Blog Posts by Fortune Magazine

By: Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE

Tyra Banks speaks a simple truth about a lot of powerful women (and many men too): Success, more often than not, is born out of insecurity.

The supermodel-cum-media entrepreneur created the TV hit, America's Next Top Model, has just released her first novel, Modelland, and is doing a variety of web projects. All of which makes her a powerful role model for many young women and girls.

Banks went from introvert to "mean girl" to "freak girl"-tall and gawky and insecure-by her early teens, she told me in last week's interview for the MPW-Yahoo (YHOO) Power Your Future series. "I became a victim of mean girls," she said, adding, "I became the victim of myself."

It was on her first day of high school when a classmate 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

Photo Credit Jonathan ExleyBy Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE

What is the No. 1 trait that has led to your success?

Warren Buffett's is focus-according to Alice Schroeder, author of the Buffett bio Snowball, who spoke, as I did, at a corporate event at the U.S. Open last week.

Getting ready to go on stage, I thought, what's my key trait? Curiosity, I guess. It keeps a journalist alive and open to ideas.

So I was innately curious to interview Billie Jean King that afternoon at the Open. As soon as we took the stage, to the blare of Elton John's "Philadelphia Freedom" and a standing ovation for the tennis champ, I asked her what is her No. 1 trait. "I love people," she replied.

It wasn't the answer I expected, and I didn't understand it at the time. Though it is an appropriate one for this audience, which was convened by Adecco (AHEXY), the global staffing giant. ("Did you customize your answer?" I asked. King swore she did not.)

For the next hour, King rushed the net, interview-wise-volleying

By Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE

Ever since Fortune, in 1998, started ranking the top women in business (yes, we were first), I've been asking the stars of the Most Powerful Women list how they reached the top and how they stay there. One month away from revealing our 2011 MPW rankings, now seems a good time to share some of their best career tips.

Here is my Top 10:

1.Don't plan your career. Most of the women on the Fortune MPW list, starting with PepsiCo (PEP) CEO Indra Nooyi, No. 1 in the rankings since 2006, had no clear career map when they graduated college or business school. Rather, they stayed flexible and open to the possibilities.

2. Forget the ladder; climb the jungle gym. What good is a ladder when the world is changing so fast and unpredictably--and who knows what tomorrow's ideal job will be? Think of your career as a jungle gym, sharpen your peripheral vision, and look for opportunities all around.

3.Worry about the job you're in. "If you don't do

By Patricia Sellers, Fortune

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 York's gritty Lower East Side and was guided, she says, by her mother, who advised:

"Where you are today is not who you are," Olga Burns told her daughter, urging young Ursula not to be defined by her surroundings.

"Success is not about money. It's not about power. It's about leaving." Burns explains: "She would always say that you have to leave the place -- any place you are -- a little bit better than you came in."

"And the third thing she always said is that there are a lot of things that can happen to you, but there are a whole

By Patricia Sellers, FORTUNE

By Patricia Sellers, Fortune

The McDonald's (MCD) boss behind the healthy upgrade to its U.S. menu is practicing what she preaches: She recently lost 90 pounds.

Jan Fields, who started at McDonald's 33 years ago cooking fries and is now the fast food chain's U.S. president, was soon to turn 55 when, she says, "I woke up one day and said, "Oh my God, how did I gain this much weight?"

Like millions of her customers at the 14,000 restaurants she oversees, Fields added her weight gradually--"10 pounds at a time: 10, 10, 10 and all of a sudden, I looked and I said, 'Oh, my God, I've gained 90 pounds. How did I ever do that?"

Related: The woman behind the McDonald's hiring blitz

Of course, McDonald's tops critics' hit list for compounding America's obesity epidemic, but Fields insists that her own culprit wasn't food but lack of exercise. "I didn't exercise," she confesses. "I worked all the time, went home and went to bed."

Fields, No. 25 on Fortune's Most

By Patricia Sellers, Fortune



As the most powerful woman in children's television, Anne Sweeney meets a lot of girls who wish they were Selena Gomez or Miley Cyrus or tomorrow's superstar.

But Sweeney insists that she sees plenty of accomplished women in business who do that very same thing.

"I see a lot of women of every age trying to be something else," says Sweeney, the co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney ABC Television Group. "I see them trying to imitate behaviors that they think belong to successful people."

Trying to be the smartest person in the room, or vying to be first with the answer, can easily lead to defeat, Sweeney warns. Particularly for women since studies show that there is, at every level of the business world, a narrower band of acceptable behavior for women than for men. Women, quite simply, are judged more harshly.

Sweeney, who began her career at Nickelodeon (VIAB) and launched the FX channel for Fox (NWS) before arriving at Disney

By Patricia Sellers, Fortune



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 boys, Drosos was a basketball star. She played shooting guard for the Ridgeview High School girl's team, which named her MVP. At P&G, where she started 24 years ago as a summer intern and marketed Spic 'n Span floor cleaner early on, she has spent her spare time coaching basketball--her daughter's grade-school team.

In fact, it was as coach of her daughter and a team of sixth-grade girls, that Drosos learned her best lesson in balancing work and family. A couple years ago, when a mandatory business trip to Asia clashed with a basketball tournament, Drosos promised the kids