by Patricia Sellers

Gerry Laybourne likes to stake out new ground.

As a cable-TV pioneer in the ’80s, she built Nickelodeon for Viacom (VIAB).

Later, she founded Oxygen Media to fill a female void in media.

In the past two years since she sold Oxygen to NBC Universal (GE) for nearly $1 billion, Laybourne has been advising a few small businesses and serving on boards–Symantec (SYMC), Electronic Arts (ERTS), and, pending her nomination,  J.C. Penney (JCP). Meantime, she says, she’s “thinking about another start-up.”

Laybourne is always on the move. Which is why it wasn’t so surprising last week when she told us she was pioneering again–this time, very far away, in Uganda. Laybourne was walking in Kampala, Uganda’s capital, for a cause.

She was participating in a Mentoring Walk, an African offshoot of an event she created in the U.S. Back when she was CEO of Oxygen, Laybourne began gathering a few hundred women–high-placed friends like Meryl Streep, Diane von Furstenberg,  J.P. Morgan Chase’s (JPM) Heidi Miller–in Central Park and pairing them with young aspiring women for advice-fueled walk-and-talks. Laybourne eventually did a dozen such sunrise walks in cities across the country. Now, as Oxygen’s owner, NBCU continues the tradition in the U.S.

On November 21, there was not just the Mentoring Walk in Uganda. Mentoring Walks took place in seven other countries across Africa and Latin America–all inspired by Laybourne.

Fortune too plays a role in the international expansion of the idea. The organizers of Mentoring Walks in five countries on November 21 are alums of the Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership. Each year, this program pairs participants of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit with rising-star leaders from across the developing world. These international mentees close out their month-long U.S. stay in Manhattan, and when they’re here, Laybourne invites them to her Upper West Side apartment to chat.

Hearing about the U. S. Mentoring Walks from Laybourne, several mentees ran with the idea–or rather, walked with it across the globe.

“Coming back home, mentoring other women has become my mission,” says Rehmah Kasule, a mentee of Axa Equitable Life Insurance Co. (AXA) EVP Barbara Goodstein in the 2009 Fortune-State Department program. Kasule runs Century Marketing, her own firm, in Kampala. On November 21, she drew 350 women and girls came to her Mentoring Walk there.

The real value of the Fortune-State Department program is when mentees pay it forward, so to speak, back in their home countries. That same Saturday, Lucy Kanu, a 2008 mentee of Exxon-Mobil (XOM), staged her second annual Mentoring Walk in Nigeria. Other Fortune alums put on Mentoring Walks in Argentina, Bolivia, and Egypt. Vital Voices Global Partnership, a non-profit group, helped organize the events. Vital Voices also supports the Fortune-State Department program.

If Laybourne could have cloned herself, she would have made it to all eight Mentoring Walks across the world. Turns out, she made it home from Uganda in time for Thanksgiving. She decided to give thanks this year, she says, “for a world of smart, energetic, game-changing women.”

P.S. Read Laybourne’s own blog post about walking and mentoring in Uganda.

by Jessica Shambora

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino (third from left) at the Minute Mentoring event she coordinated. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

Dana Perino is only 37 years old and already has the title “White House Press Secretary” on her resume.

But at age 25, after working on Capitol Hill for two and a half years, she was saying to herself, “I thought I’d be further along than this.”

All around her, it seemed, men were leap-frogging into higher positions. She wasn’t sure which path would help her advance her own career.

That early confusion and uncertainty makes Perino particularly sensitive to young women in the same predicament today. She is, not surprisingly, also someone whom ambitious young women look to for advice. They ask her what they should do: Go to grad school? Ask for a promotion? Stay in D.C. or work on a local campaign?

Perino, who is now chief issues counselor at PR giant Burson-Marsteller (WPPGY), was struggling to find the time to respond to multitudinous requests when she thought up a solution that she calls “Minute Mentoring.” It’s speed dating applied to mentoring. She coordinated the first event last Thursday in D.C. at the offices of Bracewell & Giuliani, with the help of Susan Molinari, the former New York Congresswoman who is a senior principal at the law firm. (Read yesterday’s post about the Minute Mentoring event.).

Perino had lots of advice to dole out, some of it gathered within the corridors of the White House. Like the time her predecessor as press secretary, the late Tony Snow, told her that she would be briefing the press the following day. All she could think about was the challenge of replacing the man she calls “one of the greatest to ever grace the podium.”

Snow told her, “You’re better at this than you think you are.” And it’s a message Perino passes on to other women who doubt themselves. “It applies to everything in your life, not just your job. You’re a better friend, sister, wife, mother, daughter than you think you are.”

Perino, who was President Bush’s spokesperson for close to two years until he left office last January, told the young women that she used to catch Condoleezza Rice for quick questions as the former Secretary of State made her way from the Oval Office to the Roosevelt Room. “Some of the most effective meetings you’ll have will be in the hallway,” she said.

Perino also had plenty of practical tips:

On self-enrichment: “Turn off the television and read. One hour of reality TV is fun; four hours is destructive. Enrich your brain. Reading makes you a better writer. A lot of men and women coming out of college today are not good writers and it’s very frustrating.”

On health and battling stress: “Find a healthy fitness activity and start incorporating it into your daily life.” Each day before heading to the White House, Perino used to do one hour on the elliptical machine while reading the newspaper.

On taking risks: “Don’t be afraid to move.” Perino shared her own story of moving to England and San Diego before arriving back in D.C. at the job that led to her position at the White House. And she told the young women that if they wanted to run for Congress, they’d have to go back home. “You can’t run for office in D.C.”

What struck Perino the most about the inaugural Minute Mentoring event? The eagerness of well-known, accomplished women to be mentors, whatever their party affiliation. “For as partisan as this town is,” she says, “when it comes to women helping other women, there is no partisanship.”

by Patricia Sellers

Former White House press secretary Dana Perino (third from left) at the Minute Mentoring event she coordinated. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

What good is having power unless you give it away?

The quickest and easiest way of dispensing power–and career advice–might be what I saw one night last week in Washington, D.C. It’s called Minute Mentoring. It’s speed dating applied to mentoring.

This pairing of role models and wannabes was beautifully orchestrated chaos. Last Thursday evening, 15 high-powered D.C. women parked themselves inside 15 offices at law firm Bracewell & Giuliani, and in a complex round robin of 10-minute sessions, advised 15 trios of young women how to navigate their careers.

Minute Mentoring is the brainchild of Dana Perino, the former White House Press Secretary in the Bush Administration. She’s now at public relations giant Burson-Marsteller. The idea to apply speed dating to career counseling struck Perino last May, after she gave a speech to a group of young female Congressional staffers and as usual, they converged around her afterwards, asking for “just 15 minutes of your time…I know you’re really busy, but please….Can you just have a quick cup of coffee with me?”

Perino’s notion of “one-stop shopping” for career advice gelled two months ago on her way home from the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. On the plane, she was sitting in a row with Bracewell & Giuliani’s Susan Molinari and Dee Martin, who were fellow Summit attendees. They loved Perino’s idea–and they said, they’d host a Minute Mentoring event.

Susan Molinari dispenses advice to young women. Photo courtesy of Charlotte Sellmyer.

On Thursday at Bracewell’s K Street offices, the 15 mentors who dished advice hastily (a loud whistle marked the start and stop of each 10-minute session) included CNN political correspondent Candy Crowley, Meet the Press executive producer Betsy Fischer, former Clinton White House Press Secretary DeeDee Myers, APCO Worldwide CEO Margery Kraus, Pfizer (PFE) government relations VP Maria Cino, and Fortune Washington Editor Nina Easton, as well as Molinari and Perino.

Over the next couple of weeks on Postcards, my colleague Jessica Shambora will dish to you the career advice and lessons we heard. Meantime, check out this story about the Minute Mentoring event in Saturday’s Washington Post.

And since we’re on the topic of mentoring, I want to mention that the makers of a documentary film called Miss Representation flew in from California to film Jessica at the Minute Mentoring event. They had previously interviewed both Jess and me since we’ve been studying women and power–the topic of the film–for years. They’re so impressed with Jess, as a young star journalist, that they’ve decided to feature her prominently in the film, due out next year.

Good for Jess. And good for mentoring in general. We at Fortune, incidentally, have three programs, through the MPWomen Summit, to help women leaders mentor: a Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership that each year brings rising-star women from developing countries to shadow women leaders in the U.S.; a mentoring partnership with Exxon Mobil (XOM), that pairs math and science experts in the MPWomen community with college students; and a new partnership with American Express (AXP) to find extraordinary female entrepreneurs and expose them to Fortune 500 executives and other female leaders.

Sharing the power is what it’s about, really.

Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein was one of the few men in attendance Monday night for the opening of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. He had a special role to play: Presenting $25,000 to each of the two recipients of this year’s Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Award.

The award recognizes women from developing countries for making a difference in their own communities, using the skills, knowledge and experience gained as participants in two special mentoring & education programs.

One of the honorees is Brigitte Dzogbenuku, who runs a sports program for girls in Ghana. In 2007 Dzogbenuku was mentored by WNBA president Donna Orender as part of the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Mentoring Partnership.  The program pairs rising-star women from developing countries with participants from the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit for a month-long mentoring program each year.

The other recipient, Penelope Machipi, helps manage a computer center for girls in Zambia. As part of a women’s film-making group,  she also aspires to make documentaries educating women like her about their rights. Machipi is an alum of Goldman Sachs’ 10,0000 Women program: In March 2008, Goldman committed $100 million to provide a business education to 10,000 women over the next five years. Goldman employees also help mentor and train the women. For more on Machipi’s inspiring story of triumph, check out this piece in the Financial Times.

On April 21, President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. What better day than today to spotlight businesses that reflect the late Senator’s mission to expand national service. More and more companies–IBM (IBM), UPS (UPS), Target (TGT), General Electric (GE), Citigroup (C) and Pfizer (PFE), among them–are aiding not-for-profits by having their employees share skills. Done right, this sort of volunteerism can be win-win-win: image-enhancing for the company, morale-boosting for employees, and generally good for the world.

A Billion + Change (“Great Talent for the Greater Good”) is the national program through which corporations pledge to expand their volunteered professional services to the nonprofit sector. Another member, besides the companies above, is Deloitte, whose CEO is committed personally. Here’s Deloitte CEO Barry Salzberg’s take on the value of volunteerism:

Photo Courtesy of Deloitte LLP

Recently, I was sitting with several dozen inner-city teens, talking with them about college and careers. It was a free-wheeling conversation. I was peppered with questions–including, “How can I get your job?”

I left absolutely convinced that as a result of that session, at least one kid who otherwise would have missed going to college will, in fact, be going. Let me tell you, it made my day, if not my week.

And it reminded me of an often overlooked way to meet people’s needs, particularly in these hard times as non-profit organizations are seeing double-digit drops in funding–as demand goes through the roof. I’m talking about skills-based volunteerism. That is, donating high-value, professional skills–for free.

Our company, Deloitte, recently conducted a survey on corporate volunteering. We found that 91% of respondents agreed that skills-based volunteering would add value to training and development, especially in fostering leadership and business skills. But only 16% of companies offer skills-based volunteering as an option for employees. Only one out of six.

Given the obvious need out there and also given President Obama’s impassioned call for national service, we’ve gone way beyond surveying about volunteerism. We’ve pledged $50 million in services–that’s right, $50 million worth of our employees’ time–over three years to help non-profit organizations boost their effectiveness.

Deloitte employees are donating skills in such areas as IT, marketing and personnel management at all sorts of non-profit organizations. For me, education is a special passion. I wasn’t the first in my family ever to go to college–my older sister claimed that honor. But I know what a profound difference it made in my life and in the lives of my two sons. So I work with a non-profit called College Summit.

College Summit, in fact, brought me and those inner-city kids together. The organization’s goal: to take kids–many from families in which nobody has ever gone to college—and get them into college. The approach: Create a ‘college-going culture’ in high schools where college-going rates are low. We provide cash, lots of volunteer hours from our people, and pro bono work on systems that give principals and schools districts much better data about their students’ progress.

Through personal experience, I’ve learned that skills-based volunteerism is one of those double bottom-line investments. It helps non-profits build capacity to serve more people with greater efficiency–which makes the non-profit more attractive for corporate support. That’s the no-brainer benefit. The less obvious benefit is the real-world training for our people, especially our younger people. We do valuable, low-cost training and we also do some good for the world.

Barry Salzberg, with Deloitte for 32 years, has been CEO since 2007.

You never know who your summer intern will turn out to be. In 1980, Ursula Burns was a summer intern in mechanical engineering at Xerox (XRX). Last month, she became CEO there. In 1985, Sallie Krawcheck was a summer intern at Fortune. She later climbed to the top tier of Citigroup (C), where she served as CFO and ran a $13 billion wealth management unit. Last week, Krawcheck moved to Bank of America (BAC) to head its global wealth and investment management business.

So, treat your intern well. He or she could be your boss someday. As we mention in the current Fortune, smart bosses employ interns to learn how the world is changing. Morgan Stanley (MS) recently published a report on digital media that was written by a 15-year-old summer intern. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CTO Phillip McKinney has interns live with him–to help him understand young consumers.

Another company that manages interns well is Siemens Hearing Instruments, a unit of German-based Siemens AG (SI). Here’s Christi Pedra, president and CEO of Siemens Hearing, with some advice for giving interns the best summer experience and getting value in return:

When I attended college (could it really be 30 years ago?), we picked majors that were suitable to a lifetime career in one field. With one position in mind. You could be an accountant or a nurse or a teacher. If you graduated with a general business degree, you hoped for a long career at IBM (IBM), Xerox or some financial institution.

Steadfast and secure. That was then.

This is now. It’s acceptable to change jobs frequently, or pursue a totally new career. With life expectancy approaching 80, you could easily have three or four successful and distinct careers.

As CEO of Siemens Hearing, how can I help young people navigate the bridge from college to career?

When I joined Siemens Hearing in 2007, I launched a summer intern program–and in designing it, I took input from my nieces and my son who were in the midst of internships (good and bad). One of my nieces had a great experience at a PR firm in New York City. The CEO invited all the interns to a reception in his home midway through the summer. In contrast, my other niece complained about getting an assignment that her supervisor assumed would take several days. When she finished the project early, there was no one to ask for the next assignment–because her manager went on vacation for three days. The better part of her week was spent browsing the Internet, trying to look busy!

We used these lessons, along with ideas from our employees, to shape our program, which has turned out to be really successful. A few ideas I’ll share:

First of all, we make a big deal for our managers to get interns. Department managers submit a proposal for a project that can be completed in 10 weeks. It must have a measurable outcome and benefit to the business. The best proposals are granted interns. HR helps in the sourcing and selection process. For the last three summers, we’ve hired 12 to 16 interns in their third or fourth year of college, and we pay them attractive wages–on average $18 an hour.

Second, we make it challenging. We give interns assignments that matter to them and to us.  This is not a shadow experience. The interns report to a department manager and are assigned a mentor. They’re assigned tasks as part of a cross-functional project team and manage assignments against a time line. I’ve had interns co-author a research paper, redesign a manufacturing line that resulted in a 24% productivity improvement, conduct and publish interviews for on-line media, and create video marketing segments.

Third, we make it real. Each year, we have our interns present their assignments. It used to be that the audience consisted of intern supervisors and me. But over the past couple of years, interest grew so much that we opened it up to all managers and department colleagues. Last year, intern presentation day was standing room only; this year, we reconfigured our training room to accommodate more than 30 attendees. Once again, the intern projects far exceeded expectations. For example, our interns simplified manufacturing tool kits, audited and redefined work instructions, developed internal communication campaigns and validated software. Ten weeks ago, they entered Siemens Hearing Instruments as students, and now they will be leaving us as professionals.

The results have been truly rewarding. We’ve offered permanent employment to at least one intern from each summer program. We’ve hired these interns in sales support, web marketing and finance. A win-win for all. And this year, we expect to extend two intern assignments into the fall and hire another two interns into permanent positions.

I kind of wish I were 22 again.

Unlike the job-hopping young people she writes about, Pedra has been with Siemens for more than 20 years. She graduated from Montclair State University and earned her MBA at Rutgers.

Leadership, essentially, is about inspiring others to carry on a mission. The leadership opportunity compounds in a connected, viral, global community.

Here’s how leadership can spread: In 2006, Fortune and the U.S. State Department launched the Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Every year since then, we’ve selected two dozen or more of the best and brightest young women leaders in developing countries and invited them to the U.S. to shadow women who attend the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Mentor/CEOs like Andrea Jung of Avon (AVP), Ellen Kullman of DuPont (DD), Ann Moore of Time Inc. (TWX), and Ursula Burns and Anne Mulcahy (now chairman) of Xerox (XRX)–plus top women execs at companies like Wal-Mart (WMT) and Exxon-Mobil–have hosted these international women. Ideally, the mentees return home and apply what they learned to improve their own community.

To reward the mentees who most effectively pay it forward, so to speak, Fortune has partnered with Goldman Sachs (GS)–which has created its own program, 10,000 Women, to educate and mentor rising-star businesswomen in emerging markets. Last Thursday, a team of judges convened to select a winner of the Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Mentoring Award.

It was really difficult to choose among the 26 nominees.

There was Maria Pacheco, a 2006 mentee who, after completing her month-long stint in the Fortune-U.S. State Department program, went home to Guatemala and built a network that today connects 1,000 rural craftswomen to markets. With help from United Nations Foundation COO Kathy Bushkin Calvin, who was her mentor, and an ever-expanding web of contacts in the U.S. and Guatemalan governments, Maria recently launched a U.S. company, Wakami World, to distribute the craftswomen’s products.

There was Maria Gabriella Hoch, the head of a Buenos Aires communications consulting firm and a 2007 mentee at NBC Universal. Maria connected with Clarissa Eseiza and Lorena Piazze–fellow Argentinians who had participated in last year’s program. Together, they set up a multi-faceted mentoring and leadership training program for women in their country.

And there was Lucy Kanu, a 2008 mentee at Exxon-Mobil (XOM) who returned to Nigeria and drew more than 500 women to her “Women Mentoring Women Walk.” Lucy modeled the event on a Mentors Walk that Gerry Laybourne, the media entrepreneur, started doing in New York’s Central Park when she was CEO of Oxygen Media. Laybourne invites the Fortune-U.S. State Department mentees to her home each year when they’re all in New York City for the close of their month-long visit. The stories she shares are infectious. Inspired by Laybourne–and by Lucy Kanu in Nigeria–alums of the mentoring program have staged “Women Mentoring Women Walks” in Kenya, Ghana, Serbia, Argentina and Peru.

Laybourne was one of the judges who helped select the winner of the $50,000 Goldman Sachs-Fortune award last week. She told me that she wept as she read the 115-pages of nominations and mentors’ endorsements.

Choosing a winner was difficult, as I said. But the judges settled on two women who have extraordinary stories and compelling plans to use the money–$25,000 each–to improve their communities.

Brigitte Dzogbenuku is one of the winners. Last year, she was the mentee of WNBA President Donna Orender. Brigitte, now 40, went back to her country, Ghana, and created not only a Mentors Walk but also a program called Hoop Sistas, which is a basketball club to teach girls teamwork and self-esteem. Brigitte, who is take-charge and charismatic, plans to use the award money to expand Hoop Sistas beyond Accra to four other cities in Ghana.

The other winner is Penelope Machipi, an alum of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women program in Zambia. Penelope is a shining example of what mentoring can do. A decade ago, when she was 14, she had lost her parents and her family property. She quit school and turned to prostitution to support herself and her brother. With the help of Camfed, a U.S.-based non-profit than fights poverty and HIV/AIDS in rural Africa by educating girls, Penelope got back into school and started a business selling maize. She applied to Goldman’s 10,000 Women and graduated this year.

Now trained in IT, Penelope is managing a computer resource center in Samfya, a remote spot in northern Zambia. The center has nine “green” terminals, an Internet connection, a printer and a photocopier. It’s managed by a team of women, and about 200 girls and women use the center each month.

That’s Penelope’s day job. Her real passion is film-making. Partnering with 22 other women in Samfya, she made a film called Nasange Inshila, meaning “I Have Found My Way,” and the group–calling themselves Samfya Women Filmmakers–has screened it in communities across rural Zambia. They’re planning to make a documentary about gender-based violence.

Penelope and Brigitte will come to the U.S. next month to attend the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein will be on hand opening night to present the Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Mentoring Award to each of these two remarkable women. Dina Powell, a former assistant Secretary of State who is now a Goldman managing director overseeing 10,000 Women, will be there too. She and I, sitting in her State Department office one day in the summer of 2005, dreamed up this Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring program. We hardly imagined the global power of one small idea.

P.S. Thanks to Vital Voices for helping Fortune and the State Department bring the mentees to the U.S. and for helping them pay it forward. Thanks to Lisa Clucas for managing the mentoring program for Fortune. Thanks to award judges Gerry Laybourne, Dina Powell, Molly Ashby of Solera Capital, Alyse Nelson of Vital Voices, and the IRC’s Carrie Welch, who chairs the mentoring program with me. And thanks to the mentors!

Last week, Rica Rwigamba attended a meeting with Starbucks (SBUX) CEO Howard Schultz at the U.S. embassy in Rwanda. Rica lives in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, where she is co-owner and director of New Dawn Associates, a “responsible tourism” and event management company. Rica is also a participant in the 2009 Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership, an extension of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Through this mentoring program, Rica spent three weeks in May shadowing her assigned mentor, Mary Wittenberg, who is the CEO of the New York Road Runners (which puts on the New York Marathon each November). We asked Rica to share her observations of the Starbucks event with Postcards readers, and she offered this captivating account.

Rica Rwigamba at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Dinner, May 2009

It was a gathering of more than 50 Rwandan business people and staff from the U.S. embassy, Howard and members of his team, and fair trade guys. It felt great to be part of it, and I realized the power of being part of a network. Lots of the people in the room were directors and experts in their fields. Some have undergone trainings or U.S. sponsored programs like me, and that is how they got invited.

I had read about Howard, so I knew his remarkable achievements and his picture. It was funny to see that the woman I sat next to didn’t have a clue about him and didn’t even know what he looked like until I pointed him out. I can’t bet $1 million USD that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know about him, because I don’t have that kind of money. But it was interesting to witness that!

His message wasn’t what was expected. Everyone waited to hear how he had climbed the ladder and made so much money. He didn’t really talk about that. Instead he talked about how special Rwanda was and how he felt he wanted to contribute to the development of the country. He praised the people of Rwanda for their efforts and constant struggles. He shared his memories of the meeting he had with a woman member of a coffee cooperative whose dream was to own a cow. He compared his life as a young man who came from a humble background and how it’s not money that really makes a person, but values — which many forget about because of riches.

The highlight of the event was the interaction with the crowd. One man pointed out an initiative started in eastern Rwanda to sell coffee made by women once a week. This was done to encourage men to let women make money from their work. Women often work the hardest in the field but they never get to sell their crops. So this guy said that they convinced the men to let women sell their products on Thursday at local markets and brand them “coffee made by women.” And what is selling the best?  The man then asked Starbucks to encourage this culture within cooperatives that they participate in and one day sell “Coffee made by Rwandan women” in their stores.

The crowd really applauded that. And a woman from the fair trade group later said that something similar was happening in Latin America, and that Femina was sold as “coffee made by women.” It will be interesting to see if this initiative is actually implemented! Howard invited this guy to attend a meeting in Seattle that will take place this year.

It was great to witness the active discussion and to know that Starbucks has now opened an office in Rwanda, and that we are the first African country where they have an office. If nothing else, I hope our coffee gets a permanent market and that the culture of drinking coffee is spread in Kigali and around the country. Did I say that I am drinking delicious Rwandan coffee while writing this?

I had breakfast today with some extraordinary college students — all women, all majoring in the sciences. That alone makes them extraordinary. After all, women constitute 46% of the U.S. workforce today. But women hold only 26% of the jobs in engineering science and technology. Fewer than 10% of American engineers are women.

The young women whom I met this morning are trying to change that, and we’re cheering them on. They make up the first class of participants in the National Math + Science Young Leaders Program, a new partnership between Fortune, ExxonMobil (XOM), and the National Math + Science Initiative.

If you read Postcards regularly, you know about the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership, which is another offshoot of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. That global mentoring program, launched in 2006, is a remarkable success: 32 rising stars from 23 developing countries came to the U.S. for a month this spring and were mentored by America’s top women execs. This new mentoring venture is aimed at filling a glaring gap here at home.

We already have an impressive lineup of mentors. Three of ExxonMobil’s senior women — VP of global marketing Margaret Mattix, VP of Engineering Sara Ortwein, and VP of Geoscience Pam Darwin — are mentoring college students in Texas, close to their offices. The other mentors are venture capitalist Ann Winblad of Hummer Winblad, Kendle International (KNDL) CEO Candace Kendle, and Kathy Button Bell, chief marketing officer at Emerson (EMR), the $25 billion manufacturing and technology company.

And there’s one “mentor-at-large” who coaches via National Math + Science Young Leaders webinars: Sally Ride. Yes, the astronaut. Ride, a regular at the Most Powerful Women Summit, now has a company, Sally Ride Science, and has dedicated her post-orbit life to encouraging girls to go into science and math.

The young women who bravely venture in that direction — and help to ease a tech talent drought that’s only worsening — need role models more than ever. Mentee Stephanie Ren, who is an electrical engineering major and computer science minor at University of California Berkeley, noted this morning that guys outnumber girls by close to 10 to 1 in her computer science classes. Ren also said that after spending a day in Silicon Valley with Winblad recently — and meeting some of the veteran VC’s high-powered pals — she came to believe that she has a shot at living her dream: to work at Google (GOOG) someday.

Incidentally, Ren said that after Google, she envisions becoming an elementary school teacher. (I tell everyone “Don’t plan your career” — and said the same to these young women at breakfast — but I applaud Ren for aiming to “pay it forward” to the next generation of techies.)

At the least, this new National Math + Science Young Leaders Program will give smart young women a little more confidence to be pioneers. Another mentee, Therica Grosshans, who’s a geology major at the University of Houston, said this morning that visiting ExxonMobil and getting to know her mentor, Pam Darwin, changed her outlook on her own career. Says Grosshans, “She made me feel that I can get that far.”

“His ability to boil things down, to just work on the things that really count, to think through the basics… It’s a special form of genius.”

– Bill Gates on what he’s learned from mentor Warren Buffett, as told to Fortune in this week’s Best Advice issue. Of all the great advice the Microsoft (MSFT) founder has gotten from Buffett — his greatest mentor besides his dad — “one of the most interesting is how he keeps things simple,” he says. “You look at his calendar, it’s pretty simple.”

The same philosophy guides the Berkshire Hathaway (BRKB) chief’s business moves. Gates explains, “You talk to him about a case where he thinks a business is attractive, and he knows a few basic numbers and facts about it. He picks the things that he’s got a model of, a model that really is predictive and that’s going to continue to work over a long-term period.”

Simplicity never goes out of style — but we do need to be reminded to get back to basics. Time Inc. built a successful magazine on this theme: Real Simple. The concept of “keeping it simple” is also universal. It’s the message Pattie often turns to when advising me on my writing for Postcards. And as you’ll read in the issue, this is also the best advice that the world’s No. 1 golfer got from his dad. –Jessica Shambora

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

The sun’s coming out in New York City after a week of seemingly endless rain. This was also a whirlwind week of interesting encounters.

On Tuesday, I had lunch, unexpectedly, with Walt Disney (DIS) CEO Bob Iger. We were both at the New York Stock Exchange for Jeff Sonnenfeld’s Yale CEO Summit, and Iger was getting the “Legend in Leadership Award.” The Summit was off the record (as was the lunch), but I can tell you that Iger talked about the commonly held notion that the world is flattening out culturally. It’s a misconception, he contends. He noted a rise in local pride and said that Disney, in response, is turning distribution centers into creative centers and producing more local TV shows. My Fortune colleague Richard Siklos wrote about this and more in “Bob Iger Rocks Disney” earlier this year.

On Wednesday, I led a Q&A with Condoleezza Rice. This was for a small group of execs, private and pro bono. (We at Fortune can’t take money; I do these gigs occasionally for exposure and connections.) It was off-the-record, but I can tell you that Rice, now at Stanford University, is optimistic about the Middle East. She’s planning to teach in the fall. For now, she’s busy writing two books: one on foreign policy and the other about her parents. Ever a model of discipline, she gets up at 5:15 a.m. to work out — better than a 4:30 a.m., which was her wake-up time in Washington. This is her routine six days a week — after working out, she writes for three or four hours. (And yes, she’s writing the books herself.)

Yesterday, my Postcards partner Jessica Shambora and I shared and learned wisdom about careers on NBC Universal’s Mentors Walk. Check out our Thursday’s Postcard. By the way, Jess and I saw The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 last night. If you’re up for intensity, see it. Travolta is tremendous.

P.S. David Kirkpatrick, Fortune’s star tech editor and writer who’s been on book leave since last August, just swung by and gave me a big, big hug. He’s working tirelessly on The Facebook Effect, due next spring. You can follow the book’s progress and become a fan at www.facebook.com/thefacebookeffect.

Seventy of New York’s top women in media joined 160 aspiring young women for a “Mentors Walk” in Central Park this morning. It was drizzly and great. NBC Universal (GE) and Step Up Women’s Network, a non-profit group all about advancing women and girls, hosted. The Mentor Walk’s creator, former Oxygen Media CEO Gerry Laybourne, was there along with J. Crew (JCG) President Tracy Gardner, Bank of America (BAC) Merrill Lynch media analyst Jessica Reif Cohen, Glamour Editor-in-Chief Cindi Leive, Real Housewives of New York star Bethenny Frankel….an eclectic mix!

Lauren Zalaznick, president of NBCU’s Women & Lifestyle Entertainment Networks, was mentor-in-chief. She, along with the rest of us mentors, accompanied the young women on a “walk & talk” through Central Park, followed by breakfast at Tavern on the Green. I walked with a young woman named Maria Jordan, a young finance manager who spent four years at IBM (IBM) before moving to General Electric’s (GE) NBCU. Jessica Shambora, my Postcards colleague, walked with Zalaznick, who is something of a media-industry phenom, having built Bravo into a highly profitable cable brand. Jessica and I both learned a lot and thought we’d share with you by letting you in on our post-Mentors Walk email chat:

Jessica: What did you talk about with your mentees?

Pattie: My favorite advice that I give to young people, women and men alike: Focus on the job at hand. Don’t plan your career. And think of your career as a jungle gym, not a ladder. Who can know, especially in today’s unpredictable world, what the next big thing will be? You need to have peripheral vision and swing to opportunities as they come along. Agree?

Jessica: I do. I think Lauren Z. would too. She told her mentees, “In your career, you can have high expectations for good experience, but it’s hard to have expectations for an exact path.” From her perspective, today was about helping the mentees understand the things they need to be thinking about to get to the next level in their career, as opposed to thinking your mentor or anyone else is going to just give you a job. Although we both know that can happen at these events!

Pattie: Indeed! So I gotta share our story. I did my first Mentors Walk in 2006. I was assigned to a mentee named Selena Soo, this charismatic young woman who got a velvet grip on me and never let me go. Since then, I’ve spoken and moderated panels at events that she’s organized. One event was 15 months ago at NYU: a career panel with Citigroup (C) CMO Lisa Caputo and a few other rising-star women. Before the panel began, you walked up to me and said, “My name is Jessica Shambora. I’ve read your stuff for years and I’ve seen you on panels. I even blogged about you.” I loved your manner and your confidence.

Jessica: Yeah, I just thought it would be cool to get to know you. I felt a strong connection to the “Most Powerful Women” idea—the stuff that you talked and wrote about often. I never imagined what would happen next. I was just pursuing my passions and interests, and it led to one of those “right place, right time” situations…

Pattie: That’s a lesson. You never know what will come out of a chance encounter. As a Fortune Editor at Large who started here 25 years ago as a reporter (like you are now!), I’ve been struck so often that just getting out there brings opportunity. First, you have to be curious. Curiosity is an undervalued trait. Second, you need to think broadly. Back to that peripheral vision that I mentioned. It’s so easy to bury yourself in your work—there’s so much to do!—but if you’re young and really smart, you think broadly: How can I contribute beyond my assignment? You look for ideas outside your four walls. That is, if you have four walls!

Jessica: Yes, and these are all things you can do no matter what state the economy is in. In fact, you should do them even more during tough times. We’ve heard this from a few different business leaders that we’ve written about on Postcards: Don’t hunker and hide. Get out there, be curious, look around. Think big.

One of the last things Lauren said this morning was about strking the right balance between celebrating and questioning success. When times are tough, she said, make sure to celebrate successes. In good times, deconstruct your successes so your business will have discipline and rigor to survive tough times. It’s a bit counterintuitive. But it’s good advice so you don’t get complacent or take any success for granted.

Pattie: I would never!

Fortune Most Powerful Women gathered for a blow-out celebration in May. We kicked off our 2009 MPWomen’s Summit theme, Betting on the Future, with a panel discussion with Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, Goldman Sachs’ (GS) Dina Powell, and Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst. Also part of the evening: 32 rising star women leaders from 23 developing countries — participants in the 2009 Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership. For more on the gala, click here.

Scenes from the party…

Jocelyne Attal, former Avaya CMO, and Cecilia Attias, former First Lady of France

WNBA chief Donna Orender, Susan Saint James, Solera Capital CEO Molly Ashby, and Danskin boss Carol Hochman

Melanne Verveer, U.S. Ambassador-at-Large

International Mentees with Gayle King (in orange) and daughter Kirby Bumpus (2nd from left)

Studio Museum of Harlem director Thelma Golden

The team behind the MPWomen Mentoring Program: Goldman Sachs managing director Dina Powell, Vital Voices CEO Alyse Nelson, and the State Department's Chris Miner

Gilt Groupe CEO Susan Lyne and Gayle King

Time Inc. Chairman & CEO Ann Moore

MPWomen Betting on the Future panelists Marissa Mayer of Google, Dina Powell of Goldman Sachs, and Meredith Whitney (with Pattie Sellers)

Marissa Mayer, Google's queen of search

Pattie and the Daily Beast's Tina Brown

CNN's Christiane Amanpour

MPWomen International Mentees and Christiane

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.

Where in the world is Gerry Laybourne? Last we heard, she sold Oxygen Media for almost $1 billion to General Electric’s (GE) NBC Universal. The media-industry icon, who had built Viacom’s (VIAB) Nickelodeon before creating Oxygen, has been notably quiet since her mega-sale in the fall of 2007.

In fact, I didn’t know what Laybourne was up to until last week, when I ended up at her apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Reason I was there: Laybourne invited the participants in this year’s Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership for idea-sharing on a variety of topics—business-building, creativity, women and power, the state of the universe. Each May, Laybourne meets with the mentees — rising-star women from across the developing world who come to the U.S. to shadow participants in the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Every May, the mentees say that meeting with Laybourne is one of the highlights of their month-long U.S. visit.

So this year I went to the Laybourne powwow — and as I admitted to her last week, I went partly to find out where in the world she’s been. “India, Bhutan, the Amazon—places I never had time to go to,” Laybourne told the 32 women from across the globe. One of her favorite trips was to Namibia, she said. That’s home to two of this year’s 32 mentees.

Laybourne really sounded liberated to be out of a job. “I’m happy to be a broader global citizen than I was when I was a grunt of a businesswoman and had time [during a trip] only to go to the hotel or to the meeting.”

Not that she’s abandoning her career forever. Now is prime time for women leaders, she contends. “Men’s brains are bigger, but we have more pre-frontal cortex, so we make connections better.” And connections — collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures — are more critical to business and politics than ever.

So is being adaptable, since today more than ever, who knows what tomorrow will bring? Women may have an edge in that respect. “We keep a lot of open folders in our minds, which is why we drive men crazy,” she told the group. “I joke that Steve Jobs is part woman because he has such an intuitive way of thinking about things,” she said, professing her admiration for Apple (AAPL). (She’s an Amazon (AMZN) fan too. Loves her Kindle.)

Laybourne noted two areas where women aren’t too adept. “One is tooting your own horn,” she said. “Women are slaves to facts and don’t take risks as readily and trust their intuition.” She felt her own intuition blocked at Disney (DIS), where she spent a couple of years pre-Oxygen and felt that centralized control and over-analysis of ideas hampered creativity. “Eighty percent of business decisions get made on intuition,” she ventured.

Laybourne is trusting her gut — yes, her intuition — to lead her to her next gig. She wouldn’t say what it might be, but clearly she’s thinking about government as well as business. “I’m very excited by the Obama Administration,” she said, citing education, health care and infrastructure as three areas that particularly interest her. She has a screen saver on her computer that shows all the U.S. Presidents — 43 white guys — and then Barack Obama. “It’s a beautiful image,” she said. “I have so much hope, I can hardly stand it.”

Watch for Laybourne to reemerge. For a woman who wanted to be a city planner, became a teacher and then an entrepreneur, and ended up as one of the media world’s great pioneers, the world is open to her.

“Betting on the Future.” That’s the 2009 theme of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, who convened in New York City last evening for a mega-celebration and some very smart conversation. I’m not sure I belong on stage with three superstars under 40: Bank analyst Meredith Whitney, Google’s (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, and Goldman Sachs’ (GS) Dina Powell. But there I was (at age 49), talking with them them about how they’ve navigated their careers and how they view the future.

It was an insanely inspiring evening, thanks also to 32 young women from 23 developing countries. This happened to be the last night in the U.S. for these participants in this year’s Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. These international women are nominated by the State Department’s embassies in developing countries and chosen by Fortune to shadow American women leaders each May. Some of this year’s mentors — including Time Inc. (TWX) CEO Ann Moore, Fidelity Personal Investing president Kathy Murphy, American Express (AXP) execs Joan Amble and Susan Sobbott — were with us last evening.

So were plenty boldfaced names: Tina Brown, Nora Ephron, CNBC’s Becky Quick, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. My Postcards colleague Jessica Shambora sat beside Sheri McCoy, Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) Worldwide Pharmaceuticals chairman, who is No. 44 on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list.

A few Best Moments from the evening:

Best Career Lesson: Mayer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, talked about juggling 14 job offers after she graduated from Stanford. She interviewed with Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and guessed that their start-up had “a 2% chance of succeeding,” she said. But she also figured, “I’ll learn more failing at Google” than succeeding at a well-established, stuck-in-its-ways company. She took a risk, And look at where it got her. At 33, Mayer is the youngest person ever to make Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list.

Smartest Industry Outlook: Meredith Whitney, who is No. 35 on our MPWomen list and made Fortune’s cover last August, said that more banks will fail as the economic recovery stumbles and some giants fail to adapt. The survivors: nimble companies that revamp their business models. One that she bets will succeed: American Express. (Click here to see Whitney talking with CNNMoney’s Poppy Harlow.)

Most Dynamic Duo: Gayle King, O magazine editor at large and Oprah Winfrey’s best friend, who brought as her “rising star” guest her daughter Kirby. A 23-year-old Stanford grad, Kirby Bumpus is pursuing her Masters in Public Health — and this summer doing an internship with teens in Harlem, teaching them about sex education.

Most Moving “Greatest Mentor” tribute: Rica Rwigamba, who runs an eco-toursim company in Rwanda, spoke about her mother and drew tears and standing ovations. This charismatic entrepreneur, who was one of the 2009 mentees, told a story about her mother returning to Rwanda after the country’s genocide and finding a new home for her husband and children. After Rika’s tribute, CNN”s Christiane Amanpour, sitting beside her, talked about her “Greatest Mentor.” She started by citing the remarkable success of women in a revived Rwanda today: Women hold 56% of the seats in Parliament. CNN’s chief international correspondent segued into a tribute to her mentor: Ted Turner, who built CNN.

Best Party Crasher: Cecilia Attias, who divorced French President Nicholas Sarkozy in 2007, remarried and has moved to Manhattan. She came with Jocelyne Attal, the former CMO of Avaya who now has her own marketing firm, JAgency. Surprise! Attias’s arrival was particularly dicey since the only dinner seat we had for the former First Lady of France was at a way-in-the-back table. Frantically, we tried to make the necessary switches. We couldn’t do it in time before everyone was seated. I have to say, Attias was lovely and most gracious. She thanked us and said she was thrilled that we were able to accommodate her.

We were happy to have her with us…along with 180 other extraordinary women who define power broadly and reach out globally to try and make the world a better place.

Stay tuned to Postcards for video from the evening. Meantime, have a good weekend!

“Make sure the people closest to the problem do the talking.”

– Geraldine Laybourne, founder of Oxygen Media, which she sold to NBC Universal (GE) for close to $1 billion in 2007. On Wednesday Laybourne hosted mentees from the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership at her home in Manhattan for a lively discussion about a range of topics — from why there is so little international news coverage in the U.S. to how women can use humor to navigate the workplace.

The media icon, who built Viacom’s (VIAB) Nickelodeon, shared an abundance of advice and personal stories. She told the group about attending meetings where she encountered men who tended not to listen to women’s ideas. So when another woman spoke up, Laybourne made sure to repeat what she said and give her credit. If a man then tried to take responsibility for the idea later on, she reminded the group who really came up with it. Eventually she found herself doing the same thing for the non-alpha males who were also ignored. She took on the role of “making sure everybody got heard, ” especially those who really understood what was going on. Makes sense, doesn’t it? –Jessica Shambora

Goldman Sachs’ (GS) top women execs hosted a breakfast this morning for the 32 mentees who are participating in this year’s Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Dina Powell, Goldman’s managing director who heads corporate outreach, was front and center — appropriately since this mentoring program was her idea. Back in 2005, when she was an assistant Secretary of State working for Condoleezza Rice, she and I hatched the mentoring partnership in her office.

Five years later, participants of Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit — including CEOs Andrea Jung of Avon (AVP), Anne Mulcahy of Xerox (XRX), Pat Woertz of ADM, Ann Moore of Time Inc. (TWX), and the top women at Fortune 500 companies such as ExxonMobil (XOM) and American Express (AXP) — have mentored the best and brightest young women leaders across the developing world.

And now that she’s at Goldman, Dina Powell is a mentor in the program too. Last year she and Goldman exec Edie Hunt hosted a bold and brilliant financial-services entrepreneur, Maali Qasem, from Jordan. This year, Powell is mentoring Femi Olayebi, a Nigerian entrepreneur who is also a graduate of Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women program (which Powell oversees). Powell and Hunt (sounds like a law firm, doesn’t it?) were joined at this morning’s breakfast by other top women at the firm — including three who shared the best advice they’ve ever received from a mentor:

Stacey Bash-Polley, co-head of fixed-income sales at Goldman: “Follow the 24-hour rule.” If passion or anger rises over an email, she said, hold off replying until the next day. Be thoughtful. You’ll be thankful the next day.

Kathy Elsesser, head of the consumer retail group in investment banking: “Form a personal board of directors.” On her board: friends, colleagues, clients and competitors. “I force myself to use my board for advice,” she says. “So I have to slow down, be more thoughtful and make better decisions.”

Lisa Shalett, COO, Global Compliance: “Stop pulling the plant from its roots.” If you regularly pull a plant to look at its roots — to check how it’s growing, to ask ‘Am I doing this right?’ — the plant is going to die. Shalett catches herself getting in her own way, she says. “You have to free yourself to let plants grow.”

All good advice. What’s your good advice for managing your life and career?

Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst, gathered a dozen women leaders from across the developing world for breakfast yesterday. I wrote yesterday’s Postcard about their “View of the World.”  The global economic outlook from Whitney’s and these women isn’t real pretty.

We asked our friends at CNNMoney.com to videotape the conversation and interview these women, who are participants in the Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. This year, Whitney — who, by the way, landed a spot on Time’s 2009 list of the World’s 100 Most Influential People — is a mentor, along with three dozen other American women leaders who attend Fortune’s annual Most Powerful Women Summit.

Take a look at this video featuring three mentees who are rising stars in their developing nations. Rica Rwigamba, who runs a tourism company in Rwanda, talks about how Starbucks’ (SBUX) struggles globally have have dampened coffee exports from her country. Vera Valievna Tkachenko from Kazakhstan notes that strong human capital — and education to build it — is more critical today than ever. And Anna Ipangelwa of Namibia says that her country is upping its food production as aid to Africa suffers in the global downturn.

It’s conversations like these that remind us how like-minded and interconnected we all are, spanning the globe.