Gerri Elliott, one of Microsoft’s (MSFT) star execs, left the company early this year to spend more time with her family. Yes, seriously to spend time with her family. As I wrote in January, her departure was a major loss for Microsoft, according to senior executives there, and it was also a case of a powerful woman asking, “Why kill myself and miss my kids growing up?”

Now Elliott, who spent 22 years at IBM (IBM) before moving to Microsoft and heading the $8 billion Worldwide Public Sector unit there, has finished her hands-on familial gig and hasn’t taken long to find a new one back in the business world. Today, Juniper Networks (JNPR) announced that Elliott is coming on board in a new position crafted for her: EVP of Strategic Alliances.

Elliotts’s friends and former colleagues aren’t surprised. She and Juniper’s CEO, Kevin Johnson, have known each other for two decades, going back to their stints together at IBM and Microsoft. In fact, Elliott says she remembers the day 17 years ago when Johnson walked into her IBM office and told her he was leaving to go to upstart Microsoft. He asked her if she would take him back if he screwed up. Little did Johnson know — or Elliott either — that he would rise to head Microsoft’s biggest business, Windows, and one of its toughest, search.

For a decade, Johnson tried to hire Elliott at Microsoft. But she was a bleed-Blue loyalist. Caving in 2001, she flew from Connecticut to Seattle on September 10. Her first day at Microsoft was 9/11. Between running the company’s enterprise business in the Americas, co-heading the Americas organization, and leading the global Public Sector, Elliott handled some of Microsoft’s largest customers–which include countries and government agencies.

After she left in January, she followed the advice of a good friend: She didn’t take headhunter calls for two months. “I wanted and needed this break with my daughter,” Elliott, 53, told me in an email today. But the phone didn’t stop ringing, and eventually she considered CEO positions at start-ups, a president post at a Fortune 500 company,and COO and EVP jobs at several tech companies.

The only thing that really excited her was working with Johnson again. “He’s an exec who cares about the whole person,” she says — and he proved his worth by agreeing to put in Elliott’s Juniper employment contract that she’ll be able to go to the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. That’s the annual confab that I chair, and yes, I was shocked when Elliott told me that this event is so important to miss.)

Also in Elliott’s new contract: permission to participate in the annual Fortune – U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. This is a program that brings rising-star women from developing countries to shadow American women who participate in the MPWomen Summit. Since we launched the program in 2006, Elliott has been one of the program’s most supportive mentors.

So Johnson has lured Elliott to Silicon Valley by tailoring the job to her. The other clincher, she says: Juniper values partnerships. “I mean really values them, like it’s in their DNA,” she says. Elliott will hit the ground running and work to fortify the networking giant’s existing partnership with Nokia (NOK), Siemens (SI) and IBM.  Actually, she’s hard at work already. When I checked in with her earlier today, she was on the road with Johnson, visiting a Fortune 500 giant and trying to strike another major alliance. — Pattie Sellers

If you can’t pay your people enough (a problem for a lot of bosses these days), how do you get the best talent to come and work at your company? I posed the question to Citigroup (C) chairman Dick Parsons last week. He had a fascinating answer: Appeal to “patriotic duty,” he suggested.

Of course, only a few basketcase “too big to fail” corporations — Citi, General Motors (GM), AIG (AIG) — can dream of employing the patriotic proposition. The rest of the penny-pinching corporate world must use other bait. And for anyone hunting talent globally, it helps to know that even in a flattening world, geographical and cultural differences abound.

This is what Egon Zehnder International, the search firm, found recently when it conducted an online questionnaire of 1,003 executives around the world. I had  lunch with CEO Damien O’Brien, and as he says, the findings suggest that companies that tailor their appeals will get a leg up in the war for talent.

In lieu of high pay, what do you offer? Decision-making latitude. Status. Opportunity for personal development. All those things matter to managers everywhere. But one other thing matters most of all, even more than pay, to execs pretty much across the world: “content of the work,” according to the survey.

Geographic differences kicked in particularly strongly when Egon Zehnder asked: Would you take a drop in salary for a more interesting job? Executives in Europe (where I am right now, penning this Postcard) expressed much more willingness to switch than Americans did. (Quality of life, including life at work, matters a lot here.) No execs were more willing to sacrifice pay than the Swiss: 84% said they’d switch. Sixty percent of surveyed U.S. executives  said they would trade a better-paying job for a more exciting one.

And who, according to Egon Zehnder’s research, seems to be the most stuck on pay? Japanese executives. Only 40% of the Japanese who took part in the survey said they’d give up money for more interesting work. Hmm, an even higher percentage responded “I don’t know” — suggesting that execs in Japan are puzzled by the very question. — Pattie Sellers

Two more Most Powerful Women — the latest, both named Linda — are leaving big companies.

One is Royal Dutch Shell’s (RDS.A) Linda Cook — whose exit lends fresh meaning to the term “leaky pipeline.” Cook, executive director at the Anglo-Dutch oil giant and No. 3 on Fortune’s 2008 international Most Powerful Women list, will leave next Monday after losing the CEO race there, according to the Wall Street Journal. Strangely, the New York Times this past Sunday ran a first-person piece by Cook, 50, about her unlikely career path. She grew up in Kansas, was one of few women in engineering, and early on bunked with the boys in a mud loggers’ trailer to get the job done at Shell.

And the other Linda who is leaving? That’s Linda Dillman of Wal-Mart (WMT). EVP of Benefits and Risk Management and a multi-time star on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list, Dillman is departing the world’s biggest retailer at the end of July. Yes, her exit is surprising — and not. In 2003, Dillman told me that she questioned every promotion she got. “Promotions have come to me before I felt I was ready,” she said. In 2002, when she was offered the CIO job at Wal-Mart, she replied, “Tell me what you’re going to do if I don’t take the job.” The higher-ups persuaded her to accept the post.

Dillman, who isn’t speaking publicly about her latest move, apparently wants to return to her roots: technology (and in her current lofty post, she wasn’t doing what she loved). Given her recent experience in benefits and HR, some people think she might move into HIT — health information technology. Hmm, maybe General Electric (GE), which is expanding aggressively in that area, would have an interest in Dillman.

Like a lot of accomplished women, Dillman defines power broadly — with a global view: Over the years, she’s been a standout mentor in the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Dillman’s 2009 mentee, Wilma Judish Appenteng, just returned to Ghana after spending three weeks in Bentonville, Arkansas. The folks in Bentonville and the star manager from Ghana, I’m told, opened each other’s eyes to the world.

Another powerful woman called last week to tell me she’s opting out. “I’m going to do what I want to do rather than what I need to do,” said Julie Fasone Holder, Dow Chemical’s (DOW) SVP and chief marketing, sales and reputation officer

It’s the trend lately. If you’ve been checking into Postcards regularly, you’ve read about my conversations with high-ranking women choosing the good life vs. the grind. Susan Arnold quit the presidency at Procter & Gamble (PG) with not a clue what she’s going to do next. Former Pepsi-Cola (PEP) North America boss Dawn Hudson phoned a couple of weeks ago to say that she’s going to work for a consulting firm three days a week. That gig leaves four days for tennis, golf, family, and board duties. Hudson chairs the LPGA and is on the Lowe’s (LOW) and Allergan (AGN) boards.

And now here’s one of Dow’s top women execs joining the parade. A 34-year Dow veteran, Fasone Holder had planned to quit next year, once she hit the 35-year mark. But when Dow acquired Rohm & Haas – a $16 billion deal that just closed – her bosses wanted to move her into a new post, and she decided now was the right time to go. “My husband retired five years ago,” she says. “He’s been living the good life. And I’ve been working my butt off.”

Now, at 56, what does she want to do? She doesn’t know exactly, but like many women who have climbed high in business, she says, “I’ve had a nice career and now I want to give back. How crazy do I want to go in that space? I don’t know. Do I do something in Kenya or Zimbabwe?”

Via a sustainability project, which Dow started in January and she oversees, Fasone Holder has met some not-for-profit pioneers, including Jacqueline Novogratz, whose Acumen Fund backs entrepreneurs who help the poor in Asia and Africa. (Read Novogratz’s Guest Post, “Building value in the developing world.”) “I don’t know whether my passion extends to Africa,” Fasone Holder says. “There’s need everywhere.”

Indeed. Yesterday on Postcards, in “The job crisis strikes top talent,” I mentioned that not-for-profits don’t seem to be doing a very good job recruiting the high-end talent that’s suddenly available. Nicole Russell, an ace communications consultant looking for work, has found volunteer work difficult to line up. What a missed opportunity!

If she doesn’t turn her talent to non-profits, Fasone Holder says she may join Heidrick & Struggles’ (HSII) new Chief Advisor Network. The recruiting firm launched the network a month ago to place out-of-work execs inside companies that are seeking temporary help. Says Fasone Holder: “It could be an interesting way to work without the stress.”

Well, there’s stress in all work – even in these situations where an exec, through the Heidrick program, goes into a company as a special advisor or interim leader to work on a turnaround or restructuring or special project. But Lauren Doliva, the Heidrick partner who is leading the Chief Advisor Network, notes that it meets the needs not only of companies that seek flexible solutions but also people who want flexible solutions too. “Many executives prefer a ‘portfolio’ lifestyle that will allow them to have personal flexibility, while still contributing,” she says.

Flexibility is a luxury, particularly in these stressful times, and I realize that not everyone can do what Susan Arnold and Dawn Hudson and Julie Fasone Holder are choosing to do. But if you can find flexibility and still have a career, good for you. I’m looking for examples. Please let me know if you’ve found a smart way to keep your career on track and have that flexibility at the same time.

P.S. For more job tips, read Fortune’s current cover story, How to find a job.

The job crisis is hitting closer and closer to home. I was struck by this story,  “This Time, Slump Hits Well-Educated Too” in Sunday’s New York Times. It mentions that New York City’s unemployment rate zoomed to 8.1% in February, from 6.9% one month before. And the prime victims are “an uncharacteristically well-educated group.”

I’m seeing the trend all around. Yesterday, my good friend, architect Eric Gartner, whose firm is SPG Architects, told me that he guesses that 25% of Manhattan architects have lost their jobs in the past year. And that’s on top of a slew of architects who left the profession before the downturn arrived.

Then there’s my friend Nicole Russell Didda, whom I visited in Larchmont, NY, this past weekend. Nicole was one of the best crisis PR people I know. (When I met her in 1995, she was defending former Sunbeam (JAH) chairman “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap, now-imprisoned ex-Cendant chairman Walter Forbes, and former Oxford Health Plans (UNH) CEO Steve Wiggins all at the same time.) Nicole spent the past decade in San Francisco–heading Edelman’s office there, holding senior positions at Oliver Wyman and Ketchum, marrying, having three kids. Now back east, she’s looking for a job in New York and hitting wall after wall after wall.

“Volunteer!” That’s one of the many pieces of advice that my colleague Jia-Lynn Yang gives in “How to Get a Job,” Fortune’s current cover story. But Nicole even hit walls trying to offer her communications expertise to non-profits, when she went to websites like Volunteer Center and reached out to the American Red Cross and Planned Parenthood. “It’s one thing to not find a well-paying job in this market,” she says. “It’s another to find you can’t even volunteer!”

My sense is that non-profits are so understaffed now that they aren’t reaching out as they should to grab the high-grade talent out there for the taking. Speaking at a confab for not-for-profits last month, I noted that non-profits have an unprecedented opportunity. Another speaker, an IBM (IBM) exec named Matt Ganis, talked about how non-profits can use social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn as well as Google (GOOG) to recruit volunteers. “If you’re not using them, shame on you!” he told the group.

Here’s one smart company jumping on the chance to tap unemployed execs: Heidrick & Struggles (HSII). The search firm just launched the Chief Advisor Network, which provides executive talent on a temp or part-time basis to companies not yet ready to hire permanent help.

More on that later. It’s my birthday, and I have to go celebrate…briefly…in between juggling my multiple jobs. I’m overworked already, and it’s only Monday!

by Patricia Sellers

Dawn Hudson spent more than a decade chasing stretch goals at PepsiCo (PEP). She headed sales and marketing at Frito-Lay, the consumer giant’s snack unit. She led marketing at Pepsi-Cola North America and ascended to CEO of that $5.5 billion business.

That job turned out to be Hudson’s ceiling inside PepsiCo, where chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi has put her own stamp on the company. Hudson (who ranked as high as No. 41 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list in 2007) left Pepsi in January of last year. Since then, headhunters and others have wondered what big job she’ll land next.

It took Hudson 14 months–of silence, self-reflection, and ducking press inquiries—to decide that her new gig will be at….drum-roll…a firm you might not have heard of: the Parthenon Group, a Boston-based strategic advisory outfit. She’ll be vice chairman, working just three days a week.

What gives? Like a lot of women–and men too lately–who have come close to reaching a pinnacle in business, Hudson, 51, decided that shooting for bigger and bigger jobs is simply too stressful. And not worth the price.

“I was neglecting life,” she says about her time in the Pepsi pressure-cooker. “It took six months for me to realize that there’s some great life out there to be lived.”

Not that she’s idled these past 14 months. She serves on the boards of Lowe’s, the home-improvement retailer, and Allergan, whose restorative medical products range from breast implants to Botox to Refresh eye drops. Hudson got her own shot at reinvention as soon as she exited Pepsi: She stepped up to chair the LPGA–and then whittled her golf handicap to 12, from 15.

A serious athlete ever since her Dartmouth days, Hudson played in five competitive tennis leagues and a golf league–yes, simultaneously–at one point during her time off. “I transferred my 24/7 work ethic to sports,” she says, adding that she paid for it. She developed plantar fasciitis, or heel spurs. “I played through it.”

Her onetime boss, former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico, gave her the best advice about rerouting her career: “Roger said, ‘Whatever you do, you’re going to do passionately. So make sure you join a group of people who you really want to spend time with.’”

And Ann Fudge, a former top exec at Kraft Foods (KFT) who later headed Young & Rubicam Brands (and now sits on the General Electric board), was also helpful. “As her career progressed, she fought the urge to overload herself at the expense of her family and personal time,” Hudson says. “Ann told me that you have to follow your gut, take a deep breath, make the call to say no to something. And if it turns out to be the right call, you’ll wake up in the morning with a great sense of relief and satisfaction.”

That’s what Hudson did–but only after considering opportunities in consumer goods and retail. She says she came close to taking the top job at one large company owned by private equity. “But then I thought, what’s really going to be different this time?”

Parthenon appeals to her, she says, because she’ll have the chance to work with lots of companies in lots of areas–strategy, marketing, IT–and reach beyond business too. Parthenon has a philanthropy practice, and she plans to help the firm build a sports practice as well. She’ll start at Parthenon in a month or so. First things first: She promised to take her 11-year-old daughter (the younger of two) skiing in Colorado, and she’s taking “a mystery trip” with her husband, Bruce Beach, who wants to surprise her. (She’ll find out where the trip is when she gets there.)

So much for Hudson’s spot on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list. Does she care? Hardly. “I’m in control now,” she says. “It’s a different definition of power.”

P.S. Hudson perpetuates the trend: Powerful women are opting out. Procter & Gamble (PG) president Susan Arnold quit her post two weeks ago, one day after she turned 55. Arnold needs to “decompress,” she told me, before she even thinks about what to do next. Former eBay (EBAY) Meg Whitman left business to run for governor of California. (She’s hardly decompressing, though! Read my current Fortune cover story.)

And three execs who used to be the most powerful women on Wall Street–Citigroup’s (C) Sallie Krawcheck and Morgan Stanley’s (MS) Zoe Cruz and Ellyn McColgan–are all without jobs now, while Erin Callan, the Lehman Brothers’ CFO who landed at Credit Suisse, is taking a leave of absence–supposedly to ease her stress. What do YOU think? Will women rise again when the business world gets out of crisis?

by Patricia Sellers

Procter & Gamble (PG) lost its president today: Susan Arnold, a 29-year veteran who drove the company’s high-margin beauty business to $20 billion in sales and went on to oversee all of P&G’s brands, stepped down one day after her 55th birthday.

“My dad retired at 62,” Arnold said, phoning this afternoon on her way to a Walt Disney (DIS) board meeting. “Then he got really sick. You know what? I wanted to get out when I was really healthy.”

Such high-level departures are always suspect—particularly these days as everyone is on a short leash. But this exit by Arnold, No. 7 on Fortune’s 2008 Most Powerful Women list, really seems to be motivated by a personal decision. For years, she’s told friends and colleagues that she would probably leave Procter at age 55. That talk, of course, spoiled her chances of succeeding CEO A.G. Lafley, who has told me that he views her as courageous and unusually innovative. Lafley, who turns 62 this June, is expected to retire before age 65. As we at Fortune have been saying for a while, Lafley’s successor will likely be Bob McDonald, P&G’s chief operating officer.

Arnold, who is on the board of McDonald’s (MCD) as well as Disney, has been a prime target of recruiters. Now she’ll be in their sights more than ever. Though she’s likely to duck their calls, at least for a while. “I’m going to take some time to decompress,” she says, adding that she’s looking forward to spending more time with her two kids, 16 and 13. Arnold, who is gay, raises the children with her domestic partner. And though she won’t talk about the challenge of being a gay leader in corporate America, it clearly has affected her thinking about her career. Will she eventually go for another corporate position? She insists she’s not sure. “I’m flexible,” she says.

So goes another powerful woman, adding to the so-called “leaky pipeline” problem in the corporate world. To which Arnold remarks, “Sorry about that!” In Fortune’s Most Powerful Women issue in 2007, I featured six women “One Step Away” from the CEO position. Besides Arnold, what’s happened to the rest of them? Morgan Stanley (MS) co-president Zoe Cruz got fired by CEO John Mack late that year and hasn’t landed a new job yet. Bank of America (BAC) chief Risk officer Amy Brinkley is struggling to shore her company as well as her own legacy. Avon president Liz Smith is on track to succeed CEO Andrea Jung when she retires.

Meanwhile, Schering-Plough (SGP) EVP Carrie Cox, who heads the global pharmaceutical business, woke up this morning to find her company in a $41 billion merger deal with Merck. Only one powerful women in that “One Step Away” class has moved into a top post: Ellen Kullman, now CEO of DuPont.

by Patricia Sellers

MTV’s former president, Christina Norman, is joining the most powerful woman in media to launch OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network.

Winfrey’s CEO appointment, announced Thursday afternoon, caps a talent hunt that’s been going on quietly since May 2007 when Discovery Communications (DISCA) CEO David Zaslav pitched Winfrey on the idea of her own cable-TV network. Winfrey liked the idea instantly–”it’s about living your best life,” she says about OWN. A 50-50 Harpo-Discovery joint venture, the network is supposed to launch early next year in at least 70 million homes.

Norman is a well-regarded media-industry veteran. She spent 17 years at MTV Networks, rising from freelance production coordinator to president of VH1 and then MTV in 2005. She quit last February, stunning colleagues and stirring rumors that she might be headed to Oprah’s new venture. But her meeting with Winfrey a couple of weeks later went poorly. Burned out and exhausted, “I certainly wasn’t in a position to represent myself well. I needed to bring my whole self, and I wasn’t there,” says Norman, 45, who had met Winfrey for the first time the previous December when they ran into one another in a hotel lobby in South Africa.

Norman was traveling with her husband, Charles Hunt, and their two daughters, now 17 and 12, and she stayed in vacation mode. So much so that she almost blew her chances with Winfrey because she was more interested in living her best life, so to speak, than landing a big new job. “I wanted to go to a beach, clean out a closet, pick up my kids from school, and show up for something on time,” she says.

So Winfrey considered other candidates. Her first choice was Tom Freston, the former Viacom (VIA.B) CEO who built MTV and has been on the loose ever since Labor Day 2006, when chairman Sumner Redstone fired him. Winfrey called Freston, whom she had never met, out of the blue a few weeks after his dismissal–reaching him in Burma, of all places. After a meeting at her home in Montecito, California, she pursued him to come on board as CEO of Harpo, her media empire, or OWN, the new network.

Even as Freston resisted Winfrey’s overtures, he has been working behind the scenes to help develop the new business. He and Spencer Stuart recruiter Jim Citrin helped Oprah line up other candidates for the OWN CEO post, including History Channel boss Nancy Dubuc, an up-and-comer in the media industry, and MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, who worked with Freston for more than two decades after MTV’s 1981 launch. McGrath was unwilling to move from New York to Los Angeles, where Oprah’s new network is based.

Norman says that the OWN opportunity gnawed at her through last year. But she really didn’t pop back into the picture until mid-November when Citrin, who is on the board of trustees of Vassar, offered to interview her daughter, Zoe, who was applying to college there. That day, Citrin recalls, Norman “had her sparkle back.” She was recharged. He mentioned to her that the  CEO position at OWN still hadn’t been filled.

“I definitely wanted this job,” she says. Last month, as Winfrey and Freston went into discussions with another candidates, onetime VH1 president John Sykes, Citrin checked back with Norman one more time. She jumped. Meeting with Winfrey last Friday in Chicago, she told Oprah that she had always wanted the job but she hadn’t been ready to give her full self until now. “You can’t fake the funk,’” Norman said to Winfrey.

Norman is joining media-industry veterans who subscribe to the Oprah ethic that a job is about more than clocking the hours. It’s part of a personal journey to fulfill a passion (and communicate that to an audience, of course). Winfrey’s other hires for OWN include president Robin Schwartz, who headed Regency Television and before that was VP of programming at Disney’s (DIS) ABC Family. OWN’s chief marketing officer is Liz Dolan, who oversaw global marketing at Nike (NKE) until 1997 and has since teamed with her four sisters to do an inspirational radio show, Satellite Sisters. The digital boss is Rob Tercek, who was at Mforma, a publisher of entertainment content for mobile phones, and previously at Sony (SNE) and MTV. Digital, Winfrey says, is “the bigger vision” for OWN, so that role is critical.

As for Freston, who has been the stealthy convener of much of this talent, he signed on as a consultant to OWN last summer. Winfrey, who calls Freston “my business soul mate,” is still prodding him to step up to a bigger position. Freston says he will, though not full-time. Next week in Fortune and on Postcards, Freston talks for the first time about his life after Viacom. Stay tuned for more about Oprah and OWN as well.

Click here to read a Guest Post, “How to land a great job,” by Spencer Stuart’s Jim Citrin.

Yahoo named Carol Bartz its new chief. With an appointment of Bartz, the former CEO and current executive chairman of Autodesk (ADSK), the Yahoo (YHOO) board is signaling that experience in general management and tech trumps a media and advertising background. Just as important, this is a bet on a boss known for guts and decisiveness – the latter a critical trait that Jerry Yang, the boss she is replacing, has lacked.

I’ve never written a major story about Bartz, but I’ve tracked her career for more than a decade in the course of overseeing Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list. And I’ve spent enough time with her at Fortune conferences to know that she’s one of the most blunt and candid bosses around. At one Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, Bartz spoke fiercely about earnings guidance. The Summit is off the record, but I can tell you that she’s adamant that if you’re a CEO who doesn’t provide guidance, analysts will jump to insane estimates that you can’t live with. Bartz disagrees with my colleague Carol Loomis, who contends that analysts jumping to insane estimates will cure itself if you just let them stew in their own juice.

Bartz is no-nonsense, tell-it-like-it-is, and fearless. No wonder, given her background. She was born in Winona, Minnesota, lost her mother when she was eight years old, and was raised by a grandmother who also protected Carol from her abusive father. She worked her way through the University of Wisconsin, where she earned a BA in computer science. Then, moving from 3M to Digital Equipment to Sun Microsystems (JAVA), she landed at Autodesk, where at 43, she became CEO and was diagnosed with breast cancer. The same week. She worked through months of chemotherapy.

So you see, Bartz is not easily intimidated. I recall riding a bus in Aspen with her a few years ago, at a Fortune Brainstorm conference, and chatting with her about extroversion and introversion. Though she comes across so confident, she admitted, she’s a closet introvert. (I am too.) “Learn to be an actor,” Bartz told the Wall Street Journal in 2006. “You have to learn to be confident when you are not. You have to learn to be calm when you are not and brave when you are not. Learn to be a cobra and act until you really have that confidence.”

No doubt, Bartz will take her own advice to heart at Yahoo, which has three times Autodesk’s revenues and plenty of problems in terms of product, people, and strategy. Not to mention a stock price that has dropped 50% over the past 12 months. Given Bartz’s age, 60, and her connections across Silicon Valley – she’s on the Intel (INTC) and Cisco (CSCO) boards – Yahoo watchers are sure to speculate that she’s been hired to dress the company for a sale.

This year started off with a bang – at least in terms of coming and goings of powerful people. Which Postcards is largely about.

This week, I told you about Liz Dolan, once Nike’s (NKE) global marketing boss, joining Oprah Winfrey to be CMO of her new venture, the OWN cable network. And yesterday, my colleague Jessica Shambora wrote about Ellen Kullman, No. 15 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list, stepping into the CEO job at DuPont.

Meanwhile, Meg Whitman, No. 1 on our MPWomen list when she was CEO of eBay (EBAY), popped back on the scene with a new career plan: She’s going to run for governor of California. It’s not official yet, but Whitman signalled her intentions by quitting her three public-company boards – eBay, Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks Animation. We’ve been saying for months here on Postcards that the boss who built eBay has her eye on Arnold’s job. Schwarzenegger, that is. His two terms will be up in 2010, and term limits preclude his running again.

Another Silicon Valley leader (and MPWomen list alum) may be landing a new CEO job: Carol Bartz, as the Wall Street Journal reports, is a contender to be Yahoo’s (YHOO) next CEO. Bartz is smart and tough, with loads of experience, having built Autodesk (ADSK) during 14 years at the helm. With $2.2 billion in sales last year, Autodesk is one-third Yahoo’s size, but Bartz has big-company perspective since she sits on the Cisco and Intel boards.

I’ve gotten to know Bartz a bit through Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summits, and I’ve even ridden backroads buses with her at other Fortune confabs, from Aspen to India. You always know where you stand with Carol. She’s as candid as they come. If the Yahoo board picks Bartz or another outsider – which is likely to happen next week, I hear – will Yahoo President Sue Decker opt to stay or go? Decker, who is No. 39 on Fortune’s 2008 MPWomen list, has wanted the top job and been a serious candidate.

Here in New York City, meantime, there’s lots of shakin’ inside Merrill Lynch, now part of Bank of America (BAC). Greg Fleming,  John Thain’s No. 2 at Merrill, announced that he’s leaving to become a senior research scholar at Yale Law School. I don’t know Fleming, who is just 45, but I’ve met him, and I’ve long expected him to have a bigger banking gig someday. Fleming’s exit follows brokerage boss Bob McCann’s, announced earlier this week. General counsel Rosemary Berkery is out as well; she’s never made our MPWomen list but we considered her every year. Clearly, BofA chief Ken Lewis is putting his stamp on Merrill – quickly!

One more major move to note, this one up in soggy Seattle. Gerri Elliott, head of the worldwide public sector at Microsoft (MSFT), is leaving to spend time with her family. Seriously spend time with her family (this isn’t one of those charade firings). I hear from folks at Microsoft that her departure is a big loss. Joining Microsoft from IBM, where she spent 22 years, Elliott went on to build the public sector business – selling software to government, education and non-privatized health-care customers – from $4.7 billion in revenues in 2004 to $8 billion today.

She told me in an email this week: “This was a super-tough decision for me as I had the best job on the planet. But I am really needed at home. Our youngest, Jessica is a junior in HS and wonderful, and I really wanted and needed some time with her before she goes off to college. We blinked and our son was off!”

She went on: “This isn’t retirement retirement. What is the right word to use when you know you’re taking a break to be with family for a bit before you find that next great gig you know you have to do? Whatever it is, that’s what I’m doing. Immediate goal is to get on several boards where I know I can add value.”

Don’t you think we’ll see more shifts like this – powerful people asking, “Is my job worth my stress – and what else should I be doing with my life?”

On that note, have a nice weekend. Relax!