Postcards
More women fall off the tracks
June 8, 2009: 12:31 PM ETThe 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 to the top: Ellen Kullman became CEO of DuPont in January.
Avon (AVP) President Liz Smith is on track to succeed Andrea Jung as CEO there.
Schering-Plough pharma boss Carrie Cox will soon be working for Merck (MRK), pending its $41 billion acquisition likely to close in the fourth quarter.
And the other two women in "One Step Away"? They're off the career ladder, like Brinkley. Morgan Stanley (MS) co-president Zoe Cruz has been on the sidelines since John Mack booted her in late 2007. As at BofA, her dismissal was a case of a CEO taking out a top deputy over serious risk-management problems.
Meanwhile, Susan Arnold's opt out was voluntary. When the Procter & Gamble (PG) President quit her post last March, one day after her 55th birthday, she did it to take back her life. As for returning to a big corporate job, who knows? She's not deciding yet, she told me. Meanwhile, she's staying in the game by serving on the boards of Walt Disney and McDonald's.
Here's the reality: In this stressful environment, more and more top business women are questioning the worth of their careers. Last month came a retirement announcement from one of Wal-Mart's (WMT) most senior women, Linda Dillman, at the top of her game. Dillman, EVP of Benefits and Risk Management at Wal-Mart, never lusted for big titles. I bet she'll return to her roots: information technology.
Another veteran of Fortune's Power 50 list, Sue Hellmann, recently quit her job as president of product develepment at Genentech to become Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco.
More and more women are making big life choices. Because real power is being able to choose. That's a point that Claire Shipman and Katty Kay write about extensively in their new book, Womenomics.
By the way, I hear that Amy Brinkley is doing okay. She certainly isn't proud of failing to keep BofA well-capitalized and sturdy. But she's part of a sweeping reorg there, and more change will come as CEO Ken Lewis fights to keep control. It may be small comfort, but there's less shame in losing your job now than there has been in our lifetimes.
-
Genentech president jumps to a new life
Another Fortune Most Powerful Woman -- a longtime member of our annual Power 50 list -- is leaving the corporate world. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, who was Genentech's (DNA) president of product development, is heading to the University of California San Francisco as chancellor.
Desmond-Hellmann's departure from business's upper echelons (She ranked No. 13 on Fortune's 2008 Power 50 list) adds to the trend of top women execs leaving corporations and deciding not MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 1, 2009 3:41 PM ETPosted in: Best Companies to Work For, Citigroup, Dawn Hudson, DNA, education, Erin Callan, FORTUNE MPWomen, Genentech, health care, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, P&G, PepsiCo, Personal Power, pharmaceutical, pharmaceuticals, Postcards, Power Shift, Procter & Gamble, Roche, Sallie Krawcheck, Sue Decker, Susan Arnold, Susan Desmond-Hellmann, UCSF, Yahoo, Zoe Cruz -
Power Point: Don't do it for the money
"If I wanted to make money, I would do something easier. Maybe women are prone to take crazy risks."
-- Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of consumer DNA startup 23andMe. The company's gene-testing service was named "Invention of the Year" in the new issue of Time. 23andMe beat runners-up such as the Tesla Roadster at No. 2, the Chevy Volt (GM) at No. 7, the Speedo (WRC) LZR Racer (No. 26), high-tech running MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Nov 3, 2008 6:38 PM ETPosted in: 23andMe, Adidas, Anne Wojcicki, Chevy Volt, FORTUNE MPWomen, Genentech, GM, Google, inventions, Larry Page, Linda Avey, LZR Racer, Nike, Personal Power, Postcards, Power Point, Sergey Brin, Silicon Valley, Speedo, technology, Tesla, Time Magazine, Warnaco -
DNA analysis heralds a health care revolution
Did you see the news this week that the two major personal DNA analysis companies, 23andMe and Navigenics, got licensed in California? What a brouhaha it's been--regulators issuing cease-and-desist letters, apparently aiming to protect consumers from sham operators in this nascent industry.
I just visited 23andMe's Linda Avey, who founded the company with Anne Wojcicki. Wojcicki happens to be the wife of Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google (GOOG), and Google MORE
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Aug 21, 2008 6:10 PM ET -
How powerful women behave
The Most Powerful Women franchise, just a decade old, is already Fortune's second biggest after the Fortune 500. Amazing, isn't it? This fact attests to the power of women in a year when so many powerful women - including Hillary Clinton and Morgan Stanley's (MS) Zoe Cruz and Lehman Brothers' (LEH) Erin Callan - got so close to the top and then fell. Even so, the power of women in business MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 25, 2008 2:16 PM ETPosted in: CEOs, Christine Day, Cisco, eBay, Erin Callan, FORTUNE MPWomen, Gap, Genentech, Google, Hillary Clinton, Kleiner Perkins, KPMG, Leadership by Geoff Colvin, leadership style, lululemon athletica, management, Most Powerful Women, MPWomen, Padmasree Warrior, Paula Rosput Reynolds, Postcards, SAFECO, Stephanie Tilenius, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Susan Hellman, women leaders, Zoe Cruz -
Power Point: Focus on the company's mission
"I worry when people ask, 'How many stock options am I going to get?' We hire people who want to cure diseases."
--Art Levinson, chairman and CEO of Genentech (DNA), said this during Genentech's investor day in New York City this past March. Yesterday Levinson raised Genentech's earnings forecast, and the stock is up substantially in a down market.
Jessica Shambora, Writer-Reporter - Jul 15, 2008 2:57 PM ETPosted in: Art Levinson, CEO, CEOs, DNA, Genentech, investor day, management, Pharma, pharmaceuticals, Postcards, Power Point
For the latest on the most influential women in business, philanthropy, government, and the arts, like us on Facebook. 
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.
Subscribe: RSS feed | email newsletter
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.
Read more
