Postcards

Why I left my medical practice to treat the Taliban

Postcards is about people in transition and folks who do things beyond their job description. Gary Brickner is one of those. In this Guest Post, the third in a series about executives and professionals who serve in the war, Brickner, a New Jersey surgeon and Lt. Colonel in the National Guard, shares his boots-on-the-ground experience treating Taliban detainees in Afghanistan. Brickner didn't have to do this. He has a great MORE

Ex-Google exec Singh Cassidy on Joyus and facing her "inner entrepreneur"

Most women don't go for it, career-wise, like the guys do. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy breaks that mold. A onetime star at Google (GOOG), where was president of Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, she has restlessly rotated through the startup world--from Amazon.com (AMZN) to OpenTV to News Corp.'s (NWS) BSkyB to Yodlee, a financial-services company that she co-founded, to Polyvore, a fashion site where she was CEO last year until quitting MORE

A woman soldier in Iraq: Dr. Brown tells her story

Debbie Brown isn't like every woman, but when you read her Guest Post below, I think you'll agree that she is, in fact, Everywoman. Brown typically spends her days working as an anesthesiologist at Mount Vernon Hospital in northern Virginia. But this summer, she is in full Colonel Deborah Brown mode, a deployed Army Reservist working in the OR of a hospital outside Mosul, Iraq--one of the most dangerous places MORE

Movie cowboy Buck on leadership: Taming managers is like taming horses

I recently met Buck Brannaman, the star of the new documentary Buck, at a screening hosted by Tom and Meredith Brokaw. This laconic cowboy cast a spell on the former NBC anchor and his wife, who have a home in Montana and got to know him up there in horse country. Buck cast a spell on me too. He was the inspiration for the best-selling novel "The Horse Whisperer" and MORE

Anne Mulcahy's new pitch for prosperity

Save the Children released its 2011 State of the World report today, ranking the world's best and worst places to be a mother. At the top of the list: Norway, Australia and Iceland.  Afghanistan ranks last, while the U.S. comes in at  No. 31 among the 43 developed countries ranked. Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who chairs Save the Children, wrote an essay for the report and offered to share it MORE

Girls may fear money, but powerful women don't

by Patricia Sellers

On Monday we asked, "Are girls afraid of money?"

America (and beyond) voted and...I don't know what to conclude except I know that the question stirred the pot.

In the heated debate that ensued, I particularly appreciated the viewpoint of Matt in Springfield, VA, who said he wasn't surprised by the results of the experiment in which five $20 bills were placed randomly on classroom desks, and female college students MORE

How to get women to love money

The debate rages on about women and money. After I published "Are women afraid of money?"--which stirred up this week's far-flung opinionated commentary--Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, emailed me her thoughts. Her note was so insightful that I asked her if I could run it as a Guest Post.

Sobbott knows entrepreneurs. At American Express (AXP) since 1990, she has headed OPEN, the company's small-business card unit for seven MORE

Are girls afraid of money? The answer is...

by Patricia Sellers

Monday's Postcard--detailing an experiment in which female undergrads revealed themselves to be practically allergic to $20 bills placed randomly in a classroom--drew a flood of comments and spirited debate about women and money.

Men, for the most part, said women do fear money. "Why the fear?" asked a Miami reader, Michael D. " "IMHO, it is learned behavior. Girls are bought things, boys are given opportunities to own them."

Other MORE

Are girls afraid of money?

While visiting a friend's daughter at Georgetown University earlier this month, I got lured into meeting with a group of 15 undergrads. The session was great fun and illuminating. These were bright young women whose ambitions ranged, they told me, from cleaning up the global environmental to achieving world peace to building Fortune 500 companies.

Not one shrinking violets here.

The weekly convener of these students is Susan Wilson, CEO of The MORE

Egypt uprising: An ex-CIA official's ground view

Former CIA deputy intelligence director Jami Miscik offers her firsthand account of the unrest in the streets of Egypt and explains why we're entering a new era of uncertainty and instability throughout the region.

Jami Miscik, president of Kissinger Associates in New York, happened to be in Cairo last week when Egypt's uprising began. She was traveling with a group of policy and business people on a trip sponsored by the MORE