Postcards
A tough boss's secret behind her style
May 15, 2013: 11:24 AM ETChristine Quinn, the mayoral candidate contending to become the first woman in charge of New York City, isn't shy about displaying her true self to the public. She proved that this week by disclosing that she battled bulimia and alcoholism for 10 years until entering a rehab clinic at age 26.
That revelation is stunning—particularly in light of what Quinn, 46, said on Monday at the Fortune Most Powerful Women dinner about learning to accept her own style: loud, volatile, hot-headed and lots of other things that leaders, especially women, are not supposed to be.
This two-minute clip of Quinn talking with me will make any tough boss feel a little better about her--or his--style of leadership:
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Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer talks...and sticks around
FORTUNE -- Marissa Mayer did her first interview since becoming CEO of Yahoo (YHOO) last night. She sat down with me at the Fortune Most Powerful Women dinner in Palo Alto, California.
Here's my colleague Michal Lev-Ram's story about the interview.
And here are two clips of my interview with Mayer:
By the way, even though Mayer was heading home to her two-month-old baby, Macallister, and bound for Washington early this morning to meet MORE
Patricia Sellers - Nov 28, 2012 11:42 AM ET -
Fortune awards 2012 Global Women Leaders
Real power is personal power—what you do beyond your official job description.
As I've come to know the leaders who make up Fortune's Most Powerful Women community, I've embraced this kind of power. It makes work more than a job.
CEOs like Ursula Burns of Xerox (XRX), Tory Burch, Ellen Kullman of DuPont (DD), Marissa Mayer of Yahoo (YHOO), and Pat Woertz of ADM (ADM) are those sorts of leaders who go beyond the call, stretching MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 9, 2012 1:33 PM ET -
Fortune Women Entrepreneurs: Apply by August 1
Do you know an extraordinary female founder of an emerging global startup?
Or are you--yes, you!--a potential 2012 Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur?
We 're extending the deadline to Wednesday, August 1, to nominate or apply to be selected as a 2012 Fortune MPW Entrepreneur. We're looking for female entrepreneurs at innovative, game-changing startups, based anywhere in the world, with revenue between $1 million and $25 million. We'll invite our 2012 honorees MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 24, 2012 12:50 PM ET -
PepsiCo boss Nooyi explains her purpose
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 -
Gilt Groupe's Lyne: "Go toward the heat"
Of all the super-achieving women we saw at this past week's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit—CEOs like DuPont's (DD) Ellen Kullman and Hewlett Packard's (HPQ) Meg Whitman, Billie Jean King, and Rosie O'Donnell—Susan Lyne, the chairman of online retailer Gilt Groupe, has crafted one of the most interesting careers of all.
"I always go toward the heat," Lyne said onstage here at the Summit, explaining why she long ago created Premiere magazine MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 7, 2011 11:15 AM ET -
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 -
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 -
Xerox CEO's career advice: Listen to your mom
When Ursula Burns went to Washington and met with President Obama last Friday, at least two people in the room personified her notion of what leads to great success: "The biggest differentiator is not how you are born," says the Chairman and CEO of Xerox (XRX). "It's how you're influenced throughout your life."
Barack Obama had a remarkable single mother to influence him. As did Burns, who grew up on New MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 16, 2011 10:55 AM ET -
Keys to success from Avon's top boss
In every successful career there is a moment: You could quit. But you resist, wisely.
For Andrea Jung, the chairman and CEO of Avon Products (AVP), this moment happened right after college, when she was in the management training program at Bloomingdale's. All day everyday, there she was in the stockroom, switching vendor hangers for store hangers on thousands of pieces of clothes. "I remember calling my parents around Thanksgiving and MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 9, 2011 2:20 PM ET
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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.
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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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