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 no one can deny that Nooyi, who became PepsiCo (PEP)'s chief in 2006, has injected the company with a clear long-term vision and a reputation for being a good citizen of the world.
Nooyi's vision, which she labels "Performance with Purpose," harks back to her days as a girl, growing up in southern India, as she explained in an interview with Fortune executive editor Stephanie Mehta at our Most Powerful Women Summit. In a city with little water, young Indra had to watch her mother go to collect three containers of water everyday. The family used that meager amount for drinking, cooking, and washing, while nearby corporations had more than enough water for their own needs.
You can see Nooyi tonight at 9 p.m. in a CNBC documentary, Pepsi's Challenge. From the MPW Summit, here's Nooyi on what led her, beyond her childhood experience, to "Performance with Purpose":
Susan Lyne
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 MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 7, 2011 11:15 AM ET
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
Sallie Krawcheck
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 MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 12, 2011 9:26 AM ET
Ursula Burns
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 MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 16, 2011 10:55 AM ET
China's Yang Lan and Avon CEO Andrea Jung
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. MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 9, 2011 2:20 PM ET
FORTUNE -- As the most powerful woman in children's television, Anne Sweeney meets a lot of girls who wish they were Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus or tomorrow's superstar.
But Sweeney insists that she sees plenty of accomplished women in business who do that very same thing.
"I see a lot of women of every age trying to be something else," says Sweeney, the co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 19, 2011 2:34 PM ET
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is going on the Disney (DIS) board. Smart move for her. And smart move for Disney CEO Bob Iger and his fellow directors.
Sandberg, 40, is super-smart and supremely connected, having worked her way from Harvard to the World Bank to the U.S. Treasury--where she worked for then-Secretary Larry Summers--to Google (GOOG), where she was the top-ranked woman exec. She moved to Facebook early last year. And MORE
Patricia Sellers - Dec 23, 2009 6:32 PM ET
There comes a fork in every career. Should I do this or do that?
Charting a successful career was the topic on Tuesday at Wal-Mart (WMT), where the company's female officers staged a "Fortune Most Powerful Women" event and I interviewed two stars of the 2009 MPWomen rankings: Wal-Mart EVP of People Susan Chambers and Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns.
Their bios tell the paths they chose. More inspiring and instructive, as MORE
Patricia Sellers - Oct 15, 2009 2:40 PM ET
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz
Ever since she stormed into Yahoo (YHOO) as its new CEO in January, Carol Bartz has been adamant that the company needs to simplify and define itself. What is Yahoo? "We're not a search company. We're not just a social media company. We're not just a content company. We're really the center of people's online lives," she told Fortune managing editor Andy Serwer in an MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 28, 2009 2:06 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
