Postcards
Women CEOs top the Dow's gains
January 4, 2011: 11:07 AM ETby Patricia Sellers
Here we are in 2011, and how odd is it that only a dozen Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs?
This despite plenty of evidence that placing women in key positions pays off for investors.
Maybe it's coincidental -- at least it's worth noting -- that two of the Dow 30 companies that delivered the best stock-market gains in 2010 are run by women.
One is Dupont (DD), whose CEO, Ellen Kullman, was profiled by my colleague Carol Loomis in last year's Fortune 500 issue. Since taking charge at DuPont in January 2009, Kullman has reversed decades of moribund performance and dismal results.
Indeed, the 48.1% pop in DuPont's shares last year was second-best, behind Caterpillar's (CAT) 64.3%, on the Dow. (Tractors and backhoe loaders, you can't get more macho than that.)
Kullman and the bosses at Caterpillar (CEO Douglas Oberhelman succeeded Jim Owens as CEO last July) have been at their companies for decades. (Hmm, maybe outsider CEOs are overrated.) The Dow's other winning woman, by measure of 2010 stock-market performance, is almost a lifer at Kraft Foods (KFT). But Irene Rosenfeld needed a brief stint at PepsiC0 (PEP), running Frito-Lay, to collect the cred to become Kraft's chief executive in 2006.
Revamping Kraft has been a mighty challenge for Rosenfeld. For one thing, a shareholder named Warren Buffett threw cold water on her $19 billion acquisition of candy maker Cadbury a year ago. But she persisted and prevailed. Kraft shares rose 15.9% last year (vs. the Dow's 11% average gain). Investors who reinvested dividends got a 20.5% return.
Meanwhile, No. 1 on Fortune's Most Powerful Woman list, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi, eked out a 6.4% stock-market gain. More work to do in 2011. One tactic up her sleeve: paying big money for Pepsi to sponsor The X Factor, the Simon Cowell-backed talent competition show that will go up against American Idol -- starring Coke (KO) -- this fall.
-
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
Patricia Sellers - Aug 10, 2009 12:43 PM ETPosted in: Andrea Jung, Ann Moore, Anne Mulcahy, Avon, CEOs, Dina Powell, DuPont, education, Ellen Kullman, Exxon Mobil, FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit, FORTUNE MPWomen, Goldman Sachs/Fortune Global Women Leaders Award, Goldman Scahs, Mentoring, Most Powerful Women, MPWomen Go Global, Postcards, Ursula Burns, Wall Street, Xerox -
More women fall off the tracks
The ouster of Bank of America's (BAC) chief risk officer, Amy Brinkley, was inevitable, as I wrote in "Behind the shakeup at BofA" on Friday.
And as I mentioned in that piece, two years ago, Fortune featured Brinkley and five other execs in "One Step Away," about rising-star Most Powerful Women on track to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies someday. So what's happened to the other five?
One woman made it MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jun 8, 2009 12:31 PM ETPosted in: Amy Brinkley, Avon, Bank of America, banks, Carrie Cox, CEOs, DuPont, Ellen Kullman, finance, Fortune Most Powerful Women, FORTUNE MPWomen, Genentech, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, linda dillman, liz smith, Morgan Stanley, P&G, Personal Power, Postcards, Power Shift, Procter & Gamble, Sue Hellmann, Susan Arnold, Wal-Mart, Zoe Cruz -
Why P&G's president quit
by Patricia Sellers
Procter & Gamble (PG) lost its president today: Susan Arnold, a 29-year veteran who drove the company's high-margin beauty business to $20 billion in sales and went on to oversee all of P&G's brands, stepped down one day after her 55th birthday.
"My dad retired at 62," Arnold said, phoning this afternoon on her way to a Walt Disney (DIS) board meeting. "Then he got really sick. You know MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 9, 2009 2:57 PM ETPosted in: A.G. Lafley, Amy Brinkley, Andrea Jung, Avon, Bank of America, banks, boards, Brands, Carrie Cox, CEOs, consumer goods, Disney, DuPont, Ellen Kullman, Fortune Most Powerful Women list, FORTUNE MPWomen, headhunters, John Mack, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, management, McDonald's, Morgan Stanley, Most Powerful Women, P&G, Personal Power, pharmaceuticals, Postcards, Power Shift, Procter & Gamble, Susan Arnold, Zoe Cruz -
Betting on Starbucks' lofty prices
My Fortune colleague Geoff Colvin writes in our March 2 issue that a few companies--DuPont (DD) and Colgate-Palmolive (CL) and McDonald's (MCD), to name three--are working overtime to preserve their brand equity in this downturn. Instead of discounting, they are, in some cases, actually raising prices.
Another company loathe to cut prices: Starbucks (SBUX). As I've noted on Postcards, CEO Howard Schultz told me last year that the smartest decision he MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 3, 2009 2:31 PM ETPosted in: Bono, Brands, coffee, colgate-Palmolive, consumer goods, Costco, DuPont, Howard Schultz, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, management, McDonald's, Postcards, restaurants, retail, SBUX, Starbucks -
Most Powerful Women answer Obama's call
On Friday, I left you with a promise: that I'd find something new and proactive to do to answer President Obama's call to "responsibility"--which seems to be the buzzword of his Administration.
I found my "to do" this weekend--but before I tell you what I decided on, let me share briefly what I spent yesterday working on. Carrie Welch, my onetime Fortune colleague and former Most Powerful Women Summit co-chair, and MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 2, 2009 2:10 PM ETPosted in: Accenture, American Express, Andrea Jung, Ann Moore, Avon, AVP, AXP, Beth brooke, CARE USA, Condoleezza Rice, DD, Diane Gulyas, Dina Powell, Dow, DuPont, Ernst & Young, Exxon Mobil, Fidelity, FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit, FORTUNE MPWomen, Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs/Fortune Global Women Leaders Award, GS, Helene Gayle, Kathy Murphy, KPMG, linda dillman, Mentoring, Meredith Whitney, Most Powerful Women, MPWomen Go Global, Nielson Media Research, philanthropy, Postcards, President Obama, Skadden Arps, susan whiting, Time Inc., Wal-Mart, WMT, XOM -
This week: Power shifts at Merrill, Microsoft and beyond
This year started off with a bang - at least in terms of coming and goings of powerful people. Which Postcards is largely about.
This week, I told you about Liz Dolan, once Nike's (NKE) global marketing boss, joining Oprah Winfrey to be CMO of her new venture, the OWN cable network. And yesterday, my colleague Jessica Shambora wrote about Ellen Kullman, No. 15 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list, MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jan 9, 2009 2:56 PM ETPosted in: Autodesk, Bank of America, banks, Brands, Carol Bartz, CEOs, DuPont, eBay, Ellen Kullman, finance, FORTUNE MPWomen, Gerri Elliott, Greg Fleming, headhunters, Ken Lewis, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, Liz Dolan, management, media, Meg Whitman, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Nike, OWN, Personal Power, Postcards, Power Shift, Rosemary Berkery, Silicon Valley, technology, Wall Street, Washington, Yahoo -
Kullman steps in as DuPont CEO
by Jessica Shambora
When Ellen Kullman stepped into the CEO role at DuPont (DD) this month, she became the 13th female Fortune 500 CEO. That's a milestone. But Kullman's ascension passed with little fanfare. She addressed employees in a year-end video on DuPont's intranet site but has yet to address them as a group or to send out a company-wide email since the start of the year.
Why so quiet? Well, unlike MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jan 8, 2009 2:31 PM ETPosted in: boards, CEO, CEOs, Chad Halliday, DD, DuPont, Ellen Kullman, FORTUNE MPWomen, General Motors, GM, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, Postcards, Power Shift -
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
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Sep 30, 2008 12:11 PM ETPosted in: Andrea Jung, Anne Mulcahy, Avon, AVP, Brenda Barnes, Carol Meyrowitz, CEO, CEOs, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, CS, DD, Diane Greene, DuPont, Ellen Kullman, Erin Callan, Fortune Most Powerful Women list, FORTUNE MPWomen, Google, Harpo, Heidi Miller, Indra Nooyi, Irene Rosenfeld, JPM, JPMorgan Chase, Katie Benner, KFT, Kraft, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, LEH, Lehman Brothers, Marissa Mayer, Meredith Whitney, Morgan Stanley, mp, MPWomen, MPWomen list, MS, Oppenheimer, Oprah, Oracle, PEP, Pepsi, PepsiCo, Postcards, Proct, Safra Catz, Sallie Krawcheck, Sara Lee, SLE, Susan Arnold, Susan Chambers, TJX, Ursula Burns, VMW, VMWare, Wal-Mart, Xerox, Zoe Cruz -
Most Powerful Women reach out globally
Men think about power vertically -- and focus on rank and status and size. Women think about power horizontally -- it's largely about influence. I know I'm in trouble already. This is a stereotype, indeed. But in more than a decade of asking women leaders -- and the men they work with -- how they define power, I've discovered this to be an remarkably consistent truth. My favorite definition of MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 10, 2008 10:51 AM ETPosted in: Andrea Jung, Ann Moore, anne mulchahy, Avaya, Avon, award, CEOs, Charlene Begley, Dina Powell, DuPont, Ernst & Young, Exxon Mobil, FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit, FORTUNE MPWomen, FORTUNE-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Ment, General Electric, Goldman Sachs, Herman Miller, India, KPMG, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, linda dillman, management, Mentoring, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Most Powerful Women, Most Powerful Women Summit, MPWomen, MPWomen Go Global, Oprah, Personal Power, Peru, philanthropy, Postcards, Power, Time Inc., Wal-Mart, Wells Fargo, Xerox, zimbabwe
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
Fortune Most Powerful Women
Sheryl Sandberg:
Gina Bianchini
In her first public interview since taking on the CEO gig at Yahoo, Marissa Mayer outlines her priorities both in and out of the company. Watch
Brenda Barnes famously quit a big job to be with her kids. Years later, a massive stroke nearly killed her--and her daughter returned the favor. Watch
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.
Subscribe: RSS feed | email newsletter
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.
Read more
