Postcards

This beauty queen is no girly girl

You might think that a woman who sells $20 billion worth of beauty products in a year would have been, in her youth, a girly girl.

Not Gina Drosos. "I was a total tomboy," she says.

The top boss of Procter & Gamble's (PG) global beauty division is, like quite a few of Fortune's Most Powerful Women, a recovering jock. Growing up in Atlanta with a brother and a neighborhood packed with MORE

Two ad industry icons walk into a party...

Greetings from France, where I spoke at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival yesterday. Today there's a certain reverence in the air. That's because today would be David Ogilvy's 100th birthday.

One of my favorite Postcards was David Ogilvy's best advice for business -- tips on leading and inspiring that the legendary ad man scrawled on a scrap of paper for me several years before he died in 1999. His advice is timeless and MORE

Are women lousy negotiators?

"If a man cuts himself with a razor, it's the razor's fault," quipped Bettina Whyte, a managing director at corporate turnaround advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal. "But if a woman cuts herself with a razor, she wonders, 'What did I do wrong?'"

That was just one of the, umm, razor-sharp comments at a panel discussion during private equity firm Solera Capital's annual meeting last week. Solera, which is run by founding chairman MORE

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

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

Tips for bosses in The King's Speech

by Patricia Sellers

Of three movies that I saw this weekend (a record cine-immersion for me), True Grit was disappointing, The Fighter was thrilling, and The King's Speech was inspiring -- my favorite of the bunch.

The King's Speech is about King George VI, Queen Elizabeth's father, and his determination to cure his paralyzing stammer at a moment when England is at the brink of war and in desperate need of inspiration. MORE

Lady Gaga, Oprah, and Cathie Black: Reinvent!

by Patricia Sellers

Did you hear that Lady Gaga was the magazine world's No. 1 hit-maker in 2010? So says the Audit Bureau of Circulations, which found that the provocative performer sold more magazine covers last year than any other celebrity.

That got me thinking...Lady Gaga shares a trait with two other powerful women who are making news this week: Oprah Winfrey and Cathie Black, the new chancellor of New York City's MORE

Sara Lee CEO Barnes' letter about her stroke

Brenda Barnes, who suffered a stroke in May, is permanently stepping down from her CEO role at Sara Lee (SLE).

Today's announcement resolves part of the deep mystery that has swirled around Barnes' recovery and Sara Lee's future. As for the latter, the board has begun a search for a new CEO -- and reportedly retained Egon Zehnder International to lead it, though the company hasn't confirmed the recruiter's identity. As MORE

Can women win? Meg, Carly, and Feinstein's view

by Patricia Sellers

This week in Detroit, where I interviewed Charlene Begley--General Electric's (GE) top-ranking female exec and No. 27 on the Fortune Most Powerful Women list--someone in the audience asked: "When will we see women holding half the CEO positions in Fortune 500 companies?"

Whoa! Begley is hardly a shrinking violet, but she lobbed this one to me. And I replied: "Never ever ever ever."

If you're a regular reader of Postcards, you know my view: MORE

Living with autism: A father's story

April is National Autism Awareness Month--the time to talk about a disability that affects one in every 110 births in the U.S. and almost 1 in 70 boys. The lifetime cost of caring for a child with autism: $3.5 to $5 million, according to The Autism Society. But all the money in the world doesn't make dealing with autism easy. Here is one man's story about how his son's autism MORE