Meg Whitman's first report card as CEO of Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) comes this afternoon when the company announces fourth-quarter earnings.
In the 60 days since she took the job, Whitman has settled on a strategy (keep HP in the PC business), worked to raise employee morale (terrible after three CEO ousters), and lifted the stock (up 12% since her appointment). But the former eBay (EBAY) chief, who lost her race for governor of California a year ago, has an enormous challenge ahead in reviving America's largest technology company.
"There is a bit of post-traumatic stress syndrome in the organization," she admitted at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit early last month, just days after she began the HP job. In a candid interview with Nina Easton, Fortune's Washington editor, Whitman compared HP to California--surprisingly, almost the same size by several key measures. But Whitman feels a lot more comfortable in one realm than the other, as she told us at the Summit.
Click here for the full transcript of the interview with Whitman at the MPW Summit.
The $25 million two-year deal that Chelsea Handler just chalked with the E! network says something about the enterprising queen of late-night TV talk. She sure knows how to negotiate.
Chelsea Handler at the MPW Summit Credit: Asa Mathat
"I do behave badly and I get paid well for it," Handler told Piers Morgan on CNN (TWX) last evening, adding, "It's a really good time to be me."
Last month, when MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 18, 2011 1:29 PM ET
Somaly Mam is a hero. Nick Kristof said so in his op-ed column in the New York Times this past weekend. Kristof raided a brothel in Northern Cambodia with this amazing woman who has become the guiding light in fighting forced prostitution around the world.
After escaping a similar brothel, where she was raped and tortured on a daily basis for years, Somaly Mam found her purpose. She devoted her life MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 15, 2011 10:00 AM ET
Evelyn Lauder, who died of complications from non-genetic ovarian cancer on Saturday, had a swarm of close friends throughout her life. Yet many close friends who attended her funeral today did not have a clue that she would die so soon.
Classic Evelyn. "It was never about her. It was always about you," Liz Robbins, a prominent Washington lobbyist, told me this morning over breakfast before she headed to the invitation-only MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 14, 2011 1:22 PM ET
The best CEOs, I've learned in my 27 years at Fortune, come to the job with a deep-seated passion and a very personal view of what they want to accomplish.
PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi may be struggling lately. Yes, investors are impatient with her healthy-products strategy, the stock is down, and the Pepsi boss dropped to No. 2 behind Kraft Foods (KFT) CEO Irene Rosenfeld on the 2011 Most Powerful Women list.
But MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 10, 2011 11:14 AM ET
Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, is one of the most impressive social entrepreneurs I've ever met. Anyone who writes her college thesis about recruiting America's top young people to education—and then spends the next 22 years building an organization that now hires more college seniors than most any Fortune 500 company—gets my vote.
But I'm not here to tell you about Kopp. (She's had many profiles MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 1, 2011 1:25 PM ET
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has become the go-to adviser for aspiring young women in business. Her view, which she expressed in an on-stage interview with me at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit: "Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal,'" she said, adding, "We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap."
Indeed, Sandberg's own career path--from the U.S. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 28, 2011 10:04 AM ET
As powerful and provocative women (Gloria Steinem, Chelsea Handler, Rosie O'Donnell...) have been swarming Warren Buffett to boost his so-called Buffett Rule--his pitch to tax the super-rich at higher rates, in line with the middle class--a lot of ordinary people wonder: How much money would this amount to, and what good might it do for America?
At the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) chief executive laid MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 20, 2011 10:11 AM ET
Chelsea Handler, Pattie Sellers, and Gloria Steinem in the Green Room at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Photo: Asa Mathat.
It's strange to fathom Chelsea Handler, Gloria Steinem, and Warren Buffett collaborating to reform America's tax code. But at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the edgy late-night talk-show host, the feminist icon, and the famed investor united around the "Buffett Rule," his proposal to lift taxes on MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 19, 2011 11:16 AM ET
Chelsea Handler Credit: Asa Mathat
It was a riot having Chelsea Handler at last week's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Handler, whose business is media (two talk/reality programs on E!, a primetime sitcom coming soon to NBC (CMCSA), a growing stack of best-selling books), conducted a sharp and funny interview with another well-known media entrepreneur: Arianna Huffington, the queen of content at AOL (AOL). Handler also met Gloria Steinem at MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 14, 2011 1:05 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
Xerox CEO Ursula Burns shares how she once accepted a job with Dell but ended up staying with Xerox. Watch
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
