Postcards

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

MPWomen in New York: the evening in pictures

Fortune Most Powerful Women gathered for a blow-out celebration in May. We kicked off our 2009 MPWomen's Summit theme, Betting on the Future, with a panel discussion with Google's (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, Goldman Sachs' (GS) Dina Powell, and Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst. Also part of the evening: 32 rising star women leaders from 23 developing countries -- participants in the 2009 Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership. For more MORE

Finding bits of inspiration

We're all looking for inspiration these days, aren't we? Not to be Pollyannish, but I'm jazzed following a dinner that I attended last evening. It was organized by Joan Amble, the EVP and corporate comptroller of American Express (AXP), and Skadden Arps partner Martha McGarry. These two women convened two dozen women who participate in Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit. Terri Dial, the CEO of Citigroup's (C) U.S. Consumer Bank, MORE

Carly Fiorina has breast cancer

Carly Fiorina topped Fortune's Most Powerful Women list for seven years, from its launch in 1998 (when she was heading the biggest division at Lucent Technologies) until 2004, shortly before she was fired from the CEO position at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). The news broke today that Fiorina, 54, was diagnosed with breast cancer on February 20 and underwent surgery yesterday at Stanford Hospital.

The buzz around Washington and California lately is that MORE

Sue Decker moves on from Yahoo

Sue Decker is leaving Yahoo (YHOO). The news broke Tuesday afternoon just as Yahoo announced that its board has chosen former Autodesk (ADSK) chief Carol Bartz as the company's new CEO. As Yahoo's president, Decker was the lone Yahoo insider who was a strong candidate in the CEO search. And she wanted the job. But Yahoo's poor performance and her loyalty to outgoing chief Jerry Yang damaged her reputation too MORE

Meet Yahoo's new CEO, Carol Bartz

Yahoo named Carol Bartz its new chief. With an appointment of Bartz, the former CEO and current executive chairman of Autodesk (ADSK), the Yahoo (YHOO) board is signaling that experience in general management and tech trumps a media and advertising background. Just as important, this is a bet on a boss known for guts and decisiveness - the latter a critical trait that Jerry Yang, the boss she is replacing, MORE

A visit with education's fearless reformer

"Power is the ability to move the seemingly immovable." That's what Washington, D.C. public schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee said when I stopped by her office yesterday as I headed home from the Fortune 500 Forum. Ever since we launched the Fortune Most Powerful Women list a decade ago, I've asked scores - perhaps hundreds - of leaders, male and female, how they define power. It's fascinating to hear the responses. MORE

Power Point: Find your inner Porsche

"Mommy, did you tell Pattie how good at Porsches I am?"

- Lili Callaway, age 5, to her mom, Fortune's uber-connected car columnist Sue Zesiger Callaway, this afternoon in Laguna Beach, California. Here's a girl (Lili, not Sue) who is already defining power her own way: She certainly does know Porsches -- and Maseratis and Lamborghinis, which she is able to ID by style and country. Today, we've been racing around MORE