Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman is the new CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Not interim chief. This is Whitman's for-real next big gig.
And it is big indeed, given that the storied Silicon Valley company has lurched from chief to chief to chief ever since the board, in 1999, eased out Lew Platt and recruited Carly Fiorina from Lucent (ALU).
Fiorina was the first No. 1 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list, at the top from 1998 to 2004. Who grabbed the MPW crown from Fiorina? Whitman, when she was CEO of eBay (EBAY).
H-P's board fired Fiorina in early 2005 and has had a thing about women since. In 2006 came the removal of HP board chair Pattie Dunn. Then Mark Hurd, Fiorina's CEO successor, got into trouble over his relationship with a female HP consultant. With Hurd's 2010 ouster came new chief Leo Apotheker from SAP (SAP)--and an influx of women to fill board seats and help clean up the mess.
Whitman, 55, was one of those new HP directors, fresh off her defeat in the California governor race. I hear that Whitman, who is also on the Procter & Gamble (PG) board, was key during the past couple of months as the board assessed Apotheker's poor performance. Having taken a part-time gig at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers last spring, to test her venture-capital chops, Whitman was available to step up. And ready. Fellow HP board member--and Kleiner partner--Ray Lane and another well-known VC, Marc Andreessen, apparently were critical in getting consensus among the directors.
Debate will rage about whether Whitman is right for the job. After building eBay from a startup to a Fortune 500 company, she stumbled toward the end of her CEO run.
The other question: Why would Whitman take this very difficult job? Having spent many days with Whitman (reporting Fortune cover stories about her in 2004 and 2009), I have a sense: A corporate strategist and manager to the core, she was trained at P&G and Disney (DIS) and Bain Consulting, pre-eBay, and has long loved a giant management challenge. Also, having already gotten her head around the idea of running California, she probably didn't think the H-P challenge is as daunting as other execs might.
So, now Meg Whitman is in charge of California's second-largest company--behind Chevron (CVX). And HP is, six years after Carly, once again the largest Fortune 500 company led by a woman.
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FORTUNE -- Here is what Carol Bartz thinks of the Yahoo (YHOO) board that fired her: "These people f---ed me over," she says, in her first interview since her dismissal from the CEO role late Tuesday.
Last evening, barely 24 hours after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called Bartz on her cell phone to tell her the news, she called from her Silicon Valley home ("There are reporters at the gate… a MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 8, 2011 11:00 AM ET
Linda Robinson. Credit: Richard Van Le
Linda Robinson is leaving the PR firm Robinson Lerer Montgomery to join BlackRock.
Linda Robinson sounded like Oprah in her stunning announcement that she's leaving her namesake PR firm, Robinson Lerer Montgomery, to join BlackRock. "The last 25 years have been an amazing journey and I'm excited for the next chapter in my life," she wrote in a Monday afternoon email that bounced around MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 18, 2011 12:22 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
The takeaway was pretty discouraging this week when Fortune and recruiting giant Heidrick & Struggles (HSII) co-hosted a discussion on women and boards.
The participants -- members of the Fortune Most Powerful Women community convening in Washington, D.C. -- came up with lots of reasons that "corporate boards get a D for diversity" (the title of my Postcard on Monday). Such as: the club-like culture of boards, the white MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 5, 2011 10:16 AM ET
Save the Children released its 2011 State of the World report today, ranking the world's best and worst places to be a mother. At the top of the list: Norway, Australia and Iceland. Afghanistan ranks last, while the U.S. comes in at No. 31 among the 43 developed countries ranked. Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who chairs Save the Children, wrote an essay for the report and offered to share it MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 3, 2011 10:04 AM ET
By Patricia Sellers
When I started my career at Fortune in 1984, corporate America was a land of white men. As I say in my talks about women and power, bosses back then were white men without facial hair.
We've come a long way—just look at Fortune's Most Powerful Women list.
But a new report on Fortune 500 board composition, released by the Alliance for Board Diversity this morning, should make diversity champions weep.
The MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 2, 2011 7:37 AM ET
Meg Whitman, the former eBay CEO who got trounced in the race for California governor last November, has a new career plan: Venture capital with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
Meg Whitman will start a new career path.
By Patricia Sellers
Meg Whitman, who is in Hawaii until Wednesday with her neurosurgeon husband Griff Harsh, declined to comment, but sources close to her and to the venerable Silicon Valley venture capital firm say MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 29, 2011 2:54 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Women face a narrower band of acceptable behavior than men do. Women can be powerful. Women can be likeable. Being both is difficult to do.
Last week, I was in California, the ultimate proving ground for that theory. California is the place, after all, where three well-known women -- former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Carly Fiorina, former eBay (EBAY) CEO Meg Whitman, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi -- have learned that MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jan 31, 2011 1:25 PM ET
by Patricia Sellers
Where in the world are the fewest women on major corporate boards?
Japan, according to a study, out today, by Corporate Women Directors International. The Washington-based group, known as CWDI, counted women directors at the 200 largest companies on Fortune's Global 500 list.
As of year-end, Japan has the most companies with no women directors: 19. The all-male boards include Toyota (TM), Honda (HMC), Nissan (NSANF), Panasonic (PC), and Toshiba MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 26, 2010 2:06 PM ET
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is going on the Disney (DIS) board. Smart move for her. And smart move for Disney CEO Bob Iger and his fellow directors.
Sandberg, 40, is super-smart and supremely connected, having worked her way from Harvard to the World Bank to the U.S. Treasury--where she worked for then-Secretary Larry Summers--to Google (GOOG), where she was the top-ranked woman exec. She moved to Facebook early last year. And MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 23, 2009 6:32 PM ET
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
In a funny and candid interview, Google VP Marissa Mayer explains how she got to the top. Watch
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Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), "MySpace Cowboys," Martha Stewart ("I cannot be destroyed"), Ted Turner ("Gone with the Wind") and Oprah Winfrey ("Oprah Inc."). Since its launch in 1998, Pattie has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women" cover package.
A specialist at dissecting larger-than-life personalities, she has also profiled former U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack, and countless CEOs.
Pattie co-chairs the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, academia, and the arts. She started at Fortune in 1984, covering the big brand companies.
In Pattie's blog, Postcards, she provides insight into the lives of super-achievers through commentary, career advice, and Guest Posts by CEOs and other leaders.
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
