Postcards
Tyra Banks: Insecurity paves the way to success
September 21, 2011: 9:00 AM ET
The Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit kicks off in two weeks with a twist on mentoring: 35 high school seniors will interview certain inspiring women leaders—including fashion entrepreneur Tory Burch, Lululemon (LULU) CEO Christine Day, Gilt Group Chairman Susan Lyne, singer Rosanne Cash—about success and how to get there.
Also in this mix of MPW mentors: Tyra Banks. The supermodel-cum-media entrepreneur created the TV hit, America's Next Top Model, has released her first novel, Modelland, and is doing a variety of web projects. For a lot of young women, Banks epitomizes power. Last week when I interviewed her for the MPW-Yahoo (YHOO) Power Your Future series, she spoke a simple truth about a lot of powerful women (and many men too): Success, more often than not, is born out of insecurity.
Banks grew from introvert to "mean girl" to "freak girl"—tall and gawky and insecure—by her early teens. "I became a victim of mean girls," she says, adding, "I became the victim of myself."
But then on her first day of high school, a girl tapped Tyra on the shoulder and asked, "Are you a model?" That was all it took to give her a little self-esteem. Starting to model in 11th grade, she was college-bound (with acceptances from UCLA, USC, and Loyola Marymount) but got a chance to go to Paris to model. She deferred college and gave herself a year to become a supermodel.
And she did—because, she says, her mother told her that she had to distinguish herself from the competition. Before leaving for Paris, Tyra spent countless hours in the library, studying the top fashion designers and models over the decades. "I have to get a signature walk," she told herself. Her first year in Paris, Banks broke the record for most fashion shows by a newcomer.
She wrote Modelland in between empire-building and going to Harvard Business School. In the fantastical novel she is speaking to girls and young women as insecure as she used to be. "I want to expand the definition of beauty so more girls can feel beautiful when they look in the mirror," she says.
Now Banks, 37, wants to have her own kids—and marriage to her longtime boyfriend, investment banker John Utendahl, isn't essential to her plan, she says. Children would be a huge commitment for a woman who has few hours to spare as it is. But if Banks had one more hour in the day to do something good, how would she spend it? "I think I would get the phone numbers of certain girls who reached out to me and were having some issues with their self-esteem," she replies. She says she would ask these girls to look in the mirror, find one thing great about themselves—their nose, toes, whatever—and next month, look again. And again.
Real power, says Banks, is "the power to make change, the power to be effective"—and all about passing it on to the girls. "It's the power to make them feel better," she adds.
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Fortune's most promising women entrepreneurs
Fortune's editors have chosen the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. From a pool of 131 applicants, we've selected (not easily) 10 extraordinary innovators, game-changers and groundbreakers whose startups generated $1 million to $25 million in annual revenue last year--but appear poised to become large and global businesses.
That is, these women could be on the Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business list someday. (This year's U.S. and international rankings will MORE
Patricia Sellers - Sep 13, 2011 1:28 PM ET -
Tough love: Behind Pat Summitt's leadership success
Besides her 1,071 wins, 18 Final Fours, and eight national championships--the stuff that makes Pat Summitt the winningest coach, male or female, in NCAA basketball history--there is the stuff of her leadership. Measured against anyone else in sports or anywhere, Summitt stands as one of the most formidable and focused leaders you will ever meet.
Last night, after the University of Tennessee Lady Vols coach made the stunning announcement that she MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 24, 2011 3:03 PM ET -
Ex-Google exec Singh Cassidy on Joyus and facing her "inner entrepreneur"
Most women don't go for it, career-wise, like the guys do. Sukhinder Singh Cassidy breaks that mold. A onetime star at Google (GOOG), where was president of Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, she has restlessly rotated through the startup world--from Amazon.com (AMZN) to OpenTV to News Corp.'s (NWS) BSkyB to Yodlee, a financial-services company that she co-founded, to Polyvore, a fashion site where she was CEO last year until quitting MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 1, 2011 1:17 PM ET -
MPW Entrepreneurs: Application deadline extended
FORTUNE-- We're extending the deadline to apply to be one of Fortune's 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs. The new deadline is August 1. We're reaching out worldwide to find the most innovative, game-changing female entrepreneurs whose companies brought in $1 million to $25 million in the last fiscal year. We'll invite the 10 winners to the 2011 Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, October 3-5 in Laguna Niguel, California.
We started MPW MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 20, 2011 11:40 AM ET -
MPW Entrepreneurs: The best advice they've received
The Fortune Most Powerful Women search for extraordinary entrepreneurs is on.
We're looking for 10 female founders of innovative and thriving U.S. or international companies with revenue between $1 million and $25 million. To request an application form or to nominate someone you know, please email Elizabeth Busch at Elizabeth_Busch@fortuneconf.com by Monday, July 25. For more information about the application process, visit our Facebook page here.
In this video, our winning entrepreneurs MORE
Colleen Leahey, Reporter - Jul 6, 2011 9:27 AM ET -
Calling all Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs...and Tyra Banks goes to Harvard
Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs 2011 is open for nominations and applications.
Each year, Fortune recognizes 10 female entrepreneurs who are outstanding game changers, groundbreakers, and innovators. We invite them as our special guests to the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit (this year, October 3-5 in Laguna Niguel, CA) and we share their success stories with our readers.
We're on the hunt for female founders of thriving U.S. or international companies with MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jun 30, 2011 11:08 AM ET -
How to get women to love money
The debate rages on about women and money. After I published "Are women afraid of money?"--which stirred up this week's far-flung opinionated commentary--Susan Sobbott, president of American Express OPEN, emailed me her thoughts. Her note was so insightful that I asked her if I could run it as a Guest Post.
Sobbott knows entrepreneurs. At American Express (AXP) since 1990, she has headed OPEN, the company's small-business card unit for seven MORE
Patricia Sellers - Apr 21, 2011 10:49 AM ET -
Are girls afraid of money?
While visiting a friend's daughter at Georgetown University earlier this month, I got lured into meeting with a group of 15 undergrads. The session was great fun and illuminating. These were bright young women whose ambitions ranged, they told me, from cleaning up the global environmental to achieving world peace to building Fortune 500 companies.
Not one shrinking violets here.
The weekly convener of these students is Susan Wilson, CEO of The MORE
Patricia Sellers - Apr 18, 2011 11:39 AM ET -
Raising Venture Money: 10 tips for success
On Friday in Silicon Valley, I emcee'd the finale of BlogHer BET, a confab about Business, Entrepreneurism and Technology. One of my panelists was Janet Riccio, an EVP at Omnicom Group (OMC), who came on stage with 10 tips for raising start-up money. Riccio had gotten the list of tips from an entrepreneur she knows: Communispace CEO Diane Hessan, who agreed last month to sell her company to Omnicom for MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 31, 2011 12:13 PM ET
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Fortune Most Powerful Women
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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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