Blog Posts by Forbes.com

Ilene GordonBy Jenna Goudreau, Forbes Staff

Ilene Gordon, 59, has never done anything simply because she was expected to. When she was in junior high, she lobbied the principal to take shop class with the boys rather than bake muffins with the girls. In high school, she was the only girl to take physics, and she later went on to attend MIT when the student ratio was 10:1 women. That was all good preparation for a pioneering career in the food and packaging industries, serving as the first female officer of Tenneco and leading $6.5 billion Alcan Packaging from Paris-all while raising two kids in Chicago.

Today, Gordon is CEO of publicly traded Ingredion, formerly Corn Products, a global ingredient manufacturer that works with food companies like Nestle, Kraft and Unilever, and one of just 21 women leading a Fortune 500 company. Since taking the helm in 2009, she has implemented a new strategy, grown the market cap from $2.2 billion to over $5 billion, and increased sales to $6.5 billion. She

More women have joined the ranks of the world's wealthiest, but as a group females still hold a small sliver of total 10-figure fortunes. Of the 1,426 people on the new 2013 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires, just 138 are women. That's up from 104 women last year. New women billionaires include fashion designer Tory Burch and Hong Kong finance executive Pollyanna Chu.

More On Forbes:

See more of The World's Richest Women

Full List: The World's Billionaires

Notable Newcomers To This Year's List Of Billionaires

Dani JohnsonBy Maseena Ziegler

In an episode of Sex And The City, the lead character Carrie Bradshaw, once poignantly concluded, "Maybe the past is like an anchor holding us back. Maybe, you have to let go of who you were to become who you will be."

In extraordinarily different circumstances, in a far cry from the glamorous lives portrayed on SATC, a 21-year-old homeless woman named Dani Johnson, came to roughly the same conclusion, though perhaps, through a more excruciating journey.

She made a meager living as a cocktail waitress in Hawaii, and was living out of her car with just two dollars and three cents to her name and $37,000 in debt. Haunted by a childhood filled with brutal and systematic physical and sexual abuse, she attempted suicide following a cocaine binge - but in that moment, ironically, her life changed forever.

Today Dani Johnson is a multi-millionaire many times over, runs five companies and spends her time jetting around the world, giving back through her various

Got your eye on the corner office? These companies offer women the best chance of getting there.By Jenna Goudreau

Got your eye on the corner office? These companies offer women the best chance of getting there.

The National Association for Female Executives (NAFE), a division of Working Mother Media, this week released its annual list of the top 50 companies for executive women. While only 4% of America's major corporations currently have female CEOs, this list spotlights the businesses that lead the nation in their commitment to female leadership.

More On Forbes: The Best-Paying Cities For Women In 2013

"This year we see measurable progress for women at companies that have made their advancement a priority," says Betty Spence, president of NAFE. "For women, these are the top companies to work for."

To be considered, companies needed a minimum of two women on their boards of directors and at least 1000 employees in the U.S. They were chosen based on female representation at all levels, employees' access to and usage of programs and policies that promote the advancement of

By Susan Adams

Consider asking your boss about his or her previous work experience.I once worked on a team that helped produce a nightly television news show. The format didn't vary much, the deadlines were the same every night and my colleagues and I were experienced pros. But our senior producer had a tough time letting us just do our thing. Even though we sat in offices mere feet from the boss, she wanted us to send frequent e-mail updates on our progress. We could've been the most crackerjack TV producers. If we didn't keep the boss in the loop, she thought we were falling down on the job.

That's because this boss had what management professor Joe Magee calls a strong sense of ownership over the work her staff performed. An authority on power and politics within organizations, Magee teaches at New York University's Stern School of Business. In order to be successful at work, he recommends employees get curious about their bosses' backgrounds, their goals, their values and their day-to-day management styles. To that end, he's come up with 10

By Meghan Casserly

Be prepared to be put to work at your next interview--or even before you're asked in.Ask anyone: managers, recruiters and job applicants are all unhappy with the current standards in hiring. A candidate comes in after a paper resume's been given the once-over and rattles off her best qualities over the course of a 30 minute interview, during which time you learn little more than whether she can tell a decent story or if you like her blazer. She leaves, feeling dissatisfied that she hasn't been able to show you what she's truly capable of.

More often than not, you will never see each other again.

But hiring trends are changing, and experts predict within the next 365 days a new practice will take root that will change the job application process on both sides of the interview table forever. It's called the challenge-based interview process and, in short, it's a process by which candidates, show rather than tell prospective employers their skill-sets.

Elli Sharef, the co-founder of Y-Combinator-backed recruiting company HireArt has found herself in

By Susan Adams

Jewelers have one of the least stressful jobs.University professors have a lot less stress than most of us. Update: Well maybe not, see ADDENDUM below. Unless they teach summer school, they are off between May and September and they enjoy long breaks during the school year, including a month over Christmas and New Year's and another chunk of time in the spring. Even when school is in session they don't spend too many hours in the classroom. For tenure-track professors, there is some pressure to publish books and articles, but deadlines are few. Working conditions tend to be cozy and civilized and there are minimal travel demands, except perhaps a non-mandatory conference or two. As for compensation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median salary for professors is $62,000, not a huge amount of money but enough to live on, especially in a university town.

Another boon for professors: Universities are expected to add 305,700 adjunct and tenure-track professors by 2020, according to the BLS. All of

By Jenna Goudreau

Have Degree, Will Work for PaycheckDespite women's gains in educational attainment (they are now the majority of college graduates), an ugly gender pay gap persists.

"Although women