Postcards

Why Xerox CEO Burns is buying big

Xerox's $6.4 billion deal to buy Affiliated Computer Services--which walloped the stock yesterday--is evidence that new CEO Ursula Burns knows what she wants and won't waste time getting it. "Top line revenue growth," Burns replied, at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit, when asked what is Xerox's "unfinished business."

The Summit interview was the first public sit-down for Burns and Anne Mulcahy since the former took over from the latter in the MORE

Behind Xerox's historic CEO handoff

By Beth Kowitt

In their first public conversation on their historic CEO handoff, Ursula Burns and Anne Mulcahy of Xerox (XRX) said the intensity and amount of attention it's received has really surprised them.

In July when Mulcahy, Xerox's chairman, stepped down as CEO and handed over the reins to Burns, it was the first woman-to-woman CEO succession in Fortune 500 history. Burns is also the first black woman to lead a MORE

Most Powerful Women on CNBC's Squawk Box

I co-hosted CNBC's Squawk Box Thursday morning, when we unveiled Fortune's 2009 Most Powerful Women in Business list--topped by PepsicCo (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi for the fourth year in a row.

With us on the show: bank-industry analyst Meredith Whitney, No. 39 in Fortune's rankings. She stayed after co-hosting Squawk Box the hour before--and made news, by the way, predicting that home prices will continue to fall and unemployment will go MORE

New power in Africa...and beyond

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 MORE

Xerox's next CEO: Ursula Burns

by Jessica Shambora

Yesterday on Postcards we wrote about an historic event: Xerox (XRX) CEO Anne Mulcahy announced she will pass the baton to president Ursula Burns on the first of July in the first ever woman-to-woman transfer of the CEO role in the Fortune 500. Burns will also be the first African-American female to lead a company on the list. (Click here for a 2006 Fortune profile of Burns.)

While Fortune, MORE

Behind the Fortune 500's first female CEO handoff

by Patricia Sellers, with Jessica Shambora

This is a groundbreaking day in American business. With the decision of Anne Mulcahy to pass the chief executive role at Xerox (XRX) to Ursula Burns, the Fortune 500 has its first ever woman-to-woman CEO hand-off. The transition, due July 1, will also make Burns, 50, the first African-American female CEO in the Fortune 500.

Mulcahy and Burns prove how far women in corporate America have MORE

Global mentoring program kicks off in DC

I'm on the run in Washington, following meetings at the White House yesterday and a spectacular "Most Powerful Women Evening With..." dinner that Fortune hosted on Monday night in the Benjamin Franklin Room at the State Department. We had eight U.S. Senators with us--including our speakers, Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas--and scores of women leaders, a touch of royalty (HM Queen Noor, who is MORE

Power point: Fund the future

"If you fail to fund the future, all you'll be left with is a really lean company trying to churn old ideas into new business."

--Xerox (XRX) CEO Anne Mulcahy in the Fortune 500 issue, out this week. In a piece authored by Mulcahy she tells readers not to cut back on innovation: "In the cost-cutting discussions we're having right now – and there are many – I remind my team MORE

How the best bosses find focus

"The hardest thing about the job is staying focused," President Obama told Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes Sunday night.

Are you feeling like the President these days? Unfocused? Maybe fatally so? We're living in an age of "global A.D.D.," as David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed writer said in his column last Friday. Brooks criticizes President Obama for attempting to tackle the "four most complicated problems facing the nation--health care, MORE

Behind Fortune's Most Powerful Women

What makes a Fortune Most Powerful Woman?

This is a question that we get constantly, since rising-star business women (or their PR people!) wrangle to get a spot on Fortune's annual Power 50 list. And many a male CEO takes it as a badge of honor to have one or more of his direct reports in the MPWomen rankings. In just 11 years, Fortune's MPWomen list, which we release in the MORE