What it takes to become a female Fortune 500 CEO

As Marissa Mayer stood with David Karp to announce Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr on Monday, you couldn't help but notice the vast educational divide between the two principals.

Karp dropped out of Bronx High School of Science and went on to create a blogging platform worth $1.1 billion.

Tumblr's Karp and Yahoo's Mayer

Mayer graduated with honors from Stanford, earning a B.S. in Symbolic Systems and a Master's in Computer Science--then went to Google (GOOG) as its first female engineer and on to Yahoo (YHOO) to become, at 37, the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500. (Until Facebook (FB) Mark Zuckerberg nabbed that distinction.)

Mayer's traditional tech cred clearly helped propel her to corporate America's highest level. What's surprising, given the well-known dearth of women earning tech degrees, is that Mayer's female compatriots who lead Fortune 500 companies also tend to have earned diplomas in science or math or some other technical area. More than half of the 20 female Fortune 500 CEOs graduated with so-called STEM degrees--in science, tech, engineering or mathematics.

Granted, it's no surprise that IBM (IBM) chief  Ginni Rometty graduated with high honors in computer science and electrical engineering from Northwestern. Or that Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns and DuPont (DD) chief Ellen Kullman studied mechanical engineering in college. Burns, who went on to get a Master's in mechanical engineering at Columbia, rose from summer intern at Xerox to lead the company.

But who would have expected these women chiefs to have STEM backgrounds?...

PepsiCo's (PEP) Indra Nooyi studied chemistry, physics, and math at Madras Christian College in India before getting her graduate degree at Indian Institute of Management.

Avon's (AVP) Sheri McCoy has a B.S. in textile chemistry from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, plus a Master's in chemical engineering from Princeton and an MBA from Rutgers.

Irene Rosenfeld, who leads Mondelez (MDLZ)--split off from Kraft Foods--has a Ph.D. in Marketing and Statistics, plus an MBA and B.A. in Psychology, from Cornell.

Ingredion (INGR) CEO Ilene Gordon has a theory. She believes that women, more than men, need an analytical education to succeed in business. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of MIT, with a B.S. in mathematics and an MBA, Gordon began her career as a math teacher and moved to Boston Consulting Group, where she noticed that women without analytical chops "often get snowed early in their careers."

"Women don't have the confidence" or the clout, Gordon says, to put forth ideas with the finesse that men tend to have. She has five women, including her CFO, on her 13-member executive team at Ingredion, a $6.5 billion ingredient company. Speaking as a boss who is lonely at the top, at least by gender standards, Gordon adds, "An analytical degree puts you on par or ahead of the men."

Posted in: Fortune 500, Ilene Gordon, Marissa Mayer

• Coke CEO Kent's leadership lesson

  My dad died last week, and I was lucky enough to spend most of his last month with him in Pennsylvania. A great time, a great life, no regrets. Hours before he died, I got an email from Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, wishing my dad well and commenting on my Coke story in the current Fortune 500 issue. My dad never got the chance to see the story, but I MORE

  Patricia Sellers - May 17, 2012 10:50 AM ET
  Posted in: Coca-Cola, Fortune 500, Muhtar Kent

• Muhtar Kent's new Coke

  In four years as CEO of the Coca-Cola Co., he has cranked up profits and trumped Pepsi in the beverage wars. Now Kent is shaking up Coke's culture and remaking the company in his own image.

  FORTUNE -- Muhtar Kent, the son of a Turkish diplomat, grew up in Thailand, India, and Iran, and he runs a company that operates in more than 200 countries. So it is rare for him MORE

  Patricia Sellers - May 10, 2012 5:00 AM ET
  Posted in: Coca-Cola, Fortune 500, Indra Nooyi, Muhtar Kent, PepsiCo

• HP's Whitman sets the record for female Fortune 500 CEOs

  With Meg Whitman nabbing the CEO job at Hewlett-Packard--and the four women at the bottom of this list (below) new to the top job this year--America now has 15 female Fortune 500 CEOs.

  Not a number to be proud of, but hey, it's a record and it is progress nonetheless.

  Here are the women at the helm--including the rank of their companies on the Fortune 500:

  11  Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)

  39 Pat Woertz, MORE

  Patricia Sellers - Sep 23, 2011 2:00 PM ET
  Posted in: CEOs, Fortune 500, Fortune Most Powerful Women, Fortune Most Powerful Women list, FORTUNE MPWomen, Hewlett-Packard, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, Meg Whitman, Most Powerful Women, Postcards, Power Shift

• Hear them roar: Global 500's women CEOs

  This is a great summer for powerful women.

  There are the obvious victories, like Christine Lagarde grabbing the reigns of the International Monetary Fund after Dominque Strauss-Kahn's tumultuous fall from grace.

  And then there are the successes that you won't read about in the tabloids. Two Fortune 500 companies, Sempra Energy (SRE) and Guardian Life, promoted women to CEO this past month--Debra Reed and Deanna Mulligan, respectively. Campbell Soup (CPB), named Denise MORE

  Colleen Leahey, Reporter - Jul 12, 2011 2:30 PM ET
  Posted in: Chief executive officer, Christine Lagarde, Fortune 500, FORTUNE MPWomen, Global 500, Indra Nooyi, Irene Rosenfeld, Most Powerful Women, MPWomen Go Global, Patricia Woertz, PepsiCo, Postcards

• 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

  Patricia Sellers - May 21, 2009 4:50 PM ET
  Posted in: Anne Mulcahy, CEOs, Fortune 500, FORTUNE MPWomen, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, management, Most Powerful Women, MPWomen Go Global, Postcards, succession, technology, Ursula Burns, Xerox

• One secret of J&J's success: Diversify within a single industry

  by Jessica Shambora

  For this year's Fortune 500 issue, senior writer Geoff Colvin and I had the chance to look inside one of the list's most enduring performers: Johnson & Johnson (JNJ). The New Brunswick, N.J.-based health care giant is notoriously media shy, but in the midst of the economic doom and gloom, the company decided it was time to tell its 123-year story of success. What a story that is. MORE

  Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Apr 27, 2009 2:25 PM ET
  Posted in: Bill Weldon, Fortune 500, health care, J&J, jnj, Johnson & Johnson, management, pharmaceuticals, Postcards

• Fortune 500 haven: California, against the odds

  You may have heard that California is, by many measures, America's sickest state. My recent Fortune cover story, "Can Meg Whitman save California?" lays out the crisis -- and my Postcards colleague, Jessica Shambora, did a sidebar, "A State of Pain," that delivers the very depressing stats to back it up.

  Well, I noticed an interesting pattern while I was perusing the new Fortune 500 issue and examining the lists that MORE

  Patricia Sellers - Apr 22, 2009 3:49 PM ET
  Posted in: economy, Fortune 500, Postcards, Silicon Valley, technology

• Fortune 500 CEOs: Women on the rise

  Have you seen the Fortune 500, released today?

  Click around Fortune.com. It's a rich trove of facts and stats--a window into the depressing economic condition of the U.S. The most dismal news: Overall profits of Fortune 500 companies cratered to $98.9 billion from $645 billion in 2007.

  But the news about women is positive: A record 15 female CEOs populate the latest Fortune 500. That's reassuring (and surprising, actually) since we've seen MORE

  Patricia Sellers - Apr 20, 2009 1:18 PM ET
  Posted in: CEOs, Fortune 500, FORTUNE MPWomen, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, Most Powerful Women, Postcards

• Powerful women bet their careers

  I'm on vacation this week -- or I'm supposed to be! The blog world never sleeps, I guess, nor does learning while away. So I'll share with you a few things I'm learning here in Allentown, Pa.

  Aside from plowing snow, I've been plowing through the invite list for next year's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. This, as you may know, is the annual powwow that accompanies the release of what MORE

  Patricia Sellers - Dec 23, 2008 2:16 PM ET
  Posted in: AIG, banks, BJ's Wholesale, Cece Sutton, CEOs, consumer goods, ecoimagination, Ellen Gordon, Fidelity, finance, Fortune 500, Fortune Most Powerful Women list, FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit, FORTUNE MPWomen, GE, ING, Karen Mills, Kathleen Murphy, Kathy Murphy, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, Lorraine Bolsinger, management, Morgan Stanley, Paula Reynolds, Postcards, Power Shift, retail, SAFECO, SBA, Small Business Administration, Solera Capital, stock market, Tootsie Roll, Wall Street, Washington