Postcards
Carol Bartz on boards, Yahoo, and new CEO Mayer
October 8, 2012: 4:48 PM ETIt's been a long time since we've heard from Carol Bartz, the Yahoo (YHOO) CEO who was famously fired by phone last year—and told Fortune in no uncertain terms about working with a dysfunctional corporate board.
Bartz is no longer a CEO, but she still is the lead independent director at Cisco (CSCO) and, having been on eight boards in the past 20 years, understands what makes boards functional and not. In an exclusive interview at last week's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, Bartz spoke her mind. Today's New York Times has a story about the Bartz interview by Claire Cain Miller, who attended the Summit. If you want to see Bartz in action talking about boards, Yahoo, and new CEO Marissa Mayer, here is my on-stage conversation with her at the MPW Summit:
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Best of Most Powerful Women Summit: Day One
The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit packed in famous names and exclusive interviews on Tuesday.
IBM (IBM) CEO Ginni Rometty, No. 1 on the 2012 Most Powerful Women list, did her first interview since taking the CEO job in January.
Kraft Foods CEO Irene Rosenfeld talked strategy on the day she split her business into two new companies.
Former Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz gave advice to new chief Marissa Mayer on reviving the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 3, 2012 8:48 AM ET -
Who's up, down and off the Most Powerful Women list
The biggest news about the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women list is that we have a new No. 1: Kraft Foods (KFT) CEO Irene Rosenfeld bumped PepsiCo's (PEP) Indra Nooyi to the No. 2 spot.
But when I went on CNBC this morning to reveal the new rankings, the Squawk Box anchors seemed most interested in who fell off our top 50 Power list. First and foremost to leave the list: MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 29, 2011 12:09 PM ET -
Five lessons from the Bartz and Krawcheck firings
It was a double hit to Fortune's Most Powerful Women list last Tuesday when Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz and Bank of America's (BAC) Sallie Krawcheck got fired.
Bartz, No. 10 in our 2010 MPW rankings, went out with a bang--as my explosive interview with her, F-bombs included, shows. Meanwhile, Krawcheck, BofA's global wealth management chief and No. 24 on our list, exited without a sound.
I know both women well, and it's worth observing that MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 12, 2011 9:26 AM ET -
Carol Bartz exclusive: Yahoo "f---ed me over"
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 -
The queens of media are falling fast
I was on stage with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the producer and director of Miss Representation, on Friday just after the news broke that Christina Norman was out as CEO of Oprah Winfrey's new TV network, OWN.
What an odd coincidence, since Newsom's documentary explores the dearth of women in "clout positions" in the mainstream media. Newsom says that this number is 3%.
Clearly, it is getting worse.
The day before Norman, a former president MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 9, 2011 2:54 PM ET -
What's next at Yahoo? Layoffs
by Patricia Sellers
While rumors keep swirling about Yahoo (YHOO) merging with AOL (AOL) in a deal that would include private equity, don't hold your breath. A source close to Yahoo told me today that neither AOL nor private equity buyers have contacted the company to discuss a potential deal.
Meanwhile, Yahoo news that should transpire sooner: layoffs. Sources tell me that Yahoo next week plans to announce 10% cuts in the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 6, 2010 2:48 PM ETPosted in: AOL, Carol Bartz, CEOs, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Microsoft, Postcards, private equity, Silicon Valley, technology, Yahoo -
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz hangs tough
By Patricia Sellers
On stage at Fortune's Most Powerful Women dinner in Silicon Valley, I interviewed Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz.
Approaching two years in the job, Bartz has slashed costs and improved Yahoo's profits, but she's seriously under the gun to get revenues growing and up the company's game against Google (GOOG) and social sites like Facebook.
In an interview last January, Bartz graded her job performance "B minus." What grade does MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 1, 2010 2:35 PM ET -
Why CEOs should serve on boards: Yahoo's Bartz
"You need to build your career not as a ladder, but as a pyramid," Yahoo (YHOO) CEO Carol Bartz said in the New York Times yesterday. I wholeheartedly agree: In today's ever more complex world, you need to build a broad experience base--with peripheral vision and a willingness to make lateral moves. If you've been reading Postcards, you know that my favorite image is a jungle gym. That's kind of MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 19, 2009 11:54 AM ET -
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz: Unedited
Ever since she stormed into Yahoo (YHOO) as its new CEO in January, Carol Bartz has been adamant that the company needs to simplify and define itself. What is Yahoo? "We're not a search company. We're not just a social media company. We're not just a content company. We're really the center of people's online lives," she told Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer in an on-stage interview at the MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 28, 2009 2:06 PM ET
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Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.
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The Fortune/U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership brings rising-star women from countries around the world to the U.S. for three-week mentorships with participants of the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit - among them Ursula Burns of Xerox, Laura Lang of Time Inc., Marissa Mayer of Yahoo, and Tory Burch.
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