Postcards

Meg and Carly, McCain's other key women

Keeping it brief today. Jessica and I are heading to the U.S. Open. Ilana Kloss, the CEO of World TeamTennis, invited us. We're hoping Billie Jean King, who co-founded and helps run WTT, is with us too. Btw, check out BJK's Guest Post -- and a piece I wrote about her odd connections to some of Fortune's Most Powerful Women.

Speaking of MPWomen, did you see the Republican convention last night? Sarah MORE

Billie Jean King: Pressure is a privilege

The U.S. Open begins today at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. So what could be more fitting than a Guest Post on Postcards from Billie Jean King herself? It's fitting too because King, ranked No. 1 in the world five times during her legendary career, has odd and interesting connections to some of the CEOs on Fortune Most Powerful Women in Business list.

This May, at a Most MORE

Power Point: Reach deep for the truth

"You need the truth to make the right decision. So what I've done is always go three, four, five layers deep in an organization. Get people comfortable talking to you."

- Brenda Barnes, chairman and CEO of Sara Lee (SLE), which announced a $695 million fourth-quarter loss this morning. Annual revenues rose 10% to $13.2 billion, but Sara Lee got hit by writeoffs and rocketing wheat prices in the latest quarter. MORE

Power Point: Destroy and create

"Nothing is created without something being destroyed."

- ADM (ADM) chairman and CEO Pat Woertz, who has had to make wrenching personnel and capital allocation decisions in her current job and her previous one too--as head of Chevron's (CHX) downstream operations. ADM, which processes food and ethanol, reported disappointing earnings this morning. Woertz, No. 6 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business list, is struggling to lift ADM stock, which at MORE

A powerful woman revs ahead at Enterprise

Another prominent woman made a move Monday: Pam Nicholson, No. 44 on Fortune's Most Powerful Women in Business list, was named president and COO of Enterprise Rent-a-Car.

Enterprise may not be on your radar because the company is privately held. But it's remarkable in many ways: Enterprise is the world's largest rental car company, with revenues approaching $13 billion. (You thought Hertz and Avis were No. 1 and No. 2? Enterprise MORE

Power Point: Women rise to the top

"Anytime you have a fiercely competitive, change-oriented growth business where results count and merit matters, women will rise to the top."

- Carly Fiorina said this 10 years ago this week, when I interviewed her for the very first Fortune Most Powerful Women in Businesss issue. Then a senior exec at Lucent, Fiorina was virtually unknown outside the telecom industry. In fact, she had had only one profile written about her, MORE

How Fortune selects Most Powerful Women

We rank corporate women in for-profit businesses only, and rankings are based on four criteria: the size and importance of the business in the global economy, the health and direction of the business, the arc of her career, and her social and cultural relevance.

Please send a complete description of the candidate's career and bio. Include any corporate boards or boards of other influential organizations she serves on. If the woman MORE

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

Power Point: Men and power

"Power is more important to men."

- Shelly Lazarus told me this a decade ago, soon after she became chairman and CEO of ad giant Ogilvy & Mather. Now she's planning to step down as CEO after guiding Ogilvy through the most dramatic shifts in strategy that the industry has ever seen. Pragmatic, unpretentious, and all about the work as she built long-lasting relationships with clients like Ford (F), IBM (IBM), MORE

Where are the women in tech?

As any serial conference-goer can tell you, the conversations that occur outside the scheduled panels and sessions offer equally compelling opportunities for learning and discovery. This was perhaps even more true at this week's Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference due to the broad spectrum of attendees from the wide world of technology.

On Tuesday evening, during an uncharacteristically clear sunset over Half Moon Bay, I met Dina Kaplan, co-founder and COO of blip.tv, a video-sharing MORE