Postcards

Power Point: Combine can-do and must-do

"It's a can-do spirit with a must-do responsibility that together generate great results."

- PepsiCo (PEP) chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit earlier this month. Nooyi is No. 1 on Fortune's 2008 Most Powerful Women list. PepsiCo reports earnings Tuesday morning.

Power Point: Opt for risk over inaction

"The price of inaction is much higher than the price of making a mistake."

-- Meg Whitman, who was CEO of eBay (EBAY) from 1998 until she retired this past March. Whitman said this at the 1999 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit while speaking on a panel about the future of the Internet with Morgan Stanley (MS) tech analyst Mary Meeker and Joy Covey, then CFO of Amazon.com (AMZN). The panel MORE

Buffett and more at Fortune's MPWomen Summit

Greetings from Southern California! We're here for Fortune's 10th annual Most Powerful Women Summit which, even with all that turmoil across the global markets, is drawing the heaviest hitters in business, starting with Warren Buffett and Lloyd Blankfein.

The world's greatest investor and the Goldman Sachs (GS) CEO will be at our opening dinner tonight. It's a crazy coincidence since we invited these two men (our first time inviting men) months ago. Then, last week, the MORE

Most Powerful Women: The list about the list!

We've spent the last three months slicing and dicing the accomplishments and career histories of the most powerful women in business -- far too many facts and figures to fit into our Most Powerful Women package in the magazine. Here are 10 intriguing facts that we couldn't find space for in print:

Youngest woman to ever appear on the list: Marissa Mayer, VP of Search and User Experience at Google (GOOG). MORE

New gigs for Most Powerful Women in banking

No sooner did we unveil Fortune's 2008 Most Powerful Women in Business rankings than the ground shifted beneath two women on the list. Terri Dial, No. 47, is CEO of the U.S. consumer bank at Citigroup (C). With Citi's deal to buy Wachovia, annnounced this morning, she will be in charge of the largest retail banking system in the U.S., with 4,300 branches and a 9.8% market share of deposits.

It's MORE

Power Point: Form your own family

"We were considered carpetbaggers. The other bankers wouldn't let us in their circle and certainly not in their country clubs. So we formed a family with our own associates. It was us against the world."

--Ken Lewis, Chairman and CEO of Bank of America (BAC), from a 2005 Fortune profile by Shawn Tully. Lewis shocked the financial world for a second time this year, announcing Sunday that BofA would acquire Merrill MORE

Power Point: Big is the enemy of cool

"Big is the enemy of cool."

--Urban Outfitters (URBN) CEO Glen Senk said this in the company's recent earnings call. Urban Outfitters is one of the few winners in today's punishing retail environment. Management reported a 79% increase in second-quarter net income.

Senk's words echo the philosophy of J. Crew (JCG) CEO Mickey Drexler, the subject of a cover story in the current issue of Fortune. But J. Crew isn't sharing in MORE

Power Point: Men and power

"Power is more important to men."

- Shelly Lazarus told me this a decade ago, soon after she became chairman and CEO of ad giant Ogilvy & Mather. Now she's planning to step down as CEO after guiding Ogilvy through the most dramatic shifts in strategy that the industry has ever seen. Pragmatic, unpretentious, and all about the work as she built long-lasting relationships with clients like Ford (F), IBM (IBM), MORE

Where are the women in tech?

As any serial conference-goer can tell you, the conversations that occur outside the scheduled panels and sessions offer equally compelling opportunities for learning and discovery. This was perhaps even more true at this week's Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference due to the broad spectrum of attendees from the wide world of technology.

On Tuesday evening, during an uncharacteristically clear sunset over Half Moon Bay, I met Dina Kaplan, co-founder and COO of blip.tv, a video-sharing MORE

Power Point: Motivate by listening

"The most powerful way to motivate people is to listen to them."

-- Yum! Brands (YUM) chairman and CEO David Novak to employees and franchisees during a leadership development session in London last July. Yum! Brands announces earnings today after the market closes.