Postcards
Fortune awards 2012 Global Women Leaders
August 9, 2012: 1:33 PM ETReal power is personal power—what you do beyond your official job description.
As I've come to know the leaders who make up Fortune's Most Powerful Women community, I've embraced this kind of power. It makes work more than a job.
CEOs like Ursula Burns of Xerox (XRX), Tory Burch, Ellen Kullman of DuPont (DD), Marissa Mayer of Yahoo (YHOO), and Pat Woertz of ADM (ADM) are those sorts of leaders who go beyond the call, stretching their power even as they drill into their day jobs.
These women—as well as top female executives at companies like American Express (AXP), Citigroup (C), Google (GOOG), IBM (IBM), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), Juniper Networks (JNPR) and Wal-Mart (WMT), as well as Fortune's parent, Time Warner (TWX)—have participated in Fortune's Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership.
This program, launched in 2006 in partnership with the U.S. State Department, brings rising-star women from developing countries to the U.S. each May to shadow these and other attendees of Fortune's annual Most Powerful Women Summit. Over the past six years, 200 women from 49 countries have completed the program. To fuel their power globally, we created an award with Goldman Sachs (GS) to honor the most extraordinary of these alums who, after spending a month in the U.S., go home and pay it forward there.
And now, we're announcing the 2012 winners of the Goldman Sachs & Fortune Global Women Leaders Award. Among 25 very impressive applicants, we selected these three:
2012 honoree Madhu Uday of India
Catherine Nyambala, who shadowed Marissa Mayer at Google in 2010. An electrical engineer from Kenya, Catherine is now building various programs at home to educate and empower female scientists and engineers. Mayer, who left Google last month to take the CEO job at Yahoo, has visited Catherine in Africa twice and is spurring her on.
Precious Simba, who shadowed Xerox CMO Christa Carone and Y&R (WPPGY) Worldwide Managing Partner Shelley Diamond in 2011. In her native Zimbabwe, Precious has launched mentoring clubs to encourage girls to stay in school. With the help of Xerox and Y&R, she's also created a video series, Future Self, about empowerment.
Madhu Uday, an alum of Goldman Sachs' 10,000 Women Initiative, which provides business and management education to women around the world. In India, differential treatment and poor access to resources put girls at "a serious disadvantage," Madhu notes. So she is building a skills training and mentoring center for underprivileged young mothers. "Empowerment through employment" is her objective.
We'll honor these three women at the 2012 MPW Summit on October 2. They'll share a $50,000 prize and use the money to keep paying it forward in their home countries.
Congratulations to our three honorees. Thanks to our panel of judges: Solera Capital CEO Molly Ashby, Fulbright & Jaworski Partner Linda Addison, Vital Voices CEO Alyse Nelson, and Goldman Sachs Managing Director Dina Powell. And thanks also to the Most Powerful Women who pay it forward by leveraging their power around the world.
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Update: Fortune 500 Women CEOs hits a record 20
FORTUNE -- As we noted yesterday, Yahoo's new chief Marissa Mayer is the youngest CEO in the Fortune 500. Mayer's appointment means that the Fortune 500 now has 20 female CEOs, a new record. Here's the list:
10. Meg Whitman - Hewlett-Packard (HPQ)
19. Ginni Rometty - IBM (IBM)
28. Patricia Woertz - Archer Daniels Midland (ADM)
41. Indra Nooyi - PepsiCo (PEP)
45. Angela Braly - WellPoint (WLP)
50. Irene Rosenfeld - Kraft Foods (KFT)
72. MORE
Colleen Leahey, Reporter - Jul 18, 2012 9:30 AM ET -
Xerox CEO Burns on the rising value of reputation
Playing a key role in the Xerox (XRX) corporate turnaround, serving on the American Express (AXP) board, doing big deals with Procter and Gamble (PG)—all these things give Ursula Burns unique perspective on the value of corporate reputation. The Xerox chief knows from personal experience how reputation can make or break a company.
Burns takes reputation very seriously. When I asked her to answer a few questions for Fortune's Most Admired MORE
Patricia Sellers - Mar 6, 2012 9:25 AM ETPosted in: Ursula Burns, Xerox -
Xerox CEO's career advice: Listen to your mom
When Ursula Burns went to Washington and met with President Obama last Friday, at least two people in the room personified her notion of what leads to great success: "The biggest differentiator is not how you are born," says the Chairman and CEO of Xerox (XRX). "It's how you're influenced throughout your life."
Barack Obama had a remarkable single mother to influence him. As did Burns, who grew up on New MORE
Patricia Sellers - Aug 16, 2011 10:55 AM ET -
Managing up: Advice from Pfizer and Xerox execs
"How do you manage up?" asked a young woman from the audience at the Forté Foundation's MBA Women's Conference.
It was a bold question--and one that Kristin Peck, the fast-rising Pfizer (PFE) executive who was on the panel that I moderated, answered unabashedly.
Peck knows from experience. She is Pfizer's EVP in charge of Worldwide Business Development and Innovation, a perch that she reached only by surviving a slurry of management dysfunction MORE
Patricia Sellers - Jul 28, 2011 5:00 AM ET -
Career advice from Most Powerful Women
FORTUNE -- Last week's Fortune Most Powerful Women dinner in Manhattan convened established stars, like Martha Stewart and Barbara Walters, with rising stars, like Chelsea Clinton and Barbara Bush. Two daughters of political dynasties converging in the same orbit.
And then there were 26 rising-star women from across the developing world--each a participant in the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring program. These young women were in the U.S. shadowing MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 31, 2011 12:09 PM ET -
Ursula Burns: To succeed, do what you love
The Xerox CEO shares advice from her own mentor.
FORTUNE -- For virtually every rising executive, it seems as though finding a mentor along the way is key. Xerox (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns didn't have to look very far to find hers early on. It was her mom.
"My mother was an amazing woman," she said Tuesday at Fortune's Most Powerful Women dinner in New York City, where some of the most MORE
Nin-Hai Tseng, Writer - May 24, 2011 10:35 PM ET -
CEOs, global stars, and Presidential offspring
"Leaders must role model what GREAT looks like."
In her comments at the "Fortune Most Powerful Women Evening With..." dinner in New York City Tuesday night McKinsey & Co. 's Joanna Barsh was talking about the importance of corporate women leaders helping middle managers. But her comments helped set the tone for the evening, which also recognized a group of international rising stars who have been mentored by some of the MORE
Stephanie N. Mehta, Deputy Managing Editor - May 24, 2011 10:09 PM ET -
Anne Mulcahy's new pitch for prosperity
Save the Children released its 2011 State of the World report today, ranking the world's best and worst places to be a mother. At the top of the list: Norway, Australia and Iceland. Afghanistan ranks last, while the U.S. comes in at No. 31 among the 43 developed countries ranked. Former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who chairs Save the Children, wrote an essay for the report and offered to share it MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 3, 2011 10:04 AM ET -
Most Powerful Women convene tonight
Today is a big day for Most Powerful Women, as we at Fortune call women leaders. Today I had lunch at Google's (GOOG) New York offices with 33 rising-star women from around the world who are completing their month-long Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring program.
And tonight, these mentees--who have been shadowing top female execs at U.S.-based companies like American Express (AXP), Goldman Sachs (GS), Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Time Warner (TWX)--will MORE
Patricia Sellers - May 20, 2010 3:54 PM ET
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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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