Last week, Timbuk2 made another big announcement: veteran retail goods executive Patti Cazzato is stepping in as the 25-year-old companys third CEOand the first woman to lead the brand.

You may not recognize Cazzato’s name, but you know the labels on her long resume. In the 80s, she worked in sales and merchandising roles at Esprit and Ann Taylor before pirouetting to Sam & Libby, then a humble husband-and-wife-led startup designing bow-toed ballet flats that came to define womens footwear for the decade. After Sam & Libby went public in 1991, Gap International then-CEO Millard Mickey Drexler recruited Cazzato to join his team in 1993.

Cazzato spent more than 11 years at the Gap GPS , working her way up to senior vice president, helping Gap Inc. expand from 200 to over 650 retail locations and leading a revenue spike from $650 million to $1.7 billion. I was able to take calculated risks in a large environment and see a huge payoff, she says. But, she adds, My job was on an airplane. All I did was travel the entire time.

Some would say thats a nice problem to have. But Cazzato is a single mom to two kids, just 18 months apart. Honestly, I hit a breaking point where I could not have a family and do what I needed to, she says. She decided, just temporarily, to lean back. I took a year off to reconnect with my babies.

Almost a year to the day, in 2005, Levi Strauss & Co. called and asked her to help put their womens division on the map. Even then, Cazzato says that after spending much of her career in big business, I was always really fascinated by experience at a startup like Sam & Libby. The entrepreneurial side of me really wanted to explore that for myself, to get my hands on all parts of business.

Joining Levis, she made another bold choice many would never consider. I said, Im gonna take this job, but I have this bug about needing to start my own business, she says. I felt very comfortable having honest conversations with them, and wed check in every six months. Levis has long been known for its employee-minded flexible working hours and generous benefits. I was there a little under two years, and I left for the right reasons, she says.

That reason was to found Clary Sage Organics, a B corp-certified, 100% organic apparel line hand-sewn in Northern California using pesticide-free fabrics. It took me a year to decide what Id leverage my house for, she said of the company she cobbled together from scratch. She opened the 2,100-square-foot flagship store on San Franciscos tony Fillmore Street in July 2008. And I spent a fortune on our e-commerce site, she says ruefully.

A few months later, the recession hit full force. Cazzatos credit dried up. Investors pulled out. For someone who gets paid to be a trend-spotter, I totally failed on recognizing the financial trends, she says with a chuckle. I had to get scrappy, and she didby self-funding the company and constantly retooling her business plan over the next six years.

Overseeing Timbuk2 is a natural progression to another resilient manufacturer-retailer. Even when times got tough, Timbuk2 didnt just close up, she notes. Instead, they leaned into making manufacturing a bigger part of the business.

Timbuk2s factory, which is attached to its corporate offices in San Franciscos Mission neighborhood, pays workers above minimum wage and offers full benefits. Like similar retail brands Everlane and Zady, which focus on transparency and domestic manufacturing, Timbuk2 relies on regional expertise. All of T2s highly technical, custom bags are made in the U.S., while the rest are mass-produced in partner factories in Indonesia and Vietnam, which T2 audits at least twice a year.

We need to shift the paradigm that says domestic manufacturing cant be done. It can be done. There are a lot of success stories, she explains, pointing to her own companies as the most obvious examples. The naysayers, she says, are big businesses that werent built around domestic manufacturing.

At Timbuk2, Cazzato sees a huge opportunity for growth, both personally and professionally. Timbuk2s seven-city retail expansion will enable customers to see T2 not just as a bike messenger staple but also as a lifestyle brand. I believe the customer is so brilliant right now, she says. And shes certain that savvy consumers passionate about corporate transparency will continue to pay a premium for quality, domestically produced T2 bags.

On Tuesday, the British-based bank giant will begin trading ETNs, or exchange-traded notes, that track a Women in Leadership (WIL) index of U.S. companies with gender-diverse leadership.

And the new investment products are part of a broad effort to offer socially valuable options to customers. Increasingly, investors are looking for social value — to use their investments as a vote or as a way to make a statement, says Barbara Byrne, a vice chairman in Barclays investment banking unit who is overseeing the WIL launch.

So, what do you get if you buy the new WIL ETNs? The senior, unsecured, unsubordinated debt securities (which are backed only by the full faith and credit worthiness of Barclays Bank, the issuer) track a weighted index of 85 U.S.-based companies that are listed on the NYSE or NASDAQ, have market capitalizations of at least $250 million, and have a woman CEO or a board of directors that’s at least 25% female. Spanning 10 industry sectors, the companies include most of the 24 Fortune 500 giants with female chiefsGeneral Motors GM , IBM IBM and PepsiCo PEP , among themand other companies like Verizon VZ , General Electric GE and Pfizer PFE that dont have women at the top but qualify based on female representation on their boards.

The idea for Barclays women-focused effort came about 18 months ago from two young women directors who noted studies showing that companies with gender-diverse leadership outperform those with less diversity. Barclays considered creating a mutual fund like the Pax Ellevate Global Womens Index Fund launched in June by Sallie Krawcheck, the former Bank of America BAC executive whose firm, Ellevate, is all about women and investing.

But since Barclays was already a leader in the ETN space, with 81 products covering a full range of asset classes, the bank opted to develop a tradeable security that offers investors daily liquidity.

Based on past performance, the female-focused ETNs may be a good investment. The Barclays WIL Total Return Index has outperformed the S&P 500 Total Return Index by 1.2% per year over the past five years.

Barclays management views the WIL products as step one in its plan to offer other socially valuable investment options. Weve seen the evolution of socially responsible investing go from no tobacco to no firearms to green/environmental, says Ian Merrill, head of Barclays ETN business in the Americas, noting that Credit Suisse offers an LGBT Equality Index that tracks the performance of companies with LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) friendly policies. Merrill aims to ride the trend, or better yet, lead it. We want to give investors the best ways to invest in companies that do business the right way.

For a bank that has suffered in the press and faced legal scrutiny (lately, over its high-frequency stock-trading practices), selling products that enable customers to do well and do good may be a wise investment in its reputation. While Barclays has worked to add women to its board, the company still has only three among its 14 directors so, it falls short of its own WIL standard of 25% female representation on the board. Byrne says shes fully aware of that reality, and her colleagues are sensitive to it. Were aspirational, she says. Were targeting getting there.

NowFortuneis adding one more element to its fast-growing franchise: a daily newsletter called The Broadsheet.Every weekdaymorningstarting July 8,Fortunereporter Caroline Fairchild will deliver news about the world’s most prominent women, touch on hot-button topics that women leaders are buzzing about, and offer, via exclusive Fortune interviews, a line to the advice and insights of the world’s most successful women.

The name, The Broadsheet, has several meanings. It’s Fortune‘stongue-and-cheek tribute to itsown print roots (a broadsheet is a large sheet of newspaper). It’s also atip of the hat to Fortune‘s expanding female audience. And it’s a clear signal thatthe newsletter is for a broad audiencenot just women leaders but also guys who understand that women issues are not just women’s issues anymore. Thanks to Sheryl Sandberg and others who have sparked global debates about gender in the workplace,women’s issues are now business issues. Any man who isn’t up on what women bossesthinkis sure to stumble.(Warren Buffett waxed wisely on women in business in a Fortune essay last year, and theBerkshire Hathaway BRK CEOattends theFortuneMPW Summit each year.)

The Broadsheet adds to Fortune’s stable of daily newsletters, which include TheFortune Daily and Term Sheet, which has Senior Editor Dan Primack reporting daily on deals and dealmakers.

Fairchild joined Fortune last year from the The Huffington Post, where she covered business, and, before that,Bloomberg News.She’s a graduate of Duke, where she was a Robertson Scholar. Fairchild is accepting leads on scoops and any ideas or suggestions for The Broadsheet atcaroline.fairchild@fortune.com. We hope you sign up for The Broadsheet by clicking here.

I certainly thought so.Here are three things I picked up after reading the full complaint from Wolfes lawyers:

Tinder execs used Wolfes gender only when it suited them

It is clear from the complaint that Wolfe became the face of the company partly so Tinder could market itself as the first dating app that works for women. Articles publisheda year ago featuringWolfe prominently as a key exec came under headlines like How Tinder Solved Online Dating For Women. Yet if you take a look at the more general business coverage of the app, Wolfe is nowhere to be found. Wolfe claims her male founders told her she wasnt included in general business coverage because youre a girl. Regardless of the reason, the news coverage speaks for itself.

‘Leaning in’ isnt enough to disrupt techs old boys club

If we take Wolfes claims to be true, the former marketing executive tried several times to bring her harassment complaints to other senior executives. A few weeks after she was terminated, she alleges she met with Sam Yagan, the CEO of Match.com, another online dating site that is owned by the same parent company as Tinder. He didnt feel compelled to do anything in response to her complaints and allegedly told her I can still sleep at night.

Part of Wolfes problem has nothing to do with gender at all

This is not the first time that a tech startup has thrown an integral member of the team under the bus just when the company begins to grow. Remember Facebooks Eduardo Saverin? He was also booted from the then-startup and stripped of his co-founder role. Gender aside, it is clear that tech startups often suffer from a poorly managed office culture that more times than not hangs a few people out to dry down the road to success. Wolfe claims she lost her co-founder title because she is a woman, but my hunch is that she also fell victim to internal startup politics just like Saverin did.

Collins, of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, hasn’t had it easy: Coming out led to death threats, he said in Sunday’s Q&A in the New York Times. But we’ve come a long way (baby), from 1981 when King was forced out of the closet. She too got death threats. But while Collins earned an instant hero status after he announced his homosexuality in last year’s Sports Illustrated exclusive, King suffered a slew of cancelled endorsements and “lost all my money overnight, paying lawyers.”

In the New York Times interview, King gives due credit to fellow tennis champ Martina Navratilova, who was the first world-famous pro athlete to come out voluntarily. Having been burned herself, King told her pal Martina back in ’81 “Don’t get outed! Control your message.”

Navratilova (who King, by the way, calls the greatest all-around women tennis player ever) laid it all out at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit last October, telling me in an interview how she got up the guts to come out 32 years before Jason Collins became a modern-day game-changer. This very candid conversation with Navratilova was the 2013 MPW Summit participants’ second-most favorite session, after (wouldn’t you know), my colleague Carol Loomis’ sit-down with Warren Buffett.

But she didn’t. Despite the rule change, the World Bank went with Kim. “If you say you are going to do things based on a certain set of rules, and then you go around and do them on another set of rules, what sort of example does that set for the world?”Okonjo-Iweala asked the audience at the Fortune Most Powerful Women International conference in London on Tuesday. “I was a little sad…that people would write one thing in the rules and actually do the opposite.”

Okonjo-Iweala runs25% of Africa’s economy, a tasknot without its challenges. She’s ledinvestigationsofcorrupt oil companies and reformed payroll platforms to minimize leakage. “You have to roll up your sleeves,” she explained. But her push for change sometimes comes at a price. In 2012, opponents of her attempts to clean up oil subsidy fraud kidnapped her 82-year-old mother. They didn’t want money; they wantedOkonjo-Iweala to resign.“I was sitting there in my room, feeling very depressed not knowing what would happen,” she said. “And [my father] came up and said, ‘This is what they want. They want you depressed. You have to get up and go to work.'”Okonjo-Iweala put on a brave face and went to her office, even presenting during a cabinet meeting that day. “That image of not being intimidated, of carrying on, may actually have helped,” she said. Her mother was shortly returned.

Another case of kidnapping is onOkonjo-Iweala’s more immediate radar. A group of more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls were kidnapped in Aprilby the Boko Haram, a Nigerian terrorist group. Their whereabouts are still unknown and the Nigerian government has received immense criticism for their inaction. “I think that the mistake we made is that we allowed a gap in communication, which allowed people to characterize the government as doing nothing,”Okonjo-Iwealasaid. The kidnappers are unpredictable, deeply inhumane people, she added, and Nigeria’s president wants to be careful to ensure that every girl isfound alive. “From what I know, this is something that is near to our hearts. All avenues are being pursued to try and locate the girls and get them back.” Nigeria’s also received help from the U.S., U.K., France, China and Israel. “I just want the world to know that this matter hasn’t been left alone or forgotten.” To help combat attacks like the one on the Chibok school,Nigeriaannounced last week the Safe Schools Initiative, funded by the government and former U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown. The campaign will first focus on improving the safety and security of schools in emergency states where the Boko Haram is most threatening beforespreading to other parts of the country.

Okonjo-Iweala admitted her job is exhausting– and her four children and two grandchildren help recharge her. “What is so pleasing is when they look at you and they don’t remember the career. They are very supportive, but they make you feel like a human being,” Okonjo-Iweala said. “I’m running all the time. Those 18 hour days… It’s grueling. But when somebody pulls you back to the more human or mundane things, that’s what makes life worth it.”

Editors’ note: An earlier version of this story included quotes that were taken out of context.

Baroness Shriti Vadera, a former keyadvisor to then-British prime minister Gordon Brown, said Europe still has a a long roadahead of it before fully recoveringfrom the last financial crisis. Unlike the United States, which cleaned up its banking crisis “very swiftly,” European’s banking system is barely finished with itsfinal stress tests. Vadera also pointed to low inflationas a significant threat to the euro zone and said the European Central Bank has yet to effectively address the issue.

“Most of Europe has enormous work to do withstructural reforms,” Vadera toldFortunesDeputy Managing Editor Stephanie Mehta in an exclusive interview. “But, it is very hard to do it in parallel with austerity. Frankly it hasnt been done… This is going to be a long, agonizing and slow grind in Europe. There is just no way out of it.”

The analysis comes from the woman who helped guide Britains response to the 2008 financial collapse. With 30 years of international experience in the public and private sector, Vadera advises government, investors and companies on finance, strategy and everything in between. Anon-executive director of BHP Billiton BBL and AstraZeneca AZN , Vadera is also a former member of the U.K. Treasurys Council of Economic Advisers.

Vadera went on to say that Europe, as the biggest economic bloc in the world, “boxes below its weight” on theglobal economic stage. From experiencingan “acute crisis” of poor performance in Europe, Vadera said the problem has mutated intoa “chronic phase”. She warned that Europe could become irrelevant if itseconomic issues persist.

“If you talk to, say, any Chinese leader they will tell you that they don’t consider it as Europe. There’sGermany, and Britain and France… soit doesn’t come together as a unified power bloc as it should.”

Vadera had a slightly more optimistic outlook for India, which she said is in a position to seize unprecedentedeconomic growth afterNarendraModi waselected as prime minister in May. She said India could become one of the fastest growing big economies in the world if Modi is able to create growth by cutting corruption and improving the country’s still-inadequate infrastructure.

“It is going to take a bit of time and he [Modi] doesn’t have unfettered power…so it is going to be a balance, but I have hope,” said said. “It is almost India’s best chance, but probably its last chance.”

Vadera has a track record of making accurate global economic predictions at Fortune live events.Last year at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit, Vadera said the U.S. was well on its way to economic recovery and called the then-looming consequences of a debt default unthinkable.

On Tuesday, Mendelsohn poo-pooed reports claimingthe company is struggling to engage young users. “This issue of teens is just not true. We have the most engaged audience with young people on Facebook,” she toldattendees ofthe Fortune Most Powerful Women International conference in London. Mendelsohn then cited a Forrester Research study, released today, that says three quarters of young people on the Internet use Facebook FB . “They’re spending more time on Facebook. We think this is because of the shift to mobile,” says Mendelsohn.

Which explains the social network’s recent acquisition of mobile messaging platform WhatsApp for the jaw-dropping price of $19 billion. “We want to make the world more connected,” Mendelsohn said, nodding to Facebook’s now-famous tagline. WhatsApp has over 500 million users and a large following in developing markets. Mendelsohn says that Facebooknoticed that it’s “not the best user experience for people to just do everything in one place [on Facebook].” The acquisition allows the social network to branch beyond its own site. “There’s a whole new way of people communicating. [They're] still sharing. We see that it’s mobile, and we think mobile is the platform of today.”

Facebook’s pivot toward mobile has helped spark growth in the regions Mendelsohn oversees.“It was because Mark Zuckerberg turned around and said, ‘We’ve done this wrong. We now need to go mobile first. Nobody can come in here now and show me any new products unless it’s on mobile,'” says Mendelsohn. “The growth of mobile has taken everybody by surprise.” Facebook now has over a billion people using Facebook on mobile every month, she added–andabout three quarters of that billionare coming back daily.

Facebook may think mobile’s the platform of today, but it’s already thinking about the future. It acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion in March. Oculus’virtual reality gaming headset, Oculus Rift, provides an immersive, three-dimensional experience “like [being] on the top of a roller coaster,” says Mendelsohn. She says the device can be used to watch sports like, say, the World Cup. But she’s also thinking bigger. “Imagine taking it further and imagine how we might be teaching a room of children,” continuing Facebook’s mission to connect the world virtually–while also opening up new revenue streams. What this means for advertising pros like Mendelsohn remains unclear, but she’s excited about the acquisition. “If you try [Oculus Rift], you go, “I feel the future.”

On Tuesday atFortunesMost Powerful Womeninternational conference in London, Romana saidshe worked effectively with hedge fundswhen Spain’s real estate market was tankingby establishing strict rules before makingdeals with investors. Romana, who became president of government-owned Sareb in 2012 when plummeting Spanish homeprices pushed many banks to the brink of collapse, is responsible for managing $50 billion in assets from Spanish banks that went belly up during the countrys housing crisis.

“When a market is suffering from a credit crunch, the first ones to come in are the hedge funds, because they have a riskier approach,” Romana toldFortunesWashington Columnist and Senior Editor Nina Easton in an exclusive interview. “They [American hedge funds] are our clients and our investment base. I have come to understand their position. It is nothing personal, they maximize their profits…When you are born in a weak position, in a difficult position in your country… You have to be a respected agent in the market and to be respected you need to understand the market and set your own processes.”

In 2012, theEuropean bailout relocated roughly 200,000 assets to Sareb, including loans to developers, housing, commercial buildings and land. Now, Romana has 15 years to dispose of all the assets with the goal of maximizing prices. There is no question that shehas her work cut out for her. Spaniards bought roughly900,000 homes annuallyduring the peak of Spains housing boom around 2006 and 2007. That figure dropped to 300,000 in 2013.

Yet the good news for Romana is that the latest housing data from Spain is promising. New mortgage lending in Spain rose 2% in March from a year earlier marking the first increase since 2010. Home sales have also increased nearly 50% in the first quarter. Romana told Easton that although Europe is “not out of the woods,” economically, Spain is becoming a more attractive place for global investment.

“Things have changed dramatically,” she said. “The direction has changed. We were going downwards and that’s not the case anymore…There are many deals in Spain closing right now in many different areas.”

Spaintook a 41.3 billion bail-out from the euro zone to recapitalize four of its weakest banks in 2012-3, and was one of the biggest beneficiaries ofthe European Central Bank’s promised to do “whatever it takes” to keep the euro zone together. But there are still signs that the banks aren’t cured.In a survey published Monday, over a third of Spanish banks said they might need to raise more capital after the ECB’songoing Asset Quality Review and subsequent stress test.

The former director general of the Spanish Treasury is also facing an obvious reality: unemployment is a drain on the Spanish economy. More than 25% of Spaniards are currently unemployed compared with 43% of residents under the age of 30. Romana called unemployment a “heavyweight” for any society and encouraged Spain’s youth to travel and expand their horizons as a way to open up the Spanish economy.

“It [Unemployment] is one of the clear problems we need to solve and face,” Romana said. “There are a number of young people leaving Spain and going abroad and that is not a negative thing… We need to speak more languages and travel much morethan we do.”

Romana added that she “envied the Dutch” and their wide-reaching presence around the globe – quite a compliment given that Spain is still smarting from a 5-1 thrashing at the hands of the Netherlands in the World Cup.

As difficult as Romanas task to revive the Spanish economymay seem at this point, things could be worse. The No. 5 European economy is experiencing one of the more robust recoveries in the European Union since the crisis. In the first three months of this year, Spain’s economy grew double the quarter-on-quarter rate seen at the end of last year.

Vanderveldt, the first entrepreneur-in-residence at Dell, is the network’s unofficial social chair. Before she worked for Dell, Vanderveldt attended the 2011 conference in Rio de Janeiro. She headed to the bar for a nightcap and met Belle Capital managing director Lauren Flanagan. We do scotch, thats our thing, says Vanderveldt.

The two got to talking about what drove them as entrepreneurs, what they wanted in their lives, and what made them happy. Nova Medical Products founder Sue Chen joined the conversation and the three closed out the bar. They headed back to Vanderveldts room to keep chatting and word got out to the events other stragglers. The women moved the furniture onto the hotel rooms deck and some 15 “kept drinking and talking, remembers Flanagan. We really bonded.

It was the beginning of a tradition. Every year since, aconference attendee(anointed by Vanderveldt and Flanagan) has hosted the word-of-mouth gathering. Loop Capital partner Kourtney Ratliff threw the party this year. Whoever has the biggest room is where the partys gonna end up being, says Vanderveldt. We just invited ourselves and said were coming to your room. Flanagan adds that theres always booze, always music, and always dancing.

Bonding is only part of the attraction, though. At the network’s event in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Flanagan told Vanderveldt about a company she had just invested in, electric vehicle company Current Motor. Flanagan wanted to increase manufacturing and sales, but needed help. After the conference, she asked Vanderveldtwhos consulted Fortune 500 companies on green opportunitiesto sit on the companys advisory board. A few months later, Vanderveldt became Dells entrepreneur in residence; she asked Flanagan to sit on her advisory board.

Flanagan also met Maria Helena Pettersson, who at the time was a senior partner at Ernst & Young, at the Rio shindig. Petterssons based in Brazil and helped Flanagan launch Current Motor in the country in 2012. The two also met Ana Carolina Merighe, a Brazilian startup consultant, this year. The trio left Ratliffs room and headed to Merighes room and plotted Current Motors next moves in Brazil until 2:30am. We had a serious strategy discussion after a few scotches, says Flanagan. Thats the best bit of business Ive done” at the Dell event.

The safe-space vibe is what makes these gatherings so successful. Its a more intimate environment for women to just share, says Vanderveldt. Sweetriot founder Sarah Endline, whose chocolates have been featured onthe Today Show to Vanity Fair, agrees. It fosters creativity to be in a casual environment. Endline has left past parties with advisor suggestions and mountains of feedback. (What better place for a candy company to test new products than a drink-fueled hangout?) Flanagan says the hangout allows Dell Women Entrepreneur Network attendees to cut through appearances and get to really know one another. When Flanagan first saw Pettersson at the Rio conference, she was impressed by her professionalism. At the after party, she danced to samba. I said I love this person. I want to get to know her, says Flanagan.

Despite its exclusive vibe, Vanderveldt stresses that its not a Cool Girls Club. We would love for everybody to be there. But, alas, a hotel room cannot fit hundreds of women. So how can future attendees snag an invite? Vanderveldt and Flanagan look for delegates who are really authentic, sharing their stories and asking for help. Well tell them [about the party] as were in conversation with them. Or, perhaps, women who want an in should park themselves at the bar.

Related Video: Like whiskey? Start stocking up.

Krawcheck’s index–thePax Global Women’s Leadership Index–will be the first in the U.S. to focus on investing in companies that are advancing women’s leadership. While the index can still invest in companies with a dearthof women in senior executive spots(such as Google) if they are compelling investments, Ellevate’s website lists seven ‘leading companies‘ that are stellar examples of gender balance. Mission aside, we here atFortunewanted to take a quick look to see if these companies are, in fact, good investmentsright now.

While Krawcheck’s investment concept is reasonably new, socially responsible investing is not. Ample researchsuggests that that investing in companies with superior environmental or ethical standards yields a higher return. In addition, a new body of workis emerging that points to a positive connection between female board representation and company performance.

So will Krawcheck’s index follow thistrend? Hereare some initial findings:

Procter & Gamble PG

Industry: Consumer Products

Outperform The S&P Last Year?:No

Analyst Consensus:Outperform

Recent Performance: The company reported modest second-quarter results. The top line was up 1%, missing estimates by about $100 million.

Gender Balance: Women made up nearly 44% of management positions worldwide last year (North America Group President Melanie Healey ranks No. 17 on Fortune’s list of the Most Powerful Women in U.S. business, and Deb Henretta, President, Global Beauty, is No. 21 on the list). Five women serve on the company’s 11-member board of directors.

Xerox Corporation XRX

Industry: Information Technology

OutperformThe S&P Last Year?:Yes

Analyst Consensus:Outperform

Recent Performance: Total revenue in the first quarter was down 2% to $5.1 billion. The company continues to post mixed results andits document technology sector is down largely due to decreases in equipment orders.

Gender Balance: The company is one of just 24 in the Fortune 500 with a female CEO. (Ursula Burns is Fortune’s 13th Most Powerful Woman.) Women make up 40% of Xerox’s board of directors.

DNB ASA DNHBY

Industry:Financial Services

Analyst Consensus:Outperform

Recent Performance:Headquartered in Oslo, Norway’s largest financial services company experiencedincreasedprofits in thefirst-quarter asthe top line grew to $933 million.

Gender Balance:Half of the company’s board is comprised of women, including the board chair. Norway law mandates a 40% quota for female directors of publicly listed companies.

Avon Products AVP

Industry:Household and Personal Products

OutperformThe S&P Last Year?:No

Analyst Consensus:Hold

Recent Performance:The company’s difficult fourth quarter results in 2013 reflecteda decliningpattern seen in earlier periods. Avon’s direct sellers continue to fallglobally while its number of units sold fell 6%. The company is ranked 282 on the Fortune 500, down from 252 last year.

Gender Balance:Five of the company’s 13 executives are women, including CEO Sheri McCoy (No. 20 on the MPW list) and more than half of the company’s board members are women.

Deutsche Telekom AG

Industry: Telecommunications

Analyst Consensus: Hold

Recent Performance: Based in Bonn, Germany,Deutsche recently came off a three-year decline in revenues and its share price reacheda six-year high. The company is Europe’s largest phone carrier.

Gender Balance:The companyhastwo women among its seven senior executives and has set a goal for women to make up 30% of senior and middle management positions by next year.

AstraZeneca PLC

Industry: Pharmaceuticals and biologics

Outperform The S&P Last Year?:No

Analyst Consensus: Hold

Recent Performance:The London-based company, which recently ended (for now) merger talks with Pfizer, has suffered through two years of revenue declined largely because of big patent losses. As competition from generic drug makers rose, sales of its medication for schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder fellclose to 40% in 2013.

Gender Balance:A little more than half ofthe company’s overall board is made up of women and three women sit on the board of directors.

Westpac Banking Corporation

Industry:Financial Services

Outperform The S&P Last Year?:No

Analyst Consensus:Underperform

Recent Performance: The second biggest lender by market value, Westpac saw profits rise 8% in the past six months to $3.5 billion. The Australian company’s mortgage business also enjoyed a 5% tick up in revenue.

Gender Balance:CEO Gail Kelly (No. 3 on the International MPW list) is among two women on the company’s executive team and 30% of Westpac’s board is comprised of women.

Q:Sallie, when you bought 85 Broads a year ago, did you know that you would get into the fund business?
A: You know how we all have hypotheses about thingsthen we refine our thinking? When I bought 85 Broads, I was open-minded. This is the way Ive gone about all my jobs in financial services: Lets see what all the constituents want. Polling the members of 85 Broads, now Ellevate, they told us they want to invest in companies that have women in senior management.

How many members does Ellevate, have?
We have 34,000. Thats up from below 30,000 when I bought 85 Broads. But the revenue is up more than 100% because women have upgraded and companies have joined.

Can you give me some idea of the revenue?
No. Thats the wonderful thing about having a business thats private.

You remind me of Sheryl Sandberg, who never thought much about women leaders until came to the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in 2005 and had a self-described a-ha moment.” You spent your corporate career paying little attention to female leadership. What changed you?
When youre in those corporate jobs running 1000 miles per hour, you have x amount of time for reflection. I always had diverse teams. But my first step in this new direction was when we were coming out of the financial crisis, and I started thinking about what could make the industry safer. There were lots of issues. Greed. Capital. Liquidity. The topic of diversity kept coming up. I kept fighting it. But I approach everything like a research analyst. And the research kept showing that diverse teams make slower decisions but more effective ones.

So, your company is Ellevate with two Ls.. Have you worried that this new name will be difficult to search online?
Yes, but having a name thats unique is important.

How did you come up with “Ellevate”?
It happened on the sofa. I had just come back from a run. I was sweating. I started to doodle names. You know that feeling when you know youre about to know something? Its like a brain jiggle. I had a brain jiggle. I like Ellevate because it connotes gender and movement.

– These are among the top holdings of the new Pax Ellevate Global Womens Index Fund and Krawchecks take on why they fit the investment criteria. This list shows that even companies with shortages of women in senior positions, such as Google, can make the cut if they are big and global and compelling investments.

PepsiCo PEP : Indra Nooyi serves as chairman and CEO. There are nine women among the 30 executive officers and five women on the 13-member board of directors.

Lockheed Martin LM : Marillyn Hewson is chairman, president and CEO, and women comprise 33% of the board. Women hold 20% of executive positions and 25% of the workforce.

Microsoft MSFT :There are two women, including CFO Amy Hood, among the senior executives.Two women serve on the 10-member board of directors.

Toronto-Dominion Bank TD :Women comprise 31% of the board of directors, and there are three women among the companys 11 group heads.

Procter & Gamble PG : Five women serve on the 11-member board, and there are 12 women among the 42-person senior management team.

Aetna AET : Four of 11 senior executives are women, and four women serve on the 12-member board. As of 2013, 75% of Aetnas employees are feamale, and women hold 64% of management/supervisory positions.

General Electric GE : There are five women among the 21 corporate officers and five women on GE’s 17-member board of directors.

Estee Lauder EL : Women comprise 47% of board of directors and 33% of the senior executives. Women represent 77.6% of the U.S. workforce and 51% of VP positions and above.

Canadian Utilities Limited CU : The chairman and CEO is Nancy Southern. There are five women among the 17 executive officers. Women comprise 33% of the board of directors.

Hennes & Mauritz HNNMY : Women comprise 38% of H&Ms senior management, 58% of its board of directors and 77% of the retail company’s workforce.

Yahoo YHOO : Marissa Mayer is CEO. Women comprise 33% of her executive team. Two women serve on the seven-member board of directors.

Xerox XRX : Eight women, including chairman and CEO Ursula M. Burns and CFO Kathryn Mikells, are among 32 corporate officers. Women make up 40% of the board of directors.

Google GOOG : Women comprise 30% of Googles board of directors. Women@Google is a global network with more than 4,000 female Googlers across 27 countries.

Mondelez International MDLZ : Five women, including chairman and CEO Irene Rosenfeld, serve on the 13-member management team. There are three women on the 12-member board of directors.

“We don’t do acquisitions,” except for very small transactions, Johnson said in an interview Friday at TiECON East, a Boston summit for entrepreneurs in the fields of information technology, cleantech, education and life sciences. “We don’t have a public currency that would make any [major] acquisition viable. Everyone in the company understands this. We build stuff ourselves and over the long term that’s been very good” for Fidelity.

Fidelity’s build-not-buy attitude may not have encouraging to so-called FinTech (short for financial tech) entrepreneurs in the audience who were perhapslooking to score big by selling out to the mutual fund giant. But Johnson added that Fidelity is eager to invest, partner and buy from startups. Indeed, through its Fidelity Ventures arm and other activities, Johnson said, Fidelity is looking for partners that can help the company differentiate itself from competitors.

One category Fidelity is particularly keen to win is the newest generation of investors. Millennials are looking for “a new front door, or a different-looking front door” than the traditional 401(k), she said. Demand for new tools for younger investors, she added, is being driven by employers who are frustrated that their new employees are ignoring advice about retirement plans.

Fidelity, which has been an early mover in enabling its retail customers to use mobile devices for some transactions, is moving to deploy similar mobile services for its workplace customers. She said the company also is experimenting with other digital tools and tactics like “gamification,” which rewards users with points and other digital incentives for making smart financial choices.

Fidelity is one of the largest providers of workplace plans, such as stock plan services, health savings accounts and more. In 2013 the company served some 23.8 million employees, up from 22.9 million in 2012. Overall, its entire portfolio of assets under administration totaled $4.62 trillion last year, up from $3.88 trillion the year before.

Despite the company’s scale and influence in the public markets (not to mention its role in managing the nest eggs of millions) Fidelity and Johnson maintain an incredibly low profile. For example, when Johnson was promoted to president of FMR in Sept. 2013, from the role of president,Fidelity Financial Services, the company did not issue a press release or announce her elevation to the public.

Johnson demurred somewhat when asked about “growing up Fidelity.” Her grandfather, Edward C. Johnson II, founded the company. Her father, Edward C. (Ned) Johnson, is CEO. Abby Johnson, ranked No. 10 on Fortune’s annual ranking of the Most Powerful Women in American business, is afront runner to succeed her father as the company’s top executive.

Johnson said herparents were “happy, well-adjusted people who pursued their passions” and encouraged all their children to do the same. She said she was curious about their work in “the way any kid would be. You want to know what your parents do all day when you’re working your butt off at school.”

Fidelity’s private status certainlyabets Johnson’s aversion to publicity–and it may help spark innovation by taking game-changing acquisitions off the table. But it Johnson admitted that not being a publicly traded company has one drawback: While the firm doesn’t have the pressure to meet investors’ earnings expectations every quarter, she said, “the downside is that there’s the potential to lose a little bit of discipline.” As Fidelity’s heir apparent, it is up to Johnson to find ways to keep everyone on track.

I’ll be writing regularly at Fortune‘s new digital home. Fortune.com will host all my stories, present and past (Fortune.com/author/patricia-sellers). And Fortune.com will give you daily news, exclusive video and rich explanatory graphics, as well as the deep analysis, unparalleled access and smart opinion that has long distinguished Fortune.

My goal in writing Postcards has been to help you understand how super-successful people navigate their lives and their careers. And upon this farewell, it’s fun to look back and see what grabbed readers the most.

No. 1, by measure of traffic: Carol Bartz exclusive: Yahoo “f—ed me over.” I’ll never forget sitting in my living room in September 2011 and getting a call from Bartz, on my cell, after the Yahoo YHOO board fired her. Thanks, Carol, for unloading to Fortune exclusively. The situation merited at least a few of your dozen expletives. And regardless of your failure to turn Yahoo around (many other smart people tried), no CEO deserves to get fired over the phone.

No. 2: Mark Zuckerberg’s new challenge: Eating only what he kills (and yes, we do mean literally). This was my most bizarre story on Postcards. During a visit to Silicon Valley in early 2011, I heard that the Facebook FB CEO had committed for one year to stop eating meat unless he did the slaughtering himself. I called Facebook PR, and after inevitable resistance, Zuck, to his credit, agreed to let me interview him by email. Zuckerberg was surprisingly candid and thoughtful about his odd dietary behavior. And while the post drew lots of snide comments about the young billionaire, the disclosure turned out to humanize him.

No. 3: Former Amazon star exec killed in bike accident. This was the saddest post I’ve ever had to write. Joy Covey died at age 50 last September in a cycling accident in the hills above Silicon Valley. Amazon’s first CFO who raised capital in the desperate early days and took the company public, Covey dropped out of corporate America and led a full and unconventional life. She was beloved by Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women community and beyond.

No. 4: New Yahoo CEO Mayer is pregnant. It was July 16, 2012. Three hours after Yahoo announced the hiring of Google GOOG executive Marissa Mayer as its new CEO, I was sitting down to dinner at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen and, as I checked my phone, noticed three missed calls — Marissa Mayer…Marissa Mayer…Marissa Mayer. I excused myself, walked outside, and as soon as I reached Mayer, she said, “I saved a piece of today’s story.” Meaning? “I’m pregnant,” she revealed. Neither Mayer nor I grasped how huge and globally resonant this story would become. She was the first person ever to walk into a Fortune 500 CEO job pregnant. Other stories about Mayer — her baby’s name, her career advice, and Marissa Mayer: Ready to rumble at Yahoo, which appeared on Fortune‘s cover in October 2012 — make the list of the 20 popular Postcards.

No. 5: Guest Post: The Great Depression, as I remember. Wow. This guest post by my uncle, Walter Stoiber, appeared in 2009, and who could have imagine that it would go viral around the world? People love nostalgia, especially authentic stories about everyday life before most of us were alive. Uncle Walt, who lives in Ohio, just turned 97. He’s still an inspiration.

Just a few other Postcards are worth mentioning. The most popular this year — and No. 6 on the all-time hit list — is Rupert Murdoch on his divorce, succession, and his empire’s future. This Postcard links to my exclusive and revealing Q&A with the media titan in Fortune‘s April 28 issue.

Many of my favorite Postcards are those that give helpful advice, along with provocative viewpoints on hot-button issues. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg: Unedited fits that bill. This 2009 guest post is the first piece that Sandberg ever wrote about women and careers — and it’s the earliest version of her thinking that went into her best-seller, Lean In. “Don’t leave before you leave,” Sandberg says, advising young women to resist cutting back their career ambitions as they chase uncertain hopes and dreams.

I’ll sign off by linking to my best advice: Lessons from the world’s most successful people, published yesterday. This post sums up my five year’s of blogging and 30 years of writing about extraordinary people for Fortune magazine. If you promise to keep reading, I’ll keep writing. Thanks, and see you on the new Fortune.com.

I tried to keep this in mind last week when I spoke at Allentown Central Catholic High School, which in 1978 sent me on my way from Pennsylvania to what has turned out to be a thrilling and very satisfying life and career. I told the CCHS students, who packed Rockne Hall for inductions of their new Student Council and class officers, that I’ve spent the past 30 years at Fortune “going to school on success.” That is, my job profiling some of the world’s most successful people–from Oprah Winfrey to Yahoo YHOO CEO Marissa Mayer to Rupert Murdoch NWS to Melinda Gates–is to learn and explain what makes these extraordinary people win and adapt to all sorts of challenges. I pared my message to 10 pieces of advice, which include a few obvious truths and, I hope, some enlightening points that are universal.

1. Dont plan your career. Most of the really successful people Ive met and interviewed these past 30 years at Fortune had no clue what they wanted to do when they were in high school or even in college. They stayed flexible and open to possibilities.

2. Forget the career ladder; climb the jungle gym. In a world that’s unpredictable and changing faster than ever, who knows what tomorrows ideal jobs will be? Think of your career as a jungle gym. Sharpen your peripheral vision and look for opportunities over here or over there, and swing to them. Facebook FB COO Sheryl Sandberg kindly credits me in Chapter 3 of her best-seller, Lean In, for introducing the concept of the jungle gym.

3. Pick people over pay. Work with good people who are smarter than you are, so you can stay stimulated and learn everyday.

4. Do every job as if you were going to be doing it for the rest of your life. If you spend your time thinking about what you want to do next, youre not fully focused on your current assignment. And unless you focus, you wont compete successfully with people who are all in.

5. Do the job that you’re supposed to do, but think: Whats not getting done? Always consider how you can contribute to the bigger whole — and dont be afraid to stumble. I wrote a 1995 cover story called “So you fail, so what!” Today, recovering from failure is a badge of honor that bosses want to see in people they hire.

6. Be curious. Everyone you meet is worth learning from. People derail in their careers, studies show, when they stop learning. Yes, continual learning matters more than where you go to school or how many degrees you rack up.

7. Be nice to everyone. As you get older, youll have fewer degrees of separation with more and more people. Who knows how someone who doesn’t matter to you today might matter critically tomorrow? Don’t burn any bridges. Build your bridges now to last forever.

8. Listen. Listen more than you talk. I was shy in high school. Im still a closet introvert, but Im a good conversationalist because I’m extraordinarily interested in people, I ask questions (sometimes too many) and I listen carefully. Listening to someone carefully is giving them a gift.

9. To lead, line up your followers. Leadership has no long-term value without followers on track to become as strong as you are. Show a generosity of spirit that makes people want to work with you, because they know you’ll make them better.

10. Be honest and true. If people are in a foxhole with you, do they trust you to protect and help them? Make sure they do completely, by doing what you say youre going to do, always.

I closed my talk with wisdom from Warren Buffett, who told me during an interview last year how he defines success. The Berkshire Hathaway brk.a chief actually has two definitions: 1. Success is having what you want and wanting what you have. 2. Success is having the people whom you love love you. Isn’t it reassuring that one of the wealthiest men in the universe doesn’t equate success with money?

Listening to Matthews talk about leadership, Florence Ozor, a government relations specialist at Nigeria’s Rahamaniyya Oil and Gas Ltd., was riveted enough to come out of her shell and help lead the public campaign to find the Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by the Boko Haram terrorist group. In a Guest Post on Postcards Monday, Ozor told her emotional story about learning to lead publicly.

For any leader to succeed long-term, Matthews told Ozor and her 22 fellow mentees in the Fortune-State Department program, you have to do more than seize the moment: You have to adapt and make changes throughout your career. Matthews, who spent 25 years as a TV reporter in Washington, DC., before she moved to Marriott, followed her own advice and allowed me to share it with you here. Here are Matthews’ three basic rules for success that lasts:

1. Push past fear and embrace change in order to keep growing. Too often women play it safe, rather than stretch past their comfort zone.

2. You don’t want to be a plant with a root system that has outgrown your pot. To flower and bloom, you need to keep “re-potting.”

3. Always be on the lookout for people to replace you when you do move into that bigger pot. This enables you to create a legacy, provide opportunity and pay it forward.

After 25 years in TV news, I made a career change at age 50 to a corporate communications and public affairs role at a global hospitality company. It was the scariest thing I ever did, and the smartest.

Twenty years later, James finds herself making history as the first African-American woman to lead an elite American business school. Calling herself the “accidental academic,” James will become dean of Emory’s Goizueta Business School on July 15th. In an exclusive interview with Fortune, James discusses her plans for her new role as well as the role she sees herself playing to correct the diversity imbalance plaguing business education.

Edited excerpts:

How did you react when you found out you got the job as dean of Emory?

The reaction was one of pure joy for me and for the opportunity this creates for Goizueta. There is such a strong alignment with my vision and the school’s visions and needs. The overarching values of the school are focused on principle leadership, integrity and ethics and excellence in all dimensions. Excellence is what it’s trying to create for the students at the school and excellence in the faculty and that’s something that I’ve tried to make a cornerstone of my own career. It seemed like a natural fit.

Has the historical significance of your appointment as dean to a top business school impacted you at all?

Going through the process, it really had not. But after seeing the press and how people are reacting to my appointment as a woman an an African-American leading a top business school, it has. When I see it in print, the reality of what that really means hits me. It is not something I spent a lot of time contemplating, but I see why it is so significant. I want to make sure to live up to the expectations I have for myself and the expectations that everyone who cares about business education have for me for this role.

MORE: Jill Abramson tells graduates to “show what you are made of”

What are your thoughts on gender imbalance in American business schools?

I have been a faculty member or a student in a number of business schools throughout the years. In a number of those, there have been a pretty sizable imbalance between women and men at the student level and women and men at the faculty level. It is an environment that I am familiar with, but we have a real opportunity to change. Having more women exposed to business and seeing business education as a viable career opportunity will certainly be a key driver that I have in this role. It will be part of my responsibility as a woman leading an elite business school.

What was your reaction to last year’s New York Times’ coverage of Harvard Business School?

The fact that there was media attention is not surprising. It is a salacious topic that came on the heels of Sheryl Sandberg’s book and the topic of women and business is timely. I am not surprised that that article received so much attention. I was on the faculty as a visiting professor at Harvard and so I have some insight into that particular school. I will say that the examples that were depicted were extreme examples. The underlying issue and challenge is not a Harvard only challenge, it is something that any business school or any other organization might be susceptible to when there is such an imbalance of numbers of men and women. The environment and the culture starts at the top and it is my expectation and goal to create an environment that is inclusive of everyone that steps in the door at Goizueta.

What about the lack of minority leadership at elite business schools?

I know a lot of the tension is given to the dynamics with women in business school, but I will say that I’m not sure it is unique to women. It is more anytime there is a dynamic where there is a sizable majority, dynamics play out, from a pure numbers standpoint between the majority and the minority. I think there is some overlap between [gender imbalance and racial imbalance].

How did your childhood and upbringing impact your career?

I was actually born outside the United States on the island of Bermuda and I was there for a few years with my parents before moving to the United States. I spend my early years in St. Louis and then my more formative years in Texas. Given that I moved around a lot and transitioned a lot it made me very adaptable and flexible and it exposed me to a lot of people and opportunities. My step-dad was a psychologist and so that’s how I learned about the field. In college, I found a discipline called organizational psychology that married my interest in psychology with the business environment context, which made sense to me. I pursued my PhD in that field at the University of Michigan.

What’s your take on the “having it all debate”?

My mantra is that there is no one way to do your life. You have got to make the calls and decisions that work for you. In my own situation, I am married and have two children and my husband and I have been commuting off and on for the better part of 20 years. We have made that work, we have two well-adjusted children and a happy family life. It is unconventional. He is an executive at [Exxon Mobil], which doesn’t have locations in the same places where there are great business schools. So we have had to find a way to make that situation work for us and I think we have done that well. The choices we made wouldn’t necessarily suite others, but for each person the key is finding what is important to you and building a life even it is perceived to be different. No one can live your life but you.

FORTUNE–Susan Desmond-Hellmann has never needed advice from Sheryl Sandberg to Lean In to her career.

A decade ago, when she was president of product development at Genentech, she helped makethat companya leaderin cancer drugs–and sheclimbedFortune‘s Most Powerful Women rankingstoNo.13in 2008.

A doctor who treatedcancer and HIV AIDS patients in Uganda early on in her career, Desmond-Hellmann thrived on testing herselfand taking career gambles that most people would only dream about.So when she left Genentech, after itsacquisition by Swiss drug giant Roche in 2009, she optedto take a job as Chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco. For five years, she leda majorresearchuniversity with four graduate schools, two hospitals and 23,000 employees.

Last fall when Bill and Melinda Gates werehunting fora new CEO fortheir foundation, they quicklyrealizedthat Desmond-Hellmann wouldn’t want to be afigurehead boss. Still,Desmond-Hellmann surprised the Gates with her ardent and assuredviews about howshe wanted to steertheir $40 billion in assets.

“One of the things that came out of the interview process is that we hired a bold CEO,” Melinda Gates told me in an exclusive Fortune interview. I sat down with Gates and Desmond-Hellmann together last month inKirkland, Washington.

The 56-year-old Desmond-Hellmann, who sitson the boardsof Facebook and Procter & Gamble , admits she’s “noshrinking violet.” AndMelinda Gates, whom I profiled in a 2008 cover story, confessesthat she and Bill had to get their heads around their prospective hire’sboldness. “We actually had to say to ourselves as a couple, Is that going to be okay? We really are okay with this, right?,” Gatessaid.

Desmond-Hellmann started her job as CEO oftheGates Foundation onThursday. In this Fortune interview, sheand Melinda talk about how theymet(the first time was at Sheryl Sandberg’s house, actually), how they reached a partnership deal,and how they intendto give away the Gatesfortune and the many billions more that have been entrusted to thefoundationby Warren Buffett .

And so she did last week at Fortunes Most Powerful Women dinner in New York City, when she sat on stage with me to talk about Happy Hearts Fund, a charity born out of tragedy. A decade after the tsunami, Nemcova, now 34, has raised $16 million with the support of Estee Lauder’s Clinique brand, jewelerChopard, Microsoft , SAP and United Airlines to help children in areas impacted by natural disasters. Here she talks about building 85 disaster-proof schools in seven countries, and that is just the beginning of her mission…

FORTUNE – Wendy Clark, SVP of Coca-Cola’sGlobal Sparkling Brand Center, is a participant in this year’s Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women’s Mentoring program, which brings rising-star women from developing countries to the U.S. each year to shadow participants of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Since the program launched in 2006, more than 250 women from 55 developing countries have participated as mentees — and in many cases, enlightened their U.S.-based mentors as much as the mentors enlightened them. Such was the case when Clark hosted Tidings Chimphondah from Zimbabwe at Coke headquarters in Atlanta. Here’s Clark’s story about the lessons she learned.

Ive participated in the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Womens Mentoring program. Each year, more than 20 rising-star women leaders from around the world are paired with executive women from prestigious U.S. companies like Coca-Cola , IBM , Walmart and Fidelity in a mentoring program and learning opportunity.

The mentee who was assigned to me is Tidings Chimphondah, the managing director of an agricultural company called Progroup Holdings Limited in Zimbabwe. Shes a chartered accountant, an MBA student, a married mother of two small children and the second-in-command at her firm, where she leads all daily operations and decision-making. In a word, Tidings is impressive.

So Im supposed to mentor Tidings, not the other way around? I asked the program organizers after I saw her credentials and her many accomplishments on paper. As with most new experiences, the lessons were indeed two-way. Seeing my company, my country and my life anew through Tidings eyes has been a gift. Here are just a few of the lessons that Ill carry forward.

1. Every so often, remember to slow down.
Without question, the biggest impact that Tidings felt from her time at Coke related to the pace of business and life here in the U.S. Whether it was our days packed with back-to-back meetings, our mad dashes through airports to catch planes or just driving fast on highways, the difference in pace between life in the U.S. and life in Zimbabwe was palpable to Tidings. I found her slowing me down. And over the two weeks, I sort of liked not walking quite so fast. One of the days that Tidings was with me, I had a trip cancel, and I didnt rebook the day with meetings. It felt indulgent to give myself time to return emails and calls and catch up on reading that usually took place after hours. On the other hand, it felt thoughtful and deliberate, calming and smart.

2. A terrible day is not that terrible after all.
A couple of days that Tidings was with me included tough and difficult moments. Things didn’t go to plan. Meetings went askew. As I navigated these challenges with Tidings by my side, her response gave me new perspective. Tidings spoke of the economic environment in Zimbabwe, of the 80%+ unemployment rate, of supply-chain gaps and glitches, of business financing rates of 25%-60%, of the pressure she felt to meet the expectations of her team, her family, herself. I realized that my very worst day is better than 99% of the rest of the worlds worst days. Too often we forget how fortunate and advantaged we are.

3. In business, be brave and be human.
Tidings witnessed very direct and decisive communications in a few no-nonsense meetings where clarity, as well as making the right decision, were paramount. That was a hard meeting, she said to me. You were clear, but you werent cold. Too often back at home we dont bring people along. This reminded me that we must all work on this more. We must be unabashedly ambitious and brave for our brands and our companies, and this requires rigorous debate and navigating various points of view. But at the same time, we must remember that without the teams belief, our brave decisions will go nowhere.

There are at least 10 more lessons — 10 more Good Tidings — that Ill take away from the last two weeks. Perhaps my greatest takeaways are that no matter what, we can always keep learning and we need to jump at opportunities to pay our good fortunes forward.

Wendy Clark is Senior Vice President, Global Sparkling Brand Center at The Coca-Cola Company and, most notably, proud mentor and friend of Tidings Chimphondah.

FORTUNE — Tuesdaynights Fortune Most Powerful Women event in Washington, D.C., began with a moment of silence. Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.) asked that the audience remember victims of the landslide that brutally upended Washingtons Snohomish County on Saturday.

The natural disaster has already killed 14 citizens and 176 people are unaccounted for. Oso and Darrington, the towns impacted by the landslide, are tiny; Oso has only 180 residents. Murray said the devastation is unimaginable. Rescue and recovery will be a tough challenge for the Senatorand her constituents.

Another seemingly impossible challenge, though one far less fatal, that Murray talked about was overcoming the Hills rigid polarization last fall. She stepped across party lines and worked with Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to lock down a mini-budget agreement in December. Compromises were made on both ends, but the deal helped the government avoid another shutdown. (It will be readdressed in 2016.)

MORE: FORTUNE announces a new Most Powerful Women conference

The negotiations began with personal conversations. Murray bonded with Ryan about football, family, and fishing. Murrays father had multiple sclerosis, forcing him into a wheelchair by the time she was 15, and Ryans father died when he was young. Murray and Ryan both like fishing, though Ryan baits sea creatures that Murray says she would never eat. And both are from big football states: Murray is proud to support the Seattle Seahawks, this years Super Bowl Champs, and Ryan is all about the Green Bay Packers.

I have four brothers, I know how this works, Murray told Fortune senior editor Nina Easton. Murray gave Ryan grief about the Packers disappointing performance, rubbing the Seahawks win-after-win in his face. She even went so far as getting Ryan a Russell Wilson jersey, signed by the Washington quarterback himself, a month before the Super Bowl.

That light-hearted focus on personality, rather than political philosophies, helped the liberal and the conservative find common ground. Murray said it helped build trust. Though the two met several times throughout this process, their conversations never ended up in the paper the next day. Both knew their best supporters wouldnt be happy with the final resultMurray said announcing the deal was actually harder than creating it with Ryanbut some sort of action had to take place.

MichleFlournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense in Policy and the nights second speaker, has had her own troubles with compromisethough hers were of the personal nature. Flournoy left the Pentagon in 2011 because she felt her job was becoming too hard on her three children (at the time, her husband W. Scott Gould was the Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs).

An example: The two parents had missed every single one of her 4^thgrade sons school events that year. To make up for it, she promised she would attend a certain poetry recital and reserved the date on her calendar months in advance. The night before the recital, her boss scheduled a meeting on Iran for the next dayat the exact time as the poetry reading. Flournoy told her son she couldnt make it, and he burst into tears. The guilt setting in, she explained the situation to her boss, who also has three kids. He happily reschedule and even sent her son a goody bag, loaded with the official White House M&Ms and a note that said, Thank you for sharing your mommy with us. The deed bought Flournoy another six months with her son, but she stepped down toward the end of the year.

MORE: 50 Most Powerful Women in Business

Flournoys name often floats into conversations about the first female Defense Secretary. Another first both Flournoy and Murray discussed was that of a female President of the United States. Will Hillary Clinton run in 2016? I think she has a tremendous resume, said Murray. But Im not from Las Vegas, so I dont place bets. Flournoy was a bit less elusive. I certainly hope so, she said, adding that her admiration for Clinton rose even higher after watching her as the Secretary of State. The U.S. is ready for the other half of the populationfor little girls to know they can dream of being president.

The MPW event, which celebrated the 9^thannualFortune/U.S. State Department Global Womens Mentoring Partnership, ended on that aspirational note, perfectly aligning with the new Fortune conference announced by Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellerson Tuesdaynight. Fortune Most Powerful Women: Next Gen, happening December 2-3in San Francisco, celebrates rising star women across all industries.Learn more here.

FortuneMPW: Next Gen honors and unites rising star women across all industries.

If you havent failed, in fact, you may not be a leader at all. Thats what a cast of star athlete-businesswomen said during Playing to Win, a live webcast that I moderated for Ernst & Young on Monday.

A great champion deals with setback with a comeback, said Donna de Varona, who was a gold medal Olympic swimmer in the 1960s and knows from experience. De Varona set a world record at age 13, lost it at 15, got it back at 16 and retired at age 17 because back then, little funding existed for girls like her to train and compete in sports.

So, de Varona left the pool and went to Congress to push for Title IX, the 1972 legislation that changed the game for women by requiring equal opportunity for girls to pursue sports and other activities in any educational institution that receives public funding.

Setbacks are just learning experiences, added Beth Brooke, EYs global vice chair for public policy, who led the 2013 creation of the firms Women Athletes Business Network to help elite performers in sports pivot into business. Its not the winning that teaches you how to be resilient. Its the setback. Its the loss, Brooke explained. Its the knowledge that if I work harder, if I practice longer, if Im more disciplined, I will do better tomorrow.

Summer Sanders, who won two gold medals for swimming in the 1992 Olympic Games, agrees: If you dont fail, you dont know who you really are at your worst moment.”

Heres a short video clip of the EY conversation. Click here to watch the full 75-minute webcast, which also included tennis legend Martina Navratilova, Brazilian swimming champion Fabiola Molina, British track champ Dame Kelly Holmes and Helena Morrissey, CEO of Newton Investment Management and founder of the 30% Club, which aims to make UK corporate boards at least 30% female by 2015.

Sweeney, who ranks No. 27 on Fortune‘s recently released Global Most Powerful Women list, broke the news of her planned exit through an interview with the
Hollywood Reporter
.

Only in Hollywood does a Fortune 500 boss in charge of businesses in 166 countries give up a high-profile gig to become a director of TV shows. That’s what Sweeney intends to become, she says, after her Disney contract runs out at the end of this year.

Today’s news of Sweeny’s exit sent rumors swirling that she was eased out or that she’s departing because she hoped to succeed CEO Bob Iger but is not in the running. The rumors are untrue, says a high-ranking source at Disney. When Sweeney’s previous contract was several months away from expiring last year, according to Disney, Iger offered her three more years; she asked instead for a one-year extension.

And while the rumor goes around that another powerful woman, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg who is on the Disney board, may be a candidate to succeed Iger, that’s highly unlikely. Iger’s contract runs until 2016, and the two top candidates to take over from him are internal: Disney CFO Jay Rusulo and Parks and Resorts chairman Tom Staggs.

As for Sweeney, she has been loyal since joining the company in 1996 as president of the Disney Channel, but she’s never been solely focused on climbing the ladder. Sweeney, who is 56, began her career wanting to be an actress. In 2007, she started taking painting lessons and became an avid artist.

Today, Sweeney juggles her job as co-chairman of Disney Media Networks with caring for elderly parents, both retired teachers who live near her in Los Angeles, and an autistic son, Christopher. Sweeney and her husband have a grown daughter too. She talked about Christopher at length for the first time in this 2011 interview, part of a Yahoo series called Power Your Future. And yes, that’s young Chris in Sweeney’s painting above.

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For all that — and for her success as Facebooks COO, by the way Sandberg placed No. 11 on Fortunes recently released Global Most Powerful Women (MPW) list. Given her clout and the force of her feminism, we wondered: What does Sandberg think of the career approach of Fortunes No. 1 Global MPW, General Motors CEO Mary Barra, who told us that she has never asked for a raise or a promotion?

Leaning in, Sandberg responds, is not necessarily about asking for more. Lean In is about getting the jobs you want and deserve, whether you get them by asking or without having to ask, she told me recently.

She’s not talking about clawing your way to the top, of course. But if you work hard, put in extra hours, travel to the point of exhaustion at times, and you work at the right company, you may not have to ask for either a raise or a promotion. There is no doubt that Mary Barra has been leaning in at GM, Sandberg says.

So, does Barra think her own behavior — never asking for a raise or promotion — is un-Sandberg-like”? Definitely not. In fact, the GM chief agrees with Sandberg that women should negotiate for higher pay rather than accept an original offer. Given her own recently disclosed $14.4 million pay package, did Barra negotiate that up from a lower amount? Neither she nor a GM spokesman will say.

Barra, who lately has been leaning in personally and aggressively to fix GM’s mishandled product recall, explained her formula for success in myrecentQ&Awith her: “Do every job you’re in like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life and demonstrate that ownership of it.”Heres the GM chief talking about her that and how she got to the top.

FORTUNE — In what has long been a minefield for senior women — the big banks — three female executives burnished their power this week.

In a senior management shuffle at Citigroup , CEO Mike Corbat told employees yesterday that Jane Fraser is the new CEO of U.S. Consumer & Commercial Banking. This is a huge job that encompasses retail/small business/commercial banking and wealth management, plus Citis mortgage business globally.

Fraser is certainly one of Citis executives to watch. A native of Edinburgh, Scotland, she arrived at Citi 10 years ago with a successful decade at McKinsey on her resume, a Harvard MBA, and a degree in economics from Cambridge. She headed strategy and M&A for Citi and then the Private Bank, which she grew. Viewed as a straight-talking, strategic problem-solver, Fraser, at 46, has plenty of runway to advance further.

Also moving up: Barbara DeSoer, who goes from COO to CEO of Citibank N.A. This job puts her in charge of corporate governance and franchise management for Citibank branches and subsidiaries in 101 countries. DeSoer, 61, was on Fortunes Most Powerful Women list when she was at Bank of America and considered to be a possible contender for CEO someday. But in 2012, she left BofA after taking on that bank’s toughest assignment — heading the mortgage business post-acquisition of subprime lender Countrywide Financial — and facing criticisms of foreclosure practices. DeSoer took a year off and joined Citi last fall.

Fraser and Desoer are the only women on Citi’s 24-person operating committee.

Meanwhile, U.S. Consumer and Commercial Banking president Cece Stewart, a high-profile recruit by former Citi CEO Vikram Pandit, is leaving. Her rise from bank clerk to head of retail and small business banking at Wachovia earned her a spot on Fortune‘s MPW list in 2007. But after she moved to Morgan Stanley in 2009 and then Citi in 2011, her career seemed to stall. Stewart, 55, is expected to focus on her true passion, her horses in North Carolina, as well as board work.

And as Citis rival, J.P. Morgan Chase , revealed at its investor day this week that it’s making broad cuts while expanding in asset management, it’s worth noting that the CEO of that unit, in charge of $1.6 trillion in assets, is Mary Callahan Erdoes, No. 31 on our global MPW list. Erdoes’ star is shining bright these days.

FORTUNE — Job-hopping can be a path to promotions and big pay for many executives, but the global edition of the Fortune Most Powerful Women list, released today, suggests that there is still value in corporate loyalty. Ten of the 50 executives on the list have been working at their companies their entire career.

And the woman at the topMary Barra, the No. 1 Most Powerful Woman in Business globally is a star who not only worked her way up to CEO at General Motors over 33 years; she did it by not leaning in aggressively. No offense to Sheryl Sandberg (the Facebook COO with the bestselling Lean In is No. 11 in our global rankings), but I asked Barra, for a Q&A that appears in the new issue of Fortune, if she has ever asked for a promotion. No, I have not,” she replied. Have you ever asked for a raise? No, I have not, the new GM chief answered matter-of-factly.

Leaning back has not seemed to hurt Barra, 52. Her philosophy:“Do every job you’re in like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life and demonstrate that ownership of it,” she told me. “You deliver and produce results and you do it with high integrity and teamwork, and it’ll all work out. You don’t have to ask for different jobs, and you don’t have to ask for raises..”

That may sound Pollyannish, but more power to Barra if it works out for her longterm. If youve heard the report that she’s getting paid less than half of what her CEO predecessor, Dan Akerson, earned, dont believe it. GM has disclosed only Barra’s base salary and short-term compensation so far. The company is yet to announce her long-term package, and until that happens in April, no one knows how her pay will compare. (On AC360 with Anderson Cooper Tuesday night, I suggested that the more fuss people make about Barra’s pay, the more likely shell earn more than Akerson.)

Another MPW lifer is making a big job change: Google announced Wednesday that Susan Wojcicki, SVP of ads and commerce, is the new CEO of the company’s YouTube unit. Wojcicki, who famously rented her garage to co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they were plotting their startup and got onboard as employee No. 16, has been a team player much like Barra. It’s not in Wojcicki’s nature to push her own agenda over the company’s to advance her career. Now, after she has built and managed Googles ad products these past 15 years, Wojcicki’s new assignment can fulfill her desire to run a business.

Wojcickis appointment makes sense for YouTube as well. My Fortune colleague Miguel Helft, who wrote a terrific cover story called Why YouTube Changes Everything last July, notes that YouTubes No. 1 issue is not content or audience; rather, its ad rates. So the woman who has been, by some measures, the most powerful woman in advertising will work to make YouTube more than just a cultural phenom: a reliable money machine.

Ask headhunters what they look for when recruiting directors for corporate boards and they’ll tick off a wish list of traits: Companies want directors who are financially astute, have proven leadership skills and bring global perspective. And, increasingly, they want women. (Norway has mandated that women make up 40% of corporate boards; key figures in the U.K. are pushing FTSE 100 companies to aim for 25% board participation by women by 2015.) Here are a few women who already are helping corporate boards meet their financial, management, and cross-border goals.

FORTUNE — Silicon Valley venture capitalists Jennifer Fonstad and Theresia Gouw are leaving their firms and going into business together.

Aspect Ventures is the name. And the most interesting aspect of this startupbesides the cofounders focus on mobile, which says a lot about where Silicon Valley money is flowingis that their exits from their well-known firms means that there are now almost no female senior partners in Silicon Valleys biggest VC firms.

A plan that germinated over a lunch at the Cantor Arts Center on Stanford Universitys campus last September (Why dont we go into business together? Fonstad recalls asking. I said Yes instantly, says Gouw) has Fonstad leaving Draper Fisher Jurvetson, where she’s the only female managing director, and Gouw departing Accel Partners, where shes been a managing partner and the sole woman on an 18-person U.S. investment team. (Accel has a female partner, Sonali De Rycker, in London.)

Meanwhile, other major VC firms in the Valley such as Benchmark, Redpoint and Sequoia Capitalhave all-male teams investing their capital. Andreessen Horowitz has eight general partners — eight guys who make the investment decisions and take seats on the boards of the startups they fund. Kleiner Perkins has several female partners, but only life-sciences investor Beth Seidenberg and Mary Meeker, the renowned Internet analyst who left Morgan Stanley three years ago to lead Kleiners $1 billion digital growth fund, are general partnersthe real power tier at the firm.

Fonstad and Gouw aim to change the ratioby making Aspect Ventures one of the major VC firms in Silicon Valley. Focusing on seed and early stage investments in mobile computing, Gouw says, We want to be the first institutional investment partner for entrepreneurs we work with. The co-founders say they have enough money to do what they want to do in the next two yearsthat is, invest $500,000 to $3 million in each of 12 to 24 investments.

Theyre funding their venture themselves100% founders capital, says Gouw, adding that they anticipate inviting three to five general partners into the firm.

This is not two strangers teaming up on a crazy bet. Theresia and I have known each other for 25 years, says Fonstad. After college (Fonstad went to Georgetown and Gouw studied engineering at Brown), they worked on the same case team at Bain. Then, in 1996, Fonstads firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, invested in Ranzettas startup, Release Software. Three years later, after Fonstad joined DFJ and quickly made partner, Gouw wanted to test her own talents as a VC. Jennifer was the first person I called,” she recalls.

Theyve co-invested a bit, but both women have strong track records on their own, making more than 80 seed and Series A investments that have led to six IPOs: NanoString , Trulia , Imperva , Athenahealth PeopleSupport , and NetZero . Athenahealth, which has a $5.2 billion stock-market value, isone of Fonstads investments and the biggest win.

While Gouw has backed a lot of women-led startups — Birchbox, LearnVest and ModCloth, to name three — Aspect Ventures will not be playing the gender game. That is, the firm wont have a bias toward women-run companies. But we do bring different perspective, says Fonstad about women in business. And theres evidence that having women on boards does improve ROI. Aspect will look to recruit female directors to the companies it funds, as well as add male partners to its own mix.

Asked whether their old firms male cultures frustrated them and led them to go solo (or duo, in this case) Fonstad admits that her industrys culture has been challenging at times — and she can’t help but bring the best-sellingLean Inby her famous friend at Facebook . Sheryl Sandberg talks about the penalties women take for being aggressive and tough,” says Fonstad, 48. “Ive experienced some of that.

Weve both worked at great places, adds Gouw, 45. Its not so much about running from a place as running to a place.

If these two women succeed, becoming role models will be a payoff beyond any hefty ROI. By being more visible and showing we can do this, Gouw says, maybe women will become more confident to be entrepreneurs and investors themselves.

Picture a Fortune 500 company steeped in tradition, with stodgy offices near Wall Street, old ways of operating and a relatively new CEO who wanted to update the work environment but questioned the value of change since performance was just fine. Guardian, a mutual insurer owned by its policyholders, had delivered profit increases for four straight years, so why shake things up?

Guardian was running on a successful sort of inertia under CEO and president Deanna Mulligan, who had arrived from Axa Equitable in 2008 and taken the top position in mid-2011. But when Sandy struck on October 29, 2012, the storm flooded the downtown New York headquarters with five feet of water, knocked out power, and made the offices uninhabitable for nearly a year.

A blessing in disguise is how Mulligan now characterizes the impact of the storm on Guardian’s culture, even though the disaster left inordinate damage to homes and human lives–and certainly did not seem to be a blessing initially. All employees at the company’s 7 Hanover Square headquarters–more than 1,600 out of Guardian’s total 5,000–were prohibited from returning to their offices and couldnt retrieve anything, not even what they left on their desks the Friday before. The wait was supposed to be a couple of months. It turned out to be many more.

Goldman Sachs –the cover subjectinFortunes new“Best Companies to Work For” issue–offered Guardian a few empty floors in a building across the Hudson River. So 1,600 Guardian employees moved to 30 Hudson Street in Jersey City, N.J., but the temporary space was nothing like they were used to. Instead of having individual offices or even cubicles, many employees had to work elbow to elbow at long tables, cafeteria style.

Those were the folks who made it in to work. Others with homes devastated by the storm found alternative work spaces–local libraries, coffee shops and the homes of friends–and joined Guardian meetings via Skype.

Mulligans own work habits changed because they had to. She had been one of those bosses who printed all of her documents and relied heavily on paper. After Sandy hit, Mulligan started using the productivity tool Evernote to store and manage everything. My whole life is on Evernote, she says, pulling out her iPad, tapping the Evernote app and showing me her schedule, contacts, Guardians annual report, reference materials for boards she sits on, and personal notes. Evernote can search your handwritten notes by keywords, she says.

More than just saving a few trees, Mulligan, who ranks No. 47 on Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women list, is working more productively than ever, and so are her employees, she contends. Guardian’s finance chief, Robert Broatch, has gone largely paperless. Fifteen months after Sandy, more and more employees are opting for flexible hours, working some days at home and some in the office. They did it in the most difficult circumstances. Why would we disapprove of it now? Mulligan says. Guardian has a training program to teach employees how to manage virtual teams of remote workers.

Guardians offices across the U.S., including a large office Bethlehem, Pa., are getting open-plan redesigns. And Mulligan is looking into various accessories, like treadmill desks to share, to encourage collaboration.

The real surprise is that Guardians performance held steady in Sandy’s aftermath (most policyholders were unaware of the company’s dire circumstances) and actually improved in some areas, according to customer feedback. And while Sandy was a greater challenge than expected in many ways (phone service and electricity outages kept Guardian employees out of headquarters for 11 months), the storm forced helpful change on everyone. How much management do people need? Maybe not as much as we thought, says Mulligan.

Since she’s now an advocate for letting employees loose (or looser than they were, at least) and permitting work from home, I ask the Guardian chief what she thinks about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s efforts to get her remote employees to work in the office. “I do believe that certain creativity happens when people are in the room together,” Mulligan says, “but I don’t believe people have to be in the room together all the time.” About Mayer, she adds: “I have a lot of empathy for her. She’s trying to change a culture, and so am I.”

Christiane Lemieux founded DwellStudio in 2000, hoping to create a line of home furnishings with a trendier vibe than traditional retailers like Pottery Barn WSM . The company slowly gained a following, helping the designer-turned-entrepreneur catch the eye of Wayfair, which purchased DwellStudio for an undisclosed amount in August.

Fortune’sMost Powerful Women started as a list in 1998, kicked off its annual Summit the following year, and has since become a community of the preeminent women in business, government, philanthropy, education, and the arts. This weekly Q&A features one MPW’s personal take on leadership, aspirations, and (of course) balance. (Lemieux was a Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur winner in 2012.)

1. What currently excites you most about your industry?

I think the home/lifestyle industry is in total flux. Online retail is shaping the future. It is moving at lightning pace. I am thrilled to be part of Wayfair — now the largest online home retailer in North America — and to be on the forefront of this sweeping change with the best in the business. I can’t wait to see what the next couple of years bring as we push all the boundaries together.

2. What was your biggest missed opportunity?

We were very far down the road with a great visionary and strategic venture partner in 2008, and then the world bottomed out. I think had that materialized it would have been very interesting — I am so curious to see where that would have taken the business. That being said, I do believe that everything happens for a reason, and our Wayfair partnership is shaping up to be even more interesting.

3. What is the best advice you ever received?

Your life IS the occasion. Rise to it.

MORE: Wayfair.com wants you to say its name

4. What is one trait every entrepreneur needs more today than ever?

Instinctively, I would say passion. Passion fuels the staying power it takes to be a successful entrepreneur. If you are not passionate about your endeavor it will not succeed. That being said, I now work with Niraj Shah, the inspiring and prolific CEO of Wayfair who has quickly taught me the virtues of focus. Niraj leads the company with boundless intelligence and laser focus which I believe is the reason for the company’s meteoric rise. Maybe the super-secret to business success lies in the Venn between passion and focus.

5. What would you say to a group of young people looking to enter the tough job market?

Do anything and everything — you never know where something completely random will take you. Keep your eyes open, and don’t underestimate hard work.

6. What was your first job?

The first paycheck I ever received was at 16 as a summer camp counselor-in-training. It was so little I never bothered to cash it. I still have it somewhere.

7. What is one startup you would have wanted to found?

In my world there is nothing more talked about than Warby Parker. I think as a startup in the consumer space it was beautifully executed. They got all the details right. Google GOOG would be good too.

MORE: Warby Parker valued at $500 million

8. What other companies do you admire? Why?

There are so many great companies now that are taking a 360 view of business. I am so inspired by TOMS, for example — they have the holy grail of great product, innovative communication, thoughtful growth, and they are using their product to change the world. I think more and more companies that are taking this approach not only attract the best talent, loyal and committed customers, but change the way we think about what doing business means.

9. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?

I am actually writing this on an airplane on the way to Haiti to do both design and manufacturing for the DwellStudio line and work on behalf of Every Mother Counts Christy Turlington’s amazing organization advocating maternal health. Personally — I also have my eye set on Myanmar. I tried to get there when I was last in Vietnam but could not swing the visa on time.

10. Whats your take on the having it all debate?

Ithink it may be possible to have it all but impossible to have it all at once. I also think it’s important to know that “all ” is going to look very different at different times in life. I really believe that “all” is a fluid thing and better seen that way because then it’s always out there and attainable.

FORTUNE —So much for a little bit of time off.

On Tuesday, former Lululemon lulu CEO Christine Day announced shes taking the reins at Luvo, a frozen food company that focuses on low calorie, low sodium meals.

This past summer, Day told Fortune she was planning to take some time away from the professional world once a new Lululemon CEO was named, to focus on friends and family and to finish a management book shes writing — then build something else again. Day, an executive at Starbucks SBUX prior to Lululemon, told Fortune at the time, I have one more in me.

Former TOMS CEO Laurent Potdevin became Lululemons chiefonly in December — so Days career news might feel a bit sudden. But the Luvo gig, a seemingly perfect blend of her past experiences with her personal interests, allows her to ease into the transition, starting part-time in April and joining the company full time in September. The Wall Street Journal reported that Luvos founder, Steve Sidwell, first approached Day about the job in September 2013.

Days appeal to both Lululemon and Starbucks also likely made her attractive to Luvo: an appreciation for culture along with an ability to scale a fast-growing enterprise and build a brand. She has a knack for taking small companies to the big leagues while maintaining their cool factor.

MORE:Nest founder: Why I sold to Google

During her two decades at Starbucks, Day worked directly with founder and CEO Howard Schultz to help build the brand, most recently driving Starbucks Japans stock price from the low teens to the low-50s between 2004 and 2007. She then joined Lululemon, managing its founder Chip Wilsons aspirations for the yoga retailer. Day helped hone his vision, creating focused messaging that transformed Lululemon into a cult-turned-mainstream brand.

Luvo promotes a healthy lifestyle, much like Starbucks and Lululemon. In order to scale [a business], there has to be continuity of message, a continuity of purpose and an anchoring [of the message], Day told Fortune in July. Based on Days past career choices, it seems to fit her trajectory of working for companies that fit with her lifestyle.

Day, who is reported to own 15% of Luvo, has the chance to build another company — this time without scrutiny from public shareholders. That doesnt mean that shes looking to get out of the limelight altogether. Luvos investors include Derek Jeter and actress Jennifer Garner, which will keep the company in the public eye.

Days past successes paint a promising future for Luvo: In the next few years, dont be surprised to see fit men and women, clad in their Lululemon gear with a Starbucks latte in hand, cluttering supermarkets frozen food aisles as they pass over the Lean Cuisines and Healthy Choices to reach for a Luvo meal.

FORTUNE — Sheryl Sandberg must be the most politically connected executive in Silicon Valley.

There she was in Washington, D.C., last month when President Obama hosted a powwow with tech honchos at the White House.

Fifteen years earlier, the Facebook COO served as chief of staff to Larry Summers when he was Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration.

And last year, when Summers was being considered to chair the Federal Reserve, Sandberg leaned in to support him.

Sandbergs mentor didnt get the Fed jobit went to Janet Yellen. But now it appears that Sandberg will have one degree of separation from the next No. 2 at the Fed. Obama’s choice to be the Feds next vice-chairman is Stanley Fischer, whose son David is Sandbergs longtime deputy.

David Fischer is VP of Advertising and Global Operations at Facebook. Before Sandberg lured him to Facebook in 2010, he spent more than seven years working for her at Google , helping her build a 4,000-employee ad operations groupand taking her job as VP of online sales and operations when she left. Famously thoughtful, calm and unflappable, Fischer first earned Sandberg’s praise when he worked for her at Treasury.

Like son, like father? Apparently. The elder Fischer, whom Sandberg indeed knows, is renowned as a low-key, low-ego, and evenhanded economistthe same rep that Yellen has. Once Ben Bernankes thesis adviser at MIT, Stanley Fischer, 70, has been the World Banks chief economist, the IMFs No. 2, a Citigroup vice-chairman, and the head of the Bank of Israel, where he steered the central bank through the 2008 global economic crisis with remarkable finesse.

That’s such an impressive resume that some people doubted that Fischer would agree to be No. 2 at the Fed–but Yellen reportedly pushed the White House to ask him. If he’s confirmed, Fischers father and son will be working for two of the most powerful women in the world.

As Mary Barra prepares to take the wheel at General Motors next Wednesday–and no woman has never led a corporation that big–Janet Yellen moves in as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, the news broke today that President Obama intends to nominate Lael Brainard, the former Under Secretary of the Treasury for international affairs, to the Fed Board of Governors.

These three leaders have key qualities in common and together show how far America has come since the days when women leaders needed to act like men.

Indeed, Barra, 52, has the grit of her macho industry under her manicured nails. She grew up a die maker’s daughter in Detroit and started as an engineering intern on a Pontiac factory floor. But Barra is unlike any man who has made it to the top of the auto business. A wife and mother of two teenagers, she’s recently been heading global product development, but when GM was in bankruptcy, she oversaw HR. She elevated that job–which is stereotypically female–by overhauling onerous employee rules and showing that treating workers well is as critical to success as putting out quality cars.

Like Barra, Yellen, the first woman ever to head the Fed in its 100-year history, is famously firm but evenhanded and possesses a quality ever more critical in leaders today: empathy. TIME assistant managing editor Rana Foroohar, who snagged the first interview with the new Fed chief, tells me: “Honest to God, she’s really worried about the human effects of policy.” Yellen’s research that informs her policymaking is the “real-world, kitchen-table type,” Foroohar notes. “And her ideas are about making people’s lives better.”

In her cover profile in the new issue of TIME, Foroohar explains how Yellen first noticed the human impact of economics in the 1950s while growing up in the working-class Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Yellen’s father, a family doctor, treated dockworkers and factory laborers who could scrape together a couple of bucks to pay him–or not.

Yellen, 67, married a Nobel Prize-winning economist, George Ackerlof, who is more liberal than she. Comfortably blending her personal and professional lives, Yellen talked readily with Foroohar about family life and motherhood impacting her economic mindset.

“The Most Unprecedented Thing about Janet Yellen,” notes TIME top editor Nancy Gibbs in an online post, is that Yellen and her husband are the quintessential power couple who seem to disprove Anne-Marie Slaughter’s contention in the Atlantic that “Women Still Can’t Have It All.”

One good friend of Yellen, Christina Romer, who chaired Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, told Foroohar that she views the incoming Fed chair and her husband as “a total meeting of equals, in parenting and in ideas.” When Yellen and Ackerlof were raising their son, Robert, “they both took time off, and shared all the tasks from who picked him up from school to who was doing the cooking,” Romer adds.

Doesn’t it seem thoroughly modern for a powerful woman’s spouse to have his own success but adjust to give her whatever she needs to succeed at the highest level? Economist Laura Tyson told Foroohar about the most powerful economic policymaker on earth and her husband: “They have an amazing relationship.”

Watch This Week with George Stephanopoulos this Sunday at 10 a.m. ET to see me talk about Barra, Yellen, and Fortune’s Most Powerful Women.

FORTUNE — In 2006, Sheila Marcelo struggled to take care of two young children while she helped her father recover from a heart attack. Realizing she wasnt alone, she founded Care.com. The website helps connect parents, kids with elderly moms and dads, and pet owners with the appropriate care givers, making their lives drastically less stressful. Marcelo was one of Fortunes Most Powerful Women Entrepreneur winners in 2009 — and her companys become so successful that it has sponsored the contest for the past two years.

Fortune’sMost Powerful Women started as a list in 1998, kicked off its annual Summit the following year, and has since become a community of the preeminent women in business, government, philanthropy, education, and the arts. This weekly Q&A features one MPW’s personal take on leadership, aspirations, and (of course) balance.

1. What is the best advice you ever received?

At the end of the day, think about three things that went really well or went right that day and write them down. Its amazing how focusing on the positive can change your perspective.

2. What was the last book you read?

Turning the Mind Into an Ally is a great book that I reread every year. Although not a Buddhist myself, I find that Sakyong Mipham offers insights that are an amazing life skill. I believe it is about evolutions, not revolutions, and as both a mom and CEO, Ive found Sakyong’s work is an influential, provocative journey toward managing stress through self-awareness. As a young woman growing up in the Philippines surrounded by the common scenes of a developing country, growth was something we strove for on a daily basis, and the concept of continued growth and learning has stayed with me.

MORE: What sports taught insurance exec Lori Fouch about leadership

3. What would you say to a group of young people looking to enter the tough job market?

I offer this advice all the time, but its especially true in a tough job market: Let go of your perception of success. Set goals and create plans that work for you and what you want from your life, not what someone else dictates.

4. What was your biggest missed opportunity?

Wishing we had a daughter when we were younger. We hope to consider adoption in several years since we love children. If not, Im looking forward to being a grandmother.

5. What was the most important thing you learned in school?

• People fear finance courses or marketing courses or anything theyre not already exposed to. Embrace being a generalist. If you want to be an entrepreneur, dont underestimate the value of skills learned in those classes.

• Be comfortable with networking and selling and try not to think of them as bad words. The majority of my job as an entrepreneur is selling and networking.

• Also, learn to work with a team. Study groups outweigh classroom participation.

• When in school, find mentors and reach out to the alumni database. Its better to do this as a student because when youre out in the real world, theres a sense that you have an agenda. As a student, your agenda is to ask for help and advice.

6. What business or technology person do you admire most? Why?

Dado Banatao, founder of Tallwood Capital, is an inspiration to me. He isnt only a personal mentor, but a dear friend. Hes given me terrific advice through the years about building companies that scale so that you can help more people. He has the vision behind the Philippine Development Foundation, and he is using his incredible technical background, entrepreneurial experience, and success to make a meaningful difference for millions of families.

MORE: Cisco’s CTO: Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground

7. What is one trait every entrepreneur needs more today than ever?

Humility. By definition, entrepreneurs are natural risk takers, prepared to swim against the tide. But there can be a tendency to get too wrapped up in oneself. The truth is that leadership is rarely about you; its about your team and helping them grow and achieve. Successful entrepreneurs understand that leadership is as much about being selfless as it is being strong.

8. If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be?

The Philippines. I grew up in there, and its not only my heritage, its my history. Its where I was born, where my parents raised my five siblings and me. Its where my journey began and where I often return for renewal. The devastation wreaked by Typhoon Yolanda was crippling, and it is awe-inspiring to witness the number of individuals, businesses, and community leaders who have stepped up to help rebuild the devastated towns. As a member of the Philippine Development Foundation, Im actively involved in the relief efforts and am trying leverage my position as a Filipino CEO in America to generate continued support.

9. Whats your take on the having it all debate?

It is pretty likely that most days you will not be the best CEO and the best mother/daughter/friend/sister … and thats okay. No ones perfect, including me, but so often we put so much time and energy trying to be. Ive learned to let go of the mythical goal of perfection, of all the perception baggage, and its liberating. Its really about defining success for yourself and your family. Giving yourself the license to do what you need to do and be where you need to be, so that youre servicing yourself, your company, your family best is going to be a daily conversation. Making peace with that is something that takes time, and I still struggle with it.

10. What currently excites you most about your industry?

The potential is really limitless. Care is a global issue, and it touches every family at some point in the lifecycle. But it really begins with women. Women are gatekeepers to a better future. What universally holds women back is the need for reliable, affordable care for their families, whether its child care or the growing global issue of senior care. When women, whether they are seeking or providing care, are free to pursue jobs outside the home and contribute to their familys economic standing, they are able to shape their childrens future and care for aging parents, communities, and nations. Now that Care.com is the largest online care destination in the world, were having a direct impact in helping make this happen.

But I like that this lineup of top stories, based on unique visitors, is about lives and careers rather than gadgets or gear or growth strategies.

Its no surprise that Top perks was supremely clickable, since work and personal life intermingle these days. Everybody wants more than a job, and companies face immense pressure to make employees feel goodas they push us to do three jobs instead of one.

It is startling, though, to see at No. 2 my piece about the death of Joy Covey, who was Amazon.coms CFO in its startup days. Covey was extraordinary in life and in death. Shedropped out of high school, used her 173 IQ to get to Harvard Business School, helped CEO Jeff Bezos take Amazon public, climbedFortune‘sMost Powerful Womenlist,and soon quit corporate life to be a mom, philanthropist and practitioner of extreme sports. I knew Covey, who was 50, well but never well enough. My story about her fatal bike crash in Silicon Valley this past September traveled far beyond the tech and cycling worlds.

I never imagined that Warren Buffetts essay on women would turn out to be one of Fortunes best-read pieces of the year. The Berkshire Hathaway boss phoned me last March, in the wake of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandbergs heavy-duty book promotion for Lean In. This talk about women wont stop! Buffett said. He told me that he had written a piece about women and asked if we might want to publish it. Sure thing. His essay, which reflects the deft touch of my Fortune colleague Carol Loomis as well as deputy managing editor Stephanie Mehta, is more than just wise: its fresh and unique insights expanded the conversation about why women aren’t advancing to the top quickly enough. Thanks to Buffett joining Twitter during a live online chat that I did with him, his essay exploded across the web.

During that chatin Omaha last May, Buffett was asked How do you define success? His answer is worth remembering as we move into the new year. If the people who you want to have love you love you, youre a success, said the ever-rational billionaire. You can have all the money in the world, you can have buildings named after you, and unless youve got people who really care about you, you are not a success.

And the irony is that her dismissal comes just as she expected to vault into a much bigger one.

When I had lunch with Schulman, 53, last Thursday in New York City, she talked about moving from her current position at the drug giantgeneral counsel and head of its $3.2 billion global healthcare businessto head three units: vaccines, oncology and global healthcare. That trio of businesses would have given her responsibility for more than $8 billion in annual revenue.

Something went awry between Thursday–when Schulman was prepping for a celebratory dinner at Manhattan’s elegant Le Bernardin restaurant with her legal teamand 9 a.m. Tuesday, when Pfizer disclosed her departure in a tersely written press release that said her exit is by “mutual agreement.”

Did Schulman make a power play that turned out to be fatal? Did her reputation as a consummate self-promoter rub her boss the wrong way? Did she clash with one of her senior colleagues? Whatever the back story, it’s clear that Pfizer is losing a fast-rising executive who seemed in pursuit of the top job at the company.

As Schulman explained over our lunch, her career path was unconventional. In 2008, she left law firm DLA Piper, where she was a star litigator earning almost $6 million annually, to join Pfizer, where her initial pay was a sliver of that. More important than the money, though, was her belief that then-CEO Jeff Kindler, a former general counsel at McDonald’s MCD , would give her broad responsibilities beyond legal.

It didn’t turn out that way. While Schulman and Kindler got along initially, their relationship soon soured. She played a role in his 2008 ouster, which Fortune detailed in an award-winning 2011 cover story.

Schulman found an advocate in Kindler’s successor, Ian Read, who is now Pfizer’s chief executive. Read put her in charge of Pfizer Nutrition, while she held onto her post as the company’s chief lawyer. A mother of three boys, Schulman juggled her jobs happily–wanting to stay on as general counsel, she admitted, in case she failed as an operator.

She did not fail at operations. She expanded the $2 billion-a-year nutrition business and improved its profitability. Pfizer sold the unit to Nestle NSRGF for a stunning $11.85 billion in 2012.

Eager to run a bigger business, Schulman got a plum assignment heading global healthcare, with well-known brands such as Advil, Chapstick and Centrum vitamins. Meanwhile, she ascended to be one of Pfizer’s top-paid executives. Her compensation, including options, totaled $5.6 million in 2012, according to Pfizer’s proxy.

Pfizer did not return Fortune‘s phone calls. Amidst Schulman’s sudden exit, her intended assignment goes to Albert Bourla, a 20-year Pfizer veteran. He will be group president of Vaccines, Oncology and Consumer Healthcare. Susan Silbermann, meanwhile, is Pfizer’s new president and general manager of Global Vaccines.

At a company famous for palace intrigue, there’s a deja vu in this latest drama. Speculation about who will someday replace Read as Pfizer’s CEO ensues. For now–until the next upheaval, at least–new division chiefs Bourla, Geno Germano, and John Young emerge as the top contenders.

Once Barra, who turns 52 later this month, replaces retiring CEO Dan Akerson in the boardroom, GM will have five female directors on its 12-member board. That’s 42% of the lineup.

GM, of all companies! But the new gender balance makes sense since women consumers, according to GM, make more than half of the buying decisions in the auto industry.

The rarity of such board diversity is proven in a study released this week by Catalyst: Only four Fortune 500 companies–Estee Lauder EL , Avon Products AVP , Procter & Gamble PG , and ad giant Interpublic Group IPG –have boards with more than 40% female directors.

While these companies are mixed in overall performance (Estee Lauder, with a board that’s 46.7% female, is on fire), research shows that companies with diverse director slates generally deliver superior returns to shareholders.

Yet progress is,as GM’s Akerson said publicly last month, “glacial” and “unacceptable.” As I wrote in Fortune‘s recent Most Powerful Women issue, the corporate boardroom appears to be “the last glass ceiling” where only 17% of Fortune 500 directors are female. Catalyst reportsthat 50 Fortune 500 companies still have no female directors.

There is one sign of hope, though. “Demand for digital expertise is bringing more women onto boards,” says Jana Rich, who heads the consumer digital and media practice at search firm Russell Reynolds. Last week in San Francisco, Rich hosted a panel (part of TEDWomen) called “Digital women on Fortune 500 Company Boards.” The directors on her panel were Sue Decker, Dawn Lepore and Ali Rosenthal.

Decker, a former president of Yahoo YHOO , is now on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway brk.a , Costco COST , Intel INTC , and LegalZoom LGZ . The dearth of women on boards is so troubling to her that she’s altered her view against quotas. “It’s not going to happen naturally,” Decker says. “Until you’re forced to be creative, I don’t know that equal representation will happen fast enough, given how few positions open up each year.”

In fact, low board turnover is stunting progress. Rich cited a study showing that only 151 board seats at Fortune 500 companies turned over last year. This was a 10-year low.

Decker doesn’t want the U.S. government legislating targets, as some European countries have done. She prefers Fortune 500 boards setting and complying with their own individual goals. Though she knows there would be fallout: “If boards do impose quotas, they’ll need to tolerate making mistakes from time to time because it will force them to draw from pools of talent that may not have as much experience in C-suites.”

“I have very mixed feelings,” Lepore responded to Decker’s proposal. A decade ago, Lepore was a CEO struggling to revivedrugstore.com, which is now part of Walgreen WAG , and she needed the best board members, bar none. “I agree conceptually in quotas, but I have concerns practically,” she said.

Lepore, a former vice chairman in charge of technology at Charles Schawb SCHW , shows how conducive a tech background can be to getting on great boards. Once a director of Walmart WMT , eBay EBAY and the New York Times NYT , she’s now on the boards of AOL AOL , retailer TJX TJX and RealNetworks RNWK .

Meanwhile, demand for digital directors is opening up opportunities for younger women. Starbucks SBUX has Clara Shih, the 31-year-old founder and CEO of Hearsay Social. Walmart has Marissa Mayer, 38, who got recruited before she moved from Google GOOG to be CEO of Yahoo. Facebook FB VP Carolyn Everson, 41, is on the Hertz HTZ board. Ali Rosenthal, ex-Facebook and now COO at a startup called MessageMe, joined the board of AutoNation AN in 2011–when she was 34 years old and, she admits, she did not know much about cars. But Rosenthal, now 37, certainly knew social media.

On Monday, Kim Jabal, CFO of social-networking startup Path, joined the board of Fedex FDX . A 45-year-old engineer with a Harvard MBA, she’s joining Fedex’s Information Technology Oversight Committee.

Meanwhile, the tech industry fares worst of all in terms of diversifying its boards. Ernst & Young reportsthat 39% of tech companies have no female directors. Twitter’s appointment last week of Marjorie Scardino, the digital-savvy ex-CEO of Pearson, was one small step for women on boards, and calmed some of the critics.

But it will take more women like Barra, armed with an engineering degree and a Stanford MBA plus lots of ambition, to take corporate America where it needs to be.

For more on the topic, read my Postcard on“How women can break into the boardroom.”

And based on revenue–which is what the Fortune 500 is all about–she tops the rankings of women in charge of America’s largest companies.

When Barra assumes the top job from current chief Dan Akerson on January 15, she’ll be running the largest woman-led U.S. company, displacing Hewlett-Packard’s Meg Whitman in that distinction.

GM, with $152.3 billion in revenue last year, ranks No. 7 on the Fortune 500. HP, with revenue of $120.4 billion, is No. 15.

Barra, 51, is the first female chief of a major U.S. automaker. She has cars in her blood. Her dad was a die maker for GM’s Pontiac division for four decades. Barra attended college at the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University) in Flint, Michigan, as a co-op student; she worked six months of each year for GM in exchange for the company paying her annual tuition. She started in a Pontiac plant, graduated college in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering and, over 33 years at GM, climbed to her current post as EVP of global product development, global purchasing and supply chain.

She earned the acclaim of her bosses for bringing new rigor to GM’s famously dysfunctional product development process, Barra upgraded the cars and the corporate culture too. Previously head of global human resources–a role assigned to her in 2009, right after GM filed for bankruptcy–she relieved GM employees of onerous work rules and relaxed the dress codes.

You’ll have to wait until next October to find out where Barra will rank on the 2014 Fortune Most Powerful Women list. But given the stature of her new job, she’ll surely move way up from her No. 29 ranking on the 2013 MPW list.

The annual MPW list ranks businesswomen based on the size and importance of the business in the global economy, the health and direction of the business, the arc of the woman’s career, and global influence. GM’s direction has definitely been positive. Barra is copping the CEO job one day after the U.S. Treasury announced it has sold its entire stake in the once critically sick company. With a stock-market capitalization of $56.8 billion, GM is more valuable than HP, even as the stock of that troubled tech giant has almost doubled this year. IBM IBM , which has a market cap of $192.7 billion, is the most valuable company run by a woman: Ginni Rometty, who is No. 1 on the current Fortune MPW list.

Here’s Barra, interviewed by CNBC’s Becky Quick, at the 2013 Fortune MPW Summit. And below is Barra, in our MPW Summit series on Breakthrough Moments in Leadership, explaining how she learned to motivate employees while running a GM assembly plant a decade ago.

Two years old with over 400 million daily “snaps,” the ephemeral-photo sharing company surprised its northern competitors by snagging such high-caliber talent. Whites new role at Los Angeles-based Snapchat is the latest in a string of promotions (before joining Instagram in April, she headed Mobile Business Development and Partnerships at Facebook), as well as a big risk.

Snapchats business model remains a question mark. It recently turned down Facebooks reported $3 billion bid, yet the app doesnt have an ad platform. It launched “Stories,” snaps that can be shared with all your friends for 24 hours, in October. The new feature is perhaps a precursor to its ad-sharing strategy, but thats to be determined. Much like her early days at Instagram, Whites tasked with transforming an enthusiastic group of kids into moneymaking young professionals.

White rarely shies away from the unknown. At Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit in October, she recalled her 2010 move from Google GOOG , where she was director of its emerging businesses, to Facebook. She had just delivered her first child, and maternity leave gave White the chance to ask herself, Is this really where I want to spend the next 10 years of my career? Friends and colleagues suggested she hold off on any big changes. Youve had enough change in your life, they told her. Dont change the company that you work at, the people you work with, or the space that you work in … all at once. Its just way too much change, especially when youve just had a baby. She took a job heading Facebooks local business, which changed not just one, but all three of those areas. That was the beginning of the next chapter of my career.

MORE:Richard Branson remembers Nelson Mandela

Her time at Facebook honed an expertise in harnessing and monetizing digital communities. After leading local for a little over a year, White focused on integrating ads into Facebooks mobile platforms. She then joined Instagram, working with founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to seamlessly blend ads into users photo feeds. Initially, both received uproarious pushback, but the communities seem to quickly (begrudgingly) accept the ads and only grumble from time to time. Whites also on the board of Lululemon Athletica , a retailer obsessed with engaging its customers via grassroots community events. Snapchats “communities” are small, high-quality groups of friends, and user interactions are one-on-one, creating a new kind of community for White (and advertisers) to study and understand.

As a structured goal-setter, the tech exec shouldnt be too intimidated by Snapchats uncharted future. Lululemon requires all employees to create one-, five-, and 10-year plans outlining their health, professional, and personal goals. One of Whites was to have second baby — I checked that box off, she told Fortune in August — and another was to up her workout regime and begin racing. Though Fortune didnt get a glimpse of her actual goal sheet, which hangs in the Lululemon Headquarters lobby, its safe to assume there was something on there about becoming the COO of a young, hot tech company. Looks like White can check off one more box.

In the video below, White dishes on how she helped structure Instagrams business, how her time at Facebook prepared her to work with the mobile-heavy app, and what advice Sheryl Sandberg gave her about working with a founder:

FORTUNE — For the first time since the FDA came down hard on 23andMe for marketing its DNA tests without proper approvals, founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki spoke about the big challenge, as she called the firestorm, in an exclusive interview with Fortune.

I talked with Anne and her older sister Susan Wojcicki, Googles SVP of Ads and Commerce, on stage Tuesday evening at a
Fortune
Most Powerful Women event in San Francisco.

We failed to communicate proactively, Anne Wojcicki told theFortuneaudience of 100 women leaders. Now scrambling to comply with the FDAs demands, Wojcicki has stopped advertising 23andMes $99 DNA test kits. Meanwhile, she’s facing a class-action lawsuit that claims that her companys ads are misleading and the results of its genetic tests arent supported by scientific evidence.

23andMe has plenty of financial backing to weather this storm: $126 million in funding from Google, Johnson & Johnson and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, among others. Nonetheless, this is a seriously tough period for one of Silicon Valleys rising star entrepreneurs. Earlier this year, Wojcicki separated from her husband, Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The couple has two children.

Elder sister Susan and their mother, Esther, who was in the audience Tuesday evening, are offering helpful advice. To solve any problems, Esther told her daughters, you need to break them down: Big challenges are an accumulation of small challenges, Anne said she learned from her mother.

Susan Wojcicki sympathetically noted that the genetics industry is a lot like the Internet was 15 years agoa Wild West where the rules are newly forming and pioneers are constantly scrutinized. “Insome ways, both companies [Google and 23andMe] are doing things that have never been done before, Susan said.

For more on 23andMes FDA challenge and my exclusive interview with the Wojcicki sisters, read my colleague Michal Lev-rams post here.

FORTUNE — Less than two weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration sent a rather terse letter to Anne Wojcicki, founder and CEO of Google-backed 23andMe. The jargon-filled message asked Wojcicki to stop marketing her company’s $99 DNA testing kits because she had failed to receive “FDA marketing authorization for the device.” In her first media interview since the headline-making letter (and 23andMe’s equally terse response to the FDA), Wojcicki told Fortune that her company fell behind schedule and failed to communicate proactively with the FDA and the public. At the same time, she also said she is taking steps to work with the government agency to rectify the situation and move forward.

“We want to work with them and we will work with them,” Wojcicki told the audience at a Fortune Most Powerful Women event, which took place in San Francisco on Tuesday evening. “I cant say much [more] because were actively engaged in what is the next step forward.”

Fortunesenior editor at large Pattie Sellers interviewedWojcicki, along with her sister, Google executive Susan Wojcicki, who is tasked with the search giant’s ad products and commerce business. The sisters are among Silicon Valley’s most recognizable female executives (Anne, the younger of the two, is also famous for marrying Google founder Sergey Brin; Susan was the 16th employee at the Mountain View, Calif.-based tech company). Their mother, a high school journalism teacher in nearby Palo Alto, was also in the audience, and the two sisters acknowledged her influence on their career paths–and Anne’s determination to get through her company’s current challenges.

“It is definitely a big challenge,” said the 23andMe founder and former Wall Street exec. “I feel like what helps me deal with this situation is how I saw my mom deal with everyday life. Big challenges are an accumulation of small challenges. My mom was a problem solver.”

Her sister Susan has also pitched in to try and give some advice in light of 23andMe’s recent troubles. “Insome ways both companies [Google and 23andMe] are doing things that have never been done before,” said the elder Wojcicki sister. “Its familiar to me because we have similar challenges and were doing things that are unknown. It is hard when people are questioning why something is being done.”

While 23andMe is still a small startup, it’s got some deep-pocketed investors–the company has raised a total $126 million from Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Google. About a year ago, the company lowered the cost of its DNA testing kits–which use a saliva sample to glean information on users’ heritage, potential genetic risk to diseases and receptiveness to medications–to $99 in the hopes of bringing in more customers. Anne Wojcicki has said her company’s goal is to get to a million total users by end of 2013. Despite the influential backing and ample cash, it’s not clear how big of a setback this latest missive from the FDA will be for 23andMe. One of the agency’s concerns is that inaccurate results could cause people to undergo unnecessary procedures. But both Wojcicki sisters say that the information given to 23andMe customers can help them make healthier decisions. And, says Anne, she is determined to move forward with her company’s mission.

“For me the reaction has been full force–I need to solve the problem,” said the younger Wojcicki sister.

One well-known corporate director stirred the pot last week, playing provocateur as I led a breakfast panel at a YPO (Young Presidents’ Organization) event in Chicago. Mellody Hobson, president of Chicago-based Ariel Investments, is on the boards of Starbucks , Estee Lauder , Groupon and DreamWorks Animation , where she is non-executive chairman. Hobson, in the audience for our discussion, posed a question to panelist Beth Comstock, General Electric’s chief marketing officer and head of the new Silicon Valley-based GE Ventures: Would GE Ventures, which aims to invest $250 million annually in tech companies, consider restricting its investments to startups that have female board members.

Comstock replied that GE would consider Hobsons suggestion; she was sensitive, clearly, to controversies over Twitter and Facebook going public with no women on their boards. (Facebook, after its IPO last year, named COO Sheryl Sandberg to its board.) Hobson replied impatiently: Every VC Ive asked said theyll consider it.

I asked Hobson if Ariel invests in companies that have no female directors. We put tremendous pressure on companies to add women and people of color, replied Hobson, who is African-American. Diversity makes better businesses.

Former McDonalds U.S. president Jan Fields, also on the panel, noted one challenge for CEOs seeking female directors: A lot of companies dont let their executives be on boards. Only after leaving McDonalds a year ago, Fields was able to join a second board, Chicos , in addition to Monsanto . Like McDonalds, GE lets its executives serve on one board. Comstock is a director at Nike .

Meanwhile, GE has five female directors. Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt has strategically recruited women who had big jobs and now have time to serve as well as essential experience. The five women on the 18-person GE board include former SEC chair Mary Schapiro and ex-Avon CEO Andrea Jung.

My essay, Is the boardroom the last glass ceiling? in Fortunes Most Powerful Women issue proposes three ways to improve the gender ratio in the boardroom. One more suggestion: Break the rules. At Fortunes Most Powerful Women Asia conference earlier this month, Morgan Stanley China CEO Wei Christiansen told how she got on the Estee Lauder board despite her employer’s rules. A powerful man, Leonard Lauder, talked to the investment banks top bosses, CEO James Gorman and former chairman John Mack, and they got it done:

Hobson and other Fortune Most Powerful Women–Xerox CEO Ursula Burns. Facebook’s Carolyn Everson, Walt Disney’s Anne Sweeney, and Cisco’s Padma Warrior and more–talk about how they got ahead in “Breakthrough Moments in Leadership,” sponsored by ING .

FORTUNE — Jeff Bezos remembers trying to recruit Joy Covey as Amazon’s AMZN chief financial officer during the mid-1990s. Bezos had flown down from Seattle to California specifically to interview her over lunch.

She had some brilliant, insightful questions about Amazon — and I got to interview her, too, Bezos lightly quipped at Covey’s memorial service, held Thursday at Stanford Memorial Church. Covey, 50, collided with a van while cycling in San Mateo County this September.

It was during that meal Bezos realized Covey was the right person for the job. The two discussed her childhood, her dual Harvard degrees in business and law. Toward the end, Coveycasually mentioned she had managed the second-highest score on the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) exam, trumping nearly 70,000 others who took it that year.“Joy, really? The second-highest?” Bezos teased. Shot back Covey: “I didn’t study.”

Bezos recalled laughing for a full minute afterward while Covey grinned. That was classic Joy, Bezos explained, because “she smiled a lot, and her eyes were always wide, soaking up the world around her.”

Weeks after their lunch, Covey phoned Bezos to say she wanted the job. When she joined Amazon in December 1996, the company had 150 employees and $16 million in revenues. (Now, Amazon’s 88,400 employees helped generate $61 billion in revenues as of December 2012.) Covey was instrumental in taking Amazon public in May 1997, and two years later, she ranked No. 28 onFortune’sMost Powerful Women in Business list. “As CFO, her feat was convincing Wall Street that a profitless company was worth $22 billion,”Fortunewrote then.

“Joywas more substance over optics,” remembered Bezos. “She was a long-term thinker.”

Covey voluntarily left Amazon in April 2000, became an investor, business consultant, served as Treasurer of the Natural Resources Defense Council and on Harvard’s Advisory Board, and plunged back into extreme sports, including kiteboarding and rock climbing.

Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker remembered Covey as inspirational: “Ive never met anyone like Joy, and I probably never will again. The new LeBron James Nike slogan is, ‘Talentis given and greatness is earned.’On that scale, Joy had a two-fer. She had off-the-charts I.Q. points,yet she had an uncommon degree of empathy. She had a vision to change the world and leave a mark. She was inspirational, and she was always game for challenges.”

Also speaking at the memorial was author Bruce Feiler, whose book
The Council of Dads
was found in Covey’s bedroom when she died. Other attendees included former Yahoo YHOO president Sue Decker, who is now on the boards of Berkshire Hathaway brk.a , Intel INTC , and Costco COST ; Cowboy Ventures founder Aileen Lee; Kleiner Perkins Executive-in-Residence StephanieTilenius; and Jana Rich of Russell Reynolds.

She leaves behind an eight-year-old son, Tyler.

MORE:Former Amazon star exec killed in bike accident

FORTUNE —Heather Bresch has been at the helm of pharmaceutical-maker Mylan MYL since 2012. During her time as the Fortune 500 companys CEO, shes overseen a $1.6 billion acquisition of Indias Agila Specialties and recently helped the School Access to Emergency Epinephrine Act, which will both boost Mylans profits and save childrens lives, get signed into law.

Fortune’sMost Powerful Women started as a list in 1998, kicked off its annual Summit the following year, and has since become a community of the preeminent women in business, government, philanthropy, education, and the arts. This weekly Q&A features one MPW’s personal take on leadership, aspirations, and (of course) balance.

1. What is the best advice you ever received?

One of my mentors taught me the importance of getting out of your comfort zone. She taught me that sometimes you can see more from the edge than from the middle, and that sometimes it takes looking at something from the extreme to get to the right place in the center.

2. What would you say to a group of young people looking to enter the tough job market?

Dont expect to come into the company as the president; take the opportunities that come your way and make the most of them by working harder than everyone around you.

3. What currently excites you most about your industry?

The health care industry is ready to be redefined and, in fact, must be redefined in order to meet todays challenges and the rapidly changing policy environment. I believe Mylan has a unique opportunity to lead the way in redefining this industry, for instance by driving access to affordable, high-quality medicine for all and by engaging the consumer in their health care decision making.

MORE: CST Brands’ Kim Bowers on balance: Wobbling can be kind of fun

4. What was the most important thing you learned in school?

How much I didnt know. I grew up in a small town in West Virginia and had a pretty limited worldview. At school, I majored in international relations, which for the first time gave me perspective on how big the world was — a world that had felt very small prior to going to college.

5. What do you do for fun?

Cooking is my favorite form of stress relief. I love being in the kitchen and around the dinner table with my family. I also try to go horseback riding when I have time on weekends.

6. What business or technology person do you admire most? Why?

I have a lot of admiration for Bill Gates. While he is of course a brilliant and innovative business leader, what separates him from others like him is his Foundation. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is an organization that I have tremendous respect for due to its willingness to tackle really tough problems, take risks, and measure results in meaningful ways. Historically, when philanthropists set up their foundations, the founders were willing to take risks, but over time these foundations became institutions concerned primarily about the perpetuity of the foundation. Gates has taken a different approach, and I admire that.

7. What other companies do you admire? Why?

I admire companies who have reinvented themselves and transformed from a business on the verge of extinction into something new and thriving. It takes a lot of courage and innovation to rethink the status quo and become something different.

8. What is one trait every entrepreneur needs more today than ever?

Agility and speed. We operate in an incredibly fast-paced global environment where information and ideas flow freely with no geographic boundaries. If you dont bring a great idea to life quickly, a competitor — somewhere in the world — will jump ahead of you.

9. What was your first job?

My first job was bagging ice and stocking shelves at my familys grocery store. I started my career at Mylan 22 years ago as a data entry clerk.

10. Whats your take on the having it all debate?

My first issue with the having it all debate is that it shouldnt just be a discussion about women. It shouldnt have anything to do with gender — no one has it all. For me, it is all about balancing priorities and juggling. In order to manage work, life, family, etc., Im constantly juggling and making sure that all the balls stay in the air.

The Yahoo CEO rates x3 because she is the first CEO in a parade of bosses to produce a turnaround strategy that appears to be working. Since joining Yahoo from Google in July of 2012, the 38-year-old engineer has bought two dozen startups (including Tumblr for $1.1 billion), recast the corporate culture, and lifted Yahoo’s user base to 800 million–while doubling Yahoo’s stock.

Besides Mayer, six other Fortune MPW earned a place on the Businessperson of the Year list. Burberry chief Angela Ahrendts, who is moving to Apple next year, is No. 4. TJX CEO Carol Meyrowitz ranks No. 17. Harriet Green, who saved British-based Thomas Cook from the brink, is No. 23. Carolyn McCall, CEO of low-cost European airline EasyJet , is No. 30. DuPont CEO Ellen Kullman ranks No. 43. And self-made Chinese real-estate mogul Zhang Xin is No. 46.

Meanwhile, we had some fun ranking the 25 Most Powerful Female TV Characters–applying the Fortune MPW ranking criteria to the stars of hits like Scandal and Nashville and Mad Men. Which of Sterling Cooper’s femme fatales, Peggy Olson or Joan Holloway, possesses more power? Fortune tells.

FORTUNE — Facebook (
FB
) COO Sheryl Sandberg has a lot of advice for women who want to advance in their careers. This week, she also took her Lean Inmessage to Salesforce.com (
CRM
) CEO Marc Benioff and the throngs of conference-goers at the cloud computing company’s annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

Sandberg, one of the most powerful business leaders in Silicon Valley, didn’t veer much from her usual leadershiplingo. “Instead of telling little girls they’re being bossy,” she said, “tell them they have executive leadership skills.” But she did have some specific advice for Benioff, who peppered her with questions for nearly an hour.

“If, as a CEO, you are willing to talk about this and address gender head on, its a great competitive advantage,” Sandberg told Benioff during their onstage conversation. She added that it is not illegal to talk to an employee about pregnancy, just illegal to discriminate against someone because they are pregnant.

Sandberg also told Benioff that in order to help promote a more equal working environment at Salesforce, he should dig deep into the organization to find female leaders and even give them some seemingly unfair advantages — for example, invite a few to a meeting for top managers, even if they are lower down on the org chart.

MORE:The 25 Most Powerful female TV characters

Why? According to Sandberg, it is a way to fight against the systematic bias against women in the workplace. Statistics show that women continue to lag men in promotions and wages. In order to level the playing field, corporate leaders like Benioff need to lead by example — inviting more women to the table, for example, and calling out execs who complain that a woman is being too “aggressive” at work.

Sandberg also suggested that mentoring and sponsoring employees can play a big role in getting more women to the top. Because 64% of managers in the U.S. are “afraid to be alone in the room with a woman,” Sandberg claimed, it is not always easy to find men who are willing to mentor women. (Not that a mentor has to be a man, of course.) There is no mentoring that happens in a large group, Sandberg said. You have to able to have alone conversations. We need to make it a badge of honor for the people in power, who are largely men, to mentor and sponsor young women. And its a huge issue.

Despite the thousands of people before her in the audience, Sandberg didn’t hesitate to raise a slightly more sensitive data point to back her claims: Men who do laundry are likely to have more sex than men who don’t.The data shows that when men are more active partners in their marriages, their wives are happier, she said. Happier couples have more sex. So Ive been telling men all over the country and the world: If you want to have more sex with your wives, dont buy flowers, do laundry.

FORTUNE — The Department of Commerce, the administrations chief advocate for business interests, had been effectively leaderless for over a year until Penny Pritzker took the reins in June. The billionaire Hyatt hotel heiress and real estate mogul launched her term by conducting a private-sector listening tour to help form her agenda.

And on Thursday, in a speechat local incubator 1776, she unveiled the results: expanding trade and foreign investment; promoting the manufacturing resurgence through workforce training and federal investments in innovation; and making more government data available to entrepreneurs.

Afterward, she sat down with Fortune for a conversation about her first months on the job and her priorities. A transcript edited for length and clarity follows.

Fortune: This administrations troubled relationship with the business community has gotten a lot of attention. Whats your impression of where it stands now?

Pritzker: Whats been really actually nice for me is the receptions been very open. One of the things Ive always loved about business is you just kind of have to accept the landscape as it is and move forward. And there seems to be an attitude of, Im here, the President made it very clear he wants me to be a bridge to the business community for the administration, and thats a two-way bridge.

POLITICOs magazine is out with a splashy storyabout how isolated this cabinet is from White House decision-making. Did you get guarantees from the President about your access to him and your participation with the economic team before you took the job?

The President and I did talk, not so much about access, but for me to be effective in being a bridge to the business community, I had to have a real seat at the table on economic policy, and he understood that and agreed with that. That hasnt been a problem. Its not like I feel left out. I dont think I should be sitting on their front doorstep every day. I have a job to do, and weve agreed on what they want me to do, and so Im out doing it. Im not a person whos looking for every day a pat on the head.

New foreign direct investment is off nearly half from its pre-recession highs, and also down year-over-year over the last couple of years. What are the impediments to new investment here in the U.S.?

Foreign business leaders have a much longer-term perspective. They see the United States as a generational opportunity right now, and so whatever the momentary issues are, theyre less focused on that. They really see nows the time to plant a flag here. What I hear from business leaders about the challenges — we need to invest more infrastructure, from bridges to broadband. They want to make sure they can get their goods to market, that their people can get to work. I was in the real estate business. You can get away with not funding your deferred maintenance for a while, but it catches up with you.

The second thing is skilled labor. Thats a place where I believe the private sector and the government have to work closely together, because we have a lot of Americans who are out of work who want work. And long term, we need to be training young people for the jobs that are available in this country.

When you were in Asia during the government shutdown, you didnt hear our political dysfunction also register with foreign business leaders?

I would say its not serving as a deterrent. Look, when your government is shut down, everyones aware theres a challenge. So to say I didnt hear about it, thats not an appropriate way to describe the situation. What I heard from people who are decision-makers is they see this opportunity in the United States and their view is, “Your government will get its act together.” Frankly we need to get our act together. Now, were in regular order. Were trying to do regular order. And I think that thats really important. And Im not an expert in all the procedure, but seeing an effort trying to come together I think is really important.

How does wage disparity and economic inequality figure into your portfolio?

The biggest place at the Commerce Department we can make a difference is working closely with the Department of Labor on making sure we help our labor force get the right skills for the good jobs that are open. And thats why I made skills one of our priorities. Its something where business leaders need to work together with local governments — and there is a role for the federal government.

The President in the closing days of his reelection campaign proposed a federal reorganization that would fold Commerce into a new Department of Business. Is that dead?

Right now its not where the energy is, and I havent heard any new discussions about it.

(Pritzker at the end of the interview walked over to an OPEN FOR BUSINESS sign shes hung on a nail in a door.)

Im not allowed to put anything in the wall. So when I came I found the nail in the door and I was like, “Ok Im hanging up my sign.”

It seems like you should be able to assert some prerogative power and put nails in the wall if thats what you want to do.

Well, its a historic room. It needs a little tender loving care right now. Rest assured I have not been shy to assert my prerogatives.

Senators got a better sense of what kind of monetary leader she will be — specifically, her views on the central banks bond-buying program to stimulate the economy. Its a question on the minds of most investors whenever policymakers at the Fed meet. However, the senators seemed to be more interested in questions about how Yellen would regulate Americas biggest banks.

MORE: More Americans ditch their passports

Its easy to see why. The public already knows more about how Yellen views monetary policy than her take on financial regulation.Yellen is known to focus more on jobs than most central bank policymakers, and she has consistently supported the Feds unprecedented stimulus program, having supported three rounds of bond buying under current Fed Chair Ben Bernanke.

At Thursdays confirmation hearing, Yellen did not say when the central bank will scale down its $85 billion a month asset buying program, known as quantitative easing (or QE). However, she did say that while the job market has improved, it still has plenty of problems, pointing to the millions that have remained jobless for six months or longer. The U.S. unemployment rate in October was 7.3%, but Yellen acknowledged that by broader measures, and if the long-term unemployed were counted, the rate is close to around 10%.

Its important not to remove support especially when the recovery is fragile, said Yellen, who later reminded that the Fed cant continue QE forever.

MORE: What Japan’s Abenomics is missing: Immigrants

Investors may not have gotten a clear answer on QE, but anyone who takes issue that Americas banks are far too big probably got what they wanted to hear.

Addressing too big to fail has to be among the most important goals of the post crisis period, Yellen said.

Since the financial crisis, new regulations under the 2010 Dodd-Frank law have sought to limit risky trading and such to shield the economy from another financial crisis. But as Stephen Gandel of Fortune has pointed out, at least one of the widely recognized causes of the financial crisis is still around: Banks are too big; they are bigger than they were five years ago right before the crisis.

Yellen said we are making progress on Dodd Frank, but added: I would say one of our top priorities now is ramping up our monitoring of the financial system.

Follow me on Twitter @ninhaitseng

FORTUNE — Let the great management debate commence. Or should I say, continue.

By now, youve probably read that Microsoft MSFT and Yahoo YHOO — two tech giants of the 90s now trying to regain their mojo — are taking two very different approaches in how they determine winners and losers in the workplace.

After Marissa Mayer came in as Yahoos CEO in July 2012, she instituted a rank and yank — or stacked ranking — system by which employees are graded on a curve, with those in the bottom category being asked to leave. Last week, Yahoo announced that it was laying off 600 workers based on the rankings.

A similarly Darwinian system had been in place at Microsoft for many years. But on Nov. 12, the company announced it would abandon it in favor of more frequent and informal types of reviews.

Which approach is better? That is a live-wire argument inside many a corporate headquarters these days. The first approach has been credited for success at the likes of General Electric GE , back in the Jack Welch days, and consulting firms such as McKinsey. It has also been blamed for creating toxic cultures where employees sabotage each other rather than work together.

MORE:The best states for young job hunters

But the discussion goes far beyond the realm of human resources. Its just the latest version of the struggle for supremacy between two business ideologies. Think of it as people vs. process. Supporters of both approaches have data to support their theories; neither has proven victorious yet.

In the people camp are companies like Google GOOG , The Container Store TCS , Zappos, and Intuit INTU , and thinkers like Jim Collins and Peter Drucker. They believe that a companys ability to create profitable growth is first and foremost a function of its people. Happy people work harder, are more loyal, and are more innovative, which translates to greater success in the marketplaces and — ultimately — the bottom line. Its more about collaboration than competition and more open source than closed systems. When you look at soft skills, says Mike Figliulo, managing director of consulting firm thoughtLEADERS, you either understand or you dont. I mean, tell me the ROI of Winston Churchill.

The process group argues that analytics, ruthless competition, and efficiency is more critical to success than anything else. Wall Street, where you are paid well but easily terminated, is one example. Wal-Mart WMT , Microsoft (until recently), and many companies owned by private equity firms are others. (As an example, see my recent story on how Heinz is getting squeezedby its PE owners.) Human capital is just one input to the system; its the numbers, the intense competition, and the drive to cut costs at, well, any cost that leads to success. Just ask Larry Ellison of Oracle ORCL , whose favorite quote comes from Genghis Khan: Its not sufficient I succeed. Everyone else must fail.

Its fair to say that most companies sit somewhere on the spectrum between the two extremes, and that the best approach probably lies somewhere in the middle. But the experiments continue, in real time. Which philosophy do you prefer, and why?

She was one of eight journalists honored over lunch at Sardis, joining a club that includes Mike Wallace, Gloria Steinem, and Barbara Walters. Other newcomers feted Thursday included Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, and veteran editor Norm Pearlstine, the incoming chief content officer at Time Inc., Fortunes parent company.

Loomis, who started at the magazine 60 years ago, was one of the first prominent female financial journalists. She began as a research associate at age 24 and climbed through the ranks, churning out influential stories. One piece compelled the government to begin releasing corporate-style annual financial statements. Another, in 1966, introduced the world to a new financial concept of a hedged fund. In that story, Loomis first mentioned a relatively obscure company called the Buffett Partnership, touching off a long friendship with Omahan investor and sometime worlds richest man, Warren Buffett (see her book,
Tap Dancing To Work
).

MORE: Why Norm Pearlstine returned to Time Inc.

Her secret sauce: I will confess that almost all my inspiration has come from one emotion, fear, she joked in her acceptance speech. And terrible dread of the moment when I will finally be exposed as a fraud. Her salve has been a mammoth commitment to thorough reporting. I have never met a document I dont like, she wrote in a retrospective at the 51st anniversary of her Fortune start date. Fortunes editors posited another theory: Her colleagues know where these business-changing, Congress-stirring stories really come from: her conscience. Carol is the soul of this magazine.

Among her other honors are two Gerald M. Loeb Awards, the Gerald M. Loeb Lifetime Achievement Award, and the first-ever Henry R. Luce Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Loomis, who is 84 years old and still breaking news, has few words to say on retirement: I probably have to do that one of these days. But not too soon.

Fortune’sMost Powerful Women started as a list in 1998, kicked off its annual Summit the following year, and has since become a community of the preeminent women in business, government, philanthropy, education, and the arts. This weekly Q&A features one MPWs personal take on leadership, aspirations, and (of course) balance.

1.What is the best advice you ever received?

When you think you have communicated enough, keep on communicating. Make sure all employees understand the importance of the company’s mission and how their actions contribute towards that mission every day.

2. What would you say to a group of young people looking to enter the tough job market?

Do what you love, work hard every day, check your ego at the door, and learn everything you can. Never say no to an opportunity to take on more responsibility.

3. What was your biggest missed opportunity?

I should have taken more accounting and finance classes — and paid attention in college.

4. What is one startup you would have wanted to found?

In-home salon service company with online scheduling and 24-hour service.

5. What do you do for fun?

I love to cook and read cooking magazines — and dream of all the fabulous meals I likely will never have time to prepare!

6. What business or technology person do you admire most? Why?

Southwest Airlines’ LUV Herb Kelleher. He was laser-focused on the company’s mission, communicated it beautifully to all stakeholders and created an incredible employee culture of awesome customer service. I saw him recently waiting for a flight, and he was a huge celebrity among the employees — they love him even years after retirement.

7. What other companies do you admire? Why?

USAA, Nordstrom JWN , the Container Store TCS — all know what their value proposition is, have great employee cultures and superior customer service.

8. What is one goal that you would like to accomplish during your lifetime?

Be there to help with the grandkids in a meaningful way. Hopefully, that’s a ways off with my oldest child at 20 years old!

9. What was your first job?

I waited tables. Talk about learning the importance of hard work and a positive attitude.

10. Whats your take on the having it all debate?

Balancing means never standing still — some rare moments you balance perfectly and all is perfect, but most days you wobble. But, wobbling isn’t bad — in fact, it can be kind of fun.

FORTUNE — Out of the half-dozen stage groupings at Fortunes Most Powerful Women event in Hong Kong on Tuesday, the panel that captured the most attention was one called Boards Across Borders.

The topic of how to get more women on corporate boards is a lively one at every MPW event, especially so in Asia, where just 9% of corporate directors within Hong Kongs Hang Seng Index, for example, are women. But this discussion moved on from how to shatter the glass ceiling to why its so important that we do.

Panelist Wei Sun Christianson, Morgan Stanleys MS Asia-Pacific co-CEO, had perhaps the most interesting insight of the night. Christianson, a board member at EsteLauder EL , where seven of 15 directors are women, said more women within the boardroom literally changes the conversation. Women on EsteLauders board feel freer to talk, she said, and therefore have far more productive discussions.

MORE: Hong Kong: Not dead, and not standing still

It has had a profound impact on boardroom behavior, Christianson said. When we have a corporate board room of 50% women, it has really created dialogue, she said, and the ratio led to more creative solutions to problems.

Christianson asked the audience how many times they found themselves the only woman in the room at corporate functions. There were head nods. Subconsciously you are on the defensive, she said. You have to demonstrate that you are smart. Even so on the worlds most important corporate boards.

The moderator of the panel, Fortunes Pattie Sellers, finally asked the audience of leading businesswomen in Asia how many of them wanted to join their first board, or even serve on another. More than half the women raised their hands.

“We cannot afford to stand still,” Cha said at Fortune Most Powerful Women Asia, an inaugural gathering of mostly Asia-based powerful women in business, politics, education and the arts. “Because other people are already moving ahead.”

As part of a wide-ranging conversation on everything from Chinese government reforms to Japan’s Abenomics, Cha and interviewer Andy Serwer, managing editor of Fortune, joked about a 1995 Fortune article entitled “The Death of Hong Kong,” which predicted the demise of its role as a financial and commercial hub.

MORE: Is China serious about reform?

Cha’s non-governmental advisory group is pulling together recommendations for government leaders and regulators to consider as part of efforts to keep Hong Kong’s financial sector vibrant. She said Hong Kong “may have neglected” the development of certain areas such as banking back office, settlement, and procurement. Chasaid the advisory committee is encouraging the government to put resources into development of new growth areas.

More broadly Cha,who also serves as an independent director of HSBC HBC and Unliever UL declared herself “bullish on Asia,” noting the rising middle class and the continued opportunities not only in China but also Indonesia and India, countries with “huge population growth, and good indications that their economies will go quite far.”

Other investors include General Catalyst Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and ICONIQ Capital.

We spent some time discussing the deal with IVP principal Eric Liaw, who is taking an Honest Co. board seat in connection with the transaction. A few notes:

1. This is an unusual investment for IVP, in that it is a growth-stage investor that has now participated in both a Series A and Series B round. Liaw largely chalks that up to IVPs past relationship with Lee via a 2011 LegalZoom investment. Yeah, its a little outside our sweet spot, but we were very attracted to the team,” Liaw explains. “Brian Lee is a successful serial entrepreneur, and we really believe Honest can be bigger than any of the other companies hes founded.

2. On investing in a company whose president is a working actress: It was something we talked about at the outset, but it hasnt been much of an issue. Her time is a bit more unorthodox than the typical founder, but just she and [fellow co-founder] Chris Gavigan were in Canada for a full week making a press tour announcing our launch. At the end of the day, everyone is multi-tasking, but the time commitment is certainly there.

RELATED: How Jessica Alba beats the odds

3. Liaw sees this as the companys final round of outside funding. He believes that its next two major execution challenges are expanding its in-store retail presence (it has been running a test in Cosco since the summer) and international expansion (beyond the recent Canada launch). No word yet on where the next market will be, although Liaw says that an English-speaking market — such as the UK or Australia — may make the most sense.

Sign up for Dan’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers:GetTermSheet.com

By Clara Shih, founder and CEO of Hearsay Social

This October, I attended the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., and spoke on a panel with three other women under age 40: Warren Buffett’s financial assistant Tracy Britt Cool, Cinnabon President Kat Cole, and SunRun founder and CEO (and my Stanford classmate) Lynn Jurich. Fortune‘s Leigh Gallagher moderated the conversation, which covered all kinds of inspiring and helpful leadership lessons.

Here are a few highlights I gleaned from my co-panelists:

Inexperience isnt always bad. Jurich’s lack of experience in the solar and energy industries freed her to ask dumb questions.” (Jurichs company installs solar power systems in residential and commercial properties). This turned out to be quite smart. She was able to create her company’s energy-focused mission with a fresh perspective because she wasnt weighed down by expertise — and the assumptions that often come with it.

Details and depth matter. Cool met her future boss, Buffett, when she was an undergrad at Harvard and organized a group visit to Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha headquarters. Most students are in and out within the day, but Cool and her group stayed for several days to get to know Buffett’s businesses.

Its okay to fail. Cole talked about the importance of risk-taking — and how different industries tolerate failure to various degrees. She reminds her Cinnabon employees that they make buns, not bombs. No lives are at stake when a batch doesnt turn out. Its okay to fail. Thats how we get better.

Respond to discrimination with grace. Gallagher asked if any of us had felt discriminated against in our careers or school years due to age, race or gender. I shared my philosophy that you cant control what other people assume about you, but you can control how you react. Its usually most constructive to give people the benefit of the doubt and respond with grace.

Following our panel, I caught up with two Silicon Valley friends who are under-40 influentials. Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom (left) and Instagram director of operations Emily White (right) joined me, fittingly, for an Instagram.

Warren Buffett and his lifelong investing partner Charlie Munger are rarely interviewed together except in front of 30,000-plus shareholders at the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting in Omaha each spring.

So, my recent sit-down with the two investing legends was a special event.

The new issue of
Fortune
features Buffett, 83, and Munger, 89 and other super-successful duos who have thrived by sharing advice with one another over the years. Here’s an expanded piece of my interview that didn’t make it into the magazine. You don’t have to be a billionaire to understand that following this advice can lead to a truly successful life.

Buffett (about Munger): Hes given me a lot more advice than Ive given him. He lives a very rational life. Ive never heard him say a word that expressed envy of anyone. He doesnt waste time on senseless emotions.

Munger: Theres an old saying, What good is envy? Its the one sin you cant have any fun at. Its 100% destructive. Resentment is crazy. Revenge is crazy. Envy is crazy. If you get those things out of your life early, life works a lot better.

Buffett: It so clearly makes sense.

Munger: Weve learned how to outsmart people who are clearly smarter [than we are.]

Buffett: Temperament is more important than IQ. You need reasonable intelligence, but you absolutely have to have the right temperament. Otherwise, something will snap you.

Munger: The other big secret is that were good at lifelong learning. Warren is better in his 70s and 80s, in many ways, that he was when he was younger. If you keep learning all the time, you have a wonderful advantage.

Watch Buffett sharing more wisdom–on investing, the economy, and lifehere at the recent Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C.

And here’s the playlist of all the Fortune MPW Summit main-stage interviews, including IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, Lockheed Martin chief Marillyn Hewson, Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg–and my conversations with Tory Burch, Chelsea Clinton, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, tennis legend Martina Navratilova, and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer.

Its really overwhelming when people come up and say that to you because, how are you going to fix 1,000 things? she said on stage last Thursday at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit.

What enabled Mayer to fix 1,000 things was a piece of advice she got from Eric Schmidt, her former boss at Google . Eric says that good executives confuse themselves when they convince themselves that they actually do things. Its your job to be defense [rather than] offense. Clear the path. Get obstacles out of the wayand then let employees run as far and fast as they can.

MORE:Fortune’sMost Powerful Women Summit

A self-proclaimed geek, Mayer translated Schmidts advice into her own science-based theory of leadership. She told the MPW audienceincluding Warren Buffett and Xerox chief Ursula Burnsthat she thinks of culture as DNA. I dont know a lot about genetics, but I know a bit, Mayer said. You want the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves.

To motivate Yahoos 12,000 employees around the world, Mayer says shes tried to take some of the negative genes that are getting in the way and shut them off. Its not about injecting new mutant DNA. Its not about changing the culture. Its about making the culture the best version of itself.

Her tactic has been aprogram she launched called PB&J, which is designed to rid Yahoo of poisonous processes, useless bureaucracy and jams. As part of PB&J, Mayer and her new management team created an online tool to collect employee complaints and employee votes on whether the problems are worth trying to fix. Any complaintsuch as underpowered laptops or onerous rules at the company gymthat generates at least 50 votes gets management attention–and the onus on the rank and file to fix the problem. Employees get evaluated on how they do that.

One year in, Mayer reported at the Summit, We fixed 1000 things, some big, some small.

The cultural overhaul clearly is making Yahoo a more attractive place to work. Last quarter, Mayer says, the company received resumes from 17,000 job applicants. That’s up from 2,000 last year. Here’s my full interview with Mayer at the MPW Summit:

First up, tomorrow: Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, who talked about how she’s turning around Yahooand so far more than doubled the stock price.

You’ll find Fortune‘s 2013 MPW list and stories from the current issue here, MPW Summit coverage at fortune.com/women and the video playlist of main-stage MPW Summit interviews at Fortune YouTube.

Keep coming back to
Postcards
for my take on Powerful Women, from Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan to Spanx founder Sara Blakely to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and more.

FORTUNE — Many of the perennials on Fortunes annual Worlds Most Admired list (companies such as IBM, Disney, and Apple) are trumpeting their willingness to embrace change as part of their strategies for staying ahead — and maintaining their admired status.

At Fortunes recent Most Powerful Women Summit last week, executives from some of the countrys top companies offered their perspectives on their businesses competitive advantages. Almost all the leaders from Worlds Most Admired Companies (WMAC) spoke about technological and business-model innovation. When I think of IBM, I dont define it by a product, said IBM IBM CEO Ginni Rometty. (IBM is No. 6 on the 2013 WMAC list), said at the conference. And I think thats one of the reasons that its 102 years old. If you think of yourself as a product, youll miss the trends, youll miss the shifts. And youll miss dangerous ones, like business models.

Romettys view was echoed by Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of Disney/ABC Television Group. (Parent company Disney DIS ranks No. 9 this year.) During a discussion about growth and innovation, Sweeney spoke about Disneys embrace of social media as a tool for promoting and soliciting feedback about its programming, even though going social means the corporation has to relinquish control; Disney can start a conversation, but it cant retreat or shut it down if consumers verbalize unhappiness. “[Communities] want to interact with you,” Sweeney said. “You can’t hold everything back if you expect to have a relationship.”

MORE:More coverage from the Most Powerful Women Summit

These comments come as data collection for Fortunes 32^nd WMAC ranking is underway. Fortune, in conjunction with The Hay Group, is in the process of surveying some 15,000 executives, directors, and analysts to solicit their views on about 700 companies in 59 industry groups from 27 different countries. To arrive at our 2014 overall Most Admired Companies ranking, the Hay Group is asking survey respondents to select the 10 companies they admired most, from a list made up of the companies that ranked in the top 25% in the prior years survey.

Of course, talk of innovation isnt limited to companies that rank high on the overall WMAC list — or even those who score well in their industry groups. Yahoo YHOO CEO Marissa Mayer spoke at the Fortune conference about myriad technological and cultural changes shed made during her year at the Internet company — ranging from acquisitions such as Tumblr to making smartphones available to all employees — as part of her effort to remake Yahoo into a more mobile-centric company. Shes also revamping some non-core aspects of the business, such as the quarterly analysts earnings call, which Yahoo does as a video call. We wanted to try this, Mayer explained. It was something new. But I overall think that the analyst questions were better and more topical on point. Well soon find out of analysts agree and help Yahoo return to the WMAC list. (It last earned a spot in the industry rankings in 2010.)

Shortly after, another full-page ad in the Journal for its own Heard on the Street Live conference on Investing in an Age of Easy Money hosted by three male editors and featuring nine male speakers. Within days, a half-page ad appeared for Barrons The Art of Successful Investing conference. Ten speakers. One woman.

By this point, my incredulity was a bit strained. As the saying goes: Once is an anomaly. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is a pattern.

Twenty years ago, as a novice entrepreneur looking for financial backing for a womens website, an investor asked me Is this a social cause, are you asking me for a donation? I learned very fast that it wasnt about mission. It was about money. So, lets talk numbers.

• In 2007, the most recent year for which IRS data are available, there were an estimated 1.3 million men and 1 million women with assets of $2 million or more.
• The Boston Consulting Group reports that in 2009 women controlled 27% of the worlds wealth, 33% of financial assets in North America, meaning that they decide where the assets are invested. Within the next decade, private wealth in the United States is expected to reach $22 trillion with half of it controlled by women.
• In a BCG survey of women with bankable assets of more than $250,000, 42% reported their wealth was self-earned, coming from salaries and bonuses.
• Looking to the future, due to longer lifespans, women are expected to control a large portion of what Boston College researchers say will be an estimated $42 trillion wealth transfer by 2052.

According to the IRS data, women are more likely to hold publicly traded stocks and other assets such as bonds vs. the closely held stock and business assets that make up a greater portion of mens portfolios. That means women should be in the sweet spot for the organizers of conferences, like Barrons, that target individual investors.

MORE: The 50 Most Powerful Women in business

The Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst conference targets investors in private equity and venture capital transactions. The WSJ conference is for fund managers and financial advisors. While, admittedly, this audience is dominated by men, the Center for Venture Research reports a significant increase in the number of women angel investors, growing from 12.2% of the market in 2011 to 21.8% in 2012.

At the same time, there are women in private equity with something to add to the dialog. A report earlier this year from Rothstein Kass indicated hedge funds owned by women outperformed the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index in the third quarter of 2012, netting an 8.95% return vs. 2.69%. I would think these women fund managers would have something of interest to say to the audiences at the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal conferences.

While women control a significant amount of wealth, surveys indicate they dont have a gender preference when it comes to financial managers, but they do want to be respected. Invisibility of half the population on the dais at financial conferences is the height of disrespect.

Including female voices in financial conferences isnt just good policy, its good business.

Susan Askew is a former staffer to Delaware Governor Mike Castle, is a recent graduate of the George Mason University BIS program with a concentration in Latin American Finance, and a new Gender Avenger (genderavenger.com).

An unedited transcript follows:

PATTIE SELLERS: Good crowd still here. Thank you for staying.

Welcome back, Marissa.

MARISSA MAYER: Thanks for having me.

PATTIE SELLERS: Marissa has been to the Most Powerful Women Summit many times, as many of you recall last year Marissa was not here because Macallister Bogue was born the day before the Women’s Summit started last year.

MARISSA MAYER: It’s true. It was an eventful Sunday night.

PATTIE SELLERS: So now Marissa isit’s kind of amazing, you are number eight on the Most Powerful Women’s Summit.

MARISSA MAYER: Thank you for that.

PATTIE SELLERS: You’re number one on our 40 under 40 list, which came out a few weeks ago. And you’re a Fortune 500 CEO. That’s the trifecta.

MARISSA MAYER: Andy had sent me a note saying, there’s an interesting trifecta about to happen. And it’s reallyit’s flattering, but I think a lot of it has to do with Yahoo! and the opportunity that’s there.

PATTIE SELLERS: It has had. We would not have put you at number eight on the Most Powerful Women list or at number one on 40 under 40 if the turnaround at Yahoo! so far, and I realize that it’s a work in progress, but it does appear at this point to be for real. The stock is up over 100 percent since Marissa started in the job in July 2012. (Applause.) And I think most of the people in this audience know that this is after a whole lot of smart people tried to turn Yahoo! around.

And this has happened under a CEO who actually had never run a P&L before in her career at Google.

MARISSA MAYER: That’s not true.

PATTIE SELLERS: Explain that, because I’ve actually said that in stories.

MARISSA MAYER: Okay.

PATTIE SELLERS: Correct me, go ahead.

MARISSA MAYER: Google was organized functionally, but we had P&Ls. So the real P&L is the P&L for the company, but inside of Google the different product groups have P&Ls.

PATTIE SELLERS: So your local and location business that you were running at Google until you were recruited for the Yahoo! job in 2012, you actually had a P&L that you were judged on. It’s good to have that correct. It’s good to have that corrected. You had never run, certainly never run a public company. You had joined Google when it was very, very tiny. I remember you telling me about Sergey and Larry interviewing you over a ping-pong table in a makeshift office.

MARISSA MAYER: Yes.

PATTIE SELLERS: And she had like 13 job possibilitiesnot

MARISSA MAYER: It was the height of the first boom, so it was 1999. It was a good year to be a graduate in computer science.

PATTIE SELLERS: So Google was the only place you worked. But what have you really had to learn on the job at Yahoo!? What has been the steepest learning curve?

MARISSA MAYER: I think, you know, a fellow CEO said to me that the interesting thing about being CEO that’s really striking is that you have very few decisions that you need to make, and you need to make them absolutely perfectly. And his point really was that you can delegate a lot of the decisions but there are a few decisions, and sometimes it’s not obvious, that you need to really watch, and that can really influence the outcome. And that’s something watching for those decisions every day and wondering to yourself is this one of them or is this one where it doesn’t really matter what the decision ends up being?

PATTIE SELLERS: So if you had to name, and I’m going to ask you to name, three decisions that you have made that are the most important in the 15-16 months since you’ve been CEO, what are they?

MARISSA MAYER: I think that the company’s commitment to mobile is probably the biggest one. It sounds funny, but when I got there we were still issuing Blackberries to every employee. Blackberry is a great product, and really useful. But I think that Yahoo!’s future is going to be rooted in mobile apps. And we know that we need to have apps on some of the core platforms, and so iOS and Android, probably the two most important platforms for us. We obviously have application

PATTIE SELLERS: And you gave free smart phones to everybody in the company.

MARISSA MAYER: Right. The company issues smart phones, but it was really important for people to be able to experience our products. We call it dogfooding, where people try the products and give us feedback.

PATTIE SELLERS: Dogfooding?

MARISSA MAYER: As in eat your own dog food. So we make the stuff, and then we use it every day. And so I think that was really, really important.

I think that, and I’ll just group them as a set of decisions, but the collective decisions around the team, and for me the team is incredibly important. And so everything from getting the right people in as CMO, and I actually met my CMO Kathy Savitt at this conference, I think, two years ago. But bringing in Kathy as my CMO, Jackie Reses as our chief development officer, Ken as my CFO, Enrique as my COO, and then tremendous product leads, as well as getting the company recruiting again. Year to date we’ve hired 1,000 engineers. We’ve hiredI think now we’re edging up above 60 world class computer science Ph.D.s as we rebuild Yahoo! Labs. That’s incredibly important.

PATTIE SELLERS: Marissa reported earnings the other day, and kudos to you for getting here. I mean, you jumped on a plane after you reported earnings, so thank you for that. And I think you said in the earnings report that you got 17,000 resumes in the last quarter?

MARISSA MAYER: We did. We actually we celebrated in September because we were like, wow, we got 12,000 resumes, which is basically a resume for every single person who works at Yahoo!, which basically means that how in demand it is that we get a resume for every job that we have in the company each week. And then we’ve also seen a spike since then all the way up to 17,000. And that’s up from 2,000 in January. So we’ve seen an 8X increase in the number of people who want to come and work at Yahoo!, which is just tremendous.

PATTIE SELLERS: So one more decision, what’s the third important decision?

MARISSA MAYER: I think the third important decision is probably Tumblr. I think the decision to do a large acquisition that’s not yet accretive, but overall it’s a really big bet in terms of what’s happening with that platform, what’s happening with creative expression on the web. And how people are going to choose to connect and express themselves in the future.

PATTIE SELLERS: So Tumblr is the largest of your 24 acquisitions that you’ve made, $1.1 billion was the cost of the acquisition. What is your overall strategy in terms of your acquisition strategy, and why Tumblr?

MARISSA MAYER: Sure. I mean, I think each acquisition has its own story as to why we’ve done it. There have been some of them that have been pure talent acquisitions. Stamped was our first acquisition, a group of ten people. It was someone I’d known previously, and was running a great company. They were doing this kind of foursquare for things, where you checked in and punched for things that you liked. Had a great run of it, had a fair number of users, but just really hadn’t hit the tipping point that they wanted it to hit.

And I said, okay, you’re a great group of 10 people. You know how to design mobile apps, you know how to build mobile apps. Their app was beautifully designed. And I said, would you mind abandoning your app and coming here and working on something different?

And that was a really hard decision for that team, but they ultimately decided that they would do it. They’re like, we like working together. It is true our application hasn’t really gone where it’s supposed to go in terms of users. We’re happy with where we are, but we know we’re not going to be Facebook, Twitter, foursquare. And so they decided to stop working on what they were doing, and they came to Yahoo! and built the mobile versions of Yahoo! Screen.

PATTIE SELLERS: So that’s a good example of a true acqui-hire.

MARISSA MAYER: Or we call them talent acquisitions. But the idea there is, they came in, they built a beautifulthis is our new video platform that we launched in September, and it’s got one of the nicest players in the industry. And it really has Saturday Night Live, Comedy Central, all kinds of great clips, NBC Sports. So really excited about Yahoo! Screen. And that wouldn’t have happened, but we literally took the team and said, okay, all ten of you come over here, recruit your friends, they actually recruited their friends, there are now actually 20 or 25, and build a mobile version of our video app. They’re in New York, and they did a great job. So it was a talent acquisition.

We’ve also seen talent acquisitions with technology attached. So we bought a company called Summly. It got a lot of attention because the founder is 17 years old. And so we literally have to call this mother and ask sometimes for permission for things.

PATTIE SELLERS: And is he still based in England?

MARISSA MAYER: He’s based in England, but he comes to Silicon Valley a lot. And so he was a talent acquisition. It’s funny because he came in, his summarization technology, we looked at it and we were like, is it for real?

PATTIE SELLERS: His what technology?

MARISSA MAYER: Summarization technology.

PATTIE SELLERS: What is that?

MARISSA MAYER: So he takes long-form content and summarizes it down, which is perfect for mobile. So at Yahoo! we have lots of articles, we have lots of content, we need to summarize them and get it on the phone, summarize the articles and get them on phones. Someone came and I was like, really, are we really going to buy, I think at the time he was a 16-year-old, I was like a 16-year-old’s company. And we literally rolled out Yahoo! apps, got our best artificial intelligence engineers and scientists on it. They looked at more than a dozen summarization companies around the world, and they were, like, honestly, it’s legit. His is the best. It’s based on technology from SRI. He had worked with a greathe had assembled this group of engineers from all over the world to work on this technology that he had managed to license out of SRI. And he did a great job. But, we brought that in. Within three weeks we had it integrated into the Yahoo! app on phones. So I think it was the fastest integration I’ve ever seen of an acquisition. And now Nick is working on all kinds of interesting projects all over the company, which is just tremendous.

PATTIE SELLERS: And is he in school?

MARISSA MAYER: He’s in school.

PATTIE SELLERS: Is he in high school?

MARISSA MAYER: He’s in high school. So the funny thing is, like people were really upset when we bought it, because they said, well, what is this business about the founder leaving in 18 months. We were like, well, he’s got to go to college and like maybe he’ll still intern and stick around. I think he will. He’s having a good time. But, he’s having a good time. He’s been a great contributor so far. But, we are going to have to take some time to let him go and get his education.

PATTIE SELLERS: So Tumblr, I mean here’s another case of a company that was started by a guy at a really young age, David Carp. How did you comewhat was the big selling point on Tumblr, why Tumblr, and what have you learned from David Karp?

MARISSA MAYER: Sure. So I think that Tumblr when we looked at it it was almostyou know, I love maps and I worked a lot on maps when I was at Google. And if you looked at Tumblr and Yahoo!, you know when you look at a map and you can see the way that South America and Africa used to fit together, I sort of joked that as we got to know Tumblr we were like we kind of felt like those continents, like our users were older, their users were younger. We’re really good at hard news, sports, and finance. They are great at art, architecture, travel, food, right.

I mean it was just really amazing in terms of how the companies overall really fit together. They needed great search and great discovery. We had that. What we need is great content. So they really fit together nicely and there were a lot of obvious things that just came together. And David will talk about Tumblr, both as the home of the world’s creators, which is a mission that we really loved, but also as a home for brands. This notion that on Tumblr a lot of people host their websites there, both brands like The Daily Show has their entire blog on Tumblr, as a publishing platform. It was also a place for people to just go and post, for example, their art portfolio, or their blog for the day. And so it’s really interesting there’s new brands, people who are trying to build themselves up as online personalities. There’s also all kinds of interesting brand expression going on there.

But, David Karp is just incredibly special. I like to think that I’m good at empathy, but I will say that David Karp is just incredibly empathetic and really in tune with the community of people that he has, that are contributing and creating on Tumblr.

PATTIE SELLERS: And he has a certain respect for that community in that he does not want advertising on his site, and yet

MARISSA MAYER: That’s not true. He wants advertising that ads to the user experience.

PATTIE SELLERS: How are you going to monetize Tumblr?

MARISSA MAYER: I think we have a set of ideas and they actually havethey are accepting advertisements today. And they’ve been working on monetization now for about three quarters. So they’re just getting it started. But, it’s a great platform and we have a lot of advertiser interest, because the platform is so expressive and does allow such creative ideas. I know, for example, when the movie The Hunger Games came out, they actually publishedthere’s a lot of fashion on Tumblr. They published a fashion blog called Capital Couture, of like what the different people in the movie wore, just to sort of really participate in the community on the subject matter that they care a lot about. So it’s really interesting to see how brands are using it to build interesting offline content that adds to the overall message.

PATTIE SELLERS: Marissa, I want to talk about culture. I want to talk about a couple of the building blocks of your challenge to transform the culture at Yahoo!. You’ve made a number of big changes. And the challenge is not only aligning, what is it, 13,000 people?

MARISSA MAYER: Twelve.

PATTIE SELLERS: Twelve thousand people, but aligning 12,000 people who were pretty demoralized when you came in. And aligning 12,000 people who are absorbing people from 24 acquisitions. So what are a couple of those building blocks, those things you’ve changed to transform the culture?

MARISSA MAYER: I think I’ll start off with an overall philosophy and actually two of them. Eric Schmitt from Google is one of my favorite mentors. And Eric would always say this very humbling thing that’s really true, which is he would say good executive confuse themselves when they convince themselves that they actually do things. And he was like, look, it’s your job as leadership to be defense, not offense, right. The team decides we’re running in this direction and it’s your job to clear the path, get things out of the way, get the obstacles out of the way, make it fast to make decisions, and let them run as far and fast as you possibly can.

And I think that when I came in people were like, well, what’s our strategy now. And I was like, I don’t know, you tell me. I know you’ve been here longer than I have. And they were like, really, like we get to give our ideas? I literally had some employees say no one has ever asked us for our ideas before. And it was reallyand there was a lot of pent up energy. People were like, is it time to go now? Are we ready to go? I think that was really important. And I think I’ve always thought of culture as DNA. I don’t know a lot about genetics, but I understand some of it and I think that what you really want are the genes that are positive to hyper-express themselves in culture. Take the elements of fun, take the elements that are really motivating and inspiring people, and amplify them and ramp them up. And take some of the negative genes that are getting in the way and shut them off, and figure out what’s causing those and shut them off.

It’s not about injecting new mutant DNA, right. It’s not about changing the culture. It’s about making the culture the best version of itself. And so everything fromone of the things Yahoo! has always excelled in is content generation. One of the things it’s always really excelled in is technology and really helping to build the strength there is something that I’m excited about. But, I also think that to some extent the negative expression of the DNA is when you see, hey, things are getting in people’s way. How can you turn some of those off?

PATTIE SELLERS: So how do you facilitate those good genes to operate better, and how do you clear the path? I mean one of the things that you’ve changed, I know, is goal setting in the company. Explain that?

MARISSA MAYER: There’s goal setting, we’ve also done things like quarterly calibration. But, one of the things, it sounds funny, but when I first got there everyone said to me there’s 1,000 things you need to fix. And it’s really overwhelming when people come up and say that to you, because you’re like, how am I going to fix 1,000 things? And so we came up with this idea, we have a moderator tool where people can vote on things. And we came up with it, we were like, well, there’s process in the way, there’s bureaucracy in the way, there’s just kind of stuff jamming up the system. And people would come to us and say I know the answer. I know the solution. I just need someone to tell me it’s okay to do it. And we’d be like, by all means, it’s okay. Please do it. And we said how can we harness that energy.

And we came up with this process called PB&J, process bureaucracy and jams, where you can go and you can write up something that’s just getting in the way in the company. It could be big like my laptop is woefully underpowered for the job that I’m being asked to do, because we end up refreshing everyone’s laptops and getting all new equipment in that way, or it could be small. It could be like why does the gym ask us to have orientation when every hotel in the world just lets you go and stand on a treadmill without a learning session. And so people started doing this and then other people come and vote on it. And if something gets more than 50 yes votes we sit down with a number of E staff, executive staff, that it would be the person who oversees it, and they clean out their PB&J on a quarterly basis that has more than 50 votes.

And PB&J just turned a year old in September. It’s been completely embraced by the culture, because people just love reporting these things that were kind of in the way and kind of annoying. And this notion that if you report it and it gets enough votes it’s going to get fixed, it’s going to get addressed really empowers people. They finished 1,000 things in the first year. And I joked, I told this joke at our all-team on Friday. I said it’s so funny, because all of you came up to me and said, there’s 1,000 things to fix. And the truth is, there are thousands of things to fix. We’re not done. But, I was like, wow, they fixed 1,000 things in the first year, some big, some small, but it’s really, really amazing.

PATTIE SELLERS: And how are people held accountable for fixing those things that get more than 50 votes?

MARISSA MAYER: Because one is there, so everyone can see, hey, this is on the top of you PB&J list. There’s this real transparency, there’s real public accountability for it. But, the other thing is we have a small team of five or six people that work on PB&J and so they go and meet with the teams. But, those five or six people can’t do 1,000 things. The real testimony and the real learning lesson here is that by empowering people in the company to fix what they knew was broken, they were like, oh, are we fixing things, are we changing things, because I’ve got some stuff I want to fix. I’ve got some stuff I want to change. They really grabbed the opportunity.

PATTIE SELLERS: That’s great. Our time is supposedly up. But, you know what, we hold the power here. And we’re going to take two questions from the audience.

Who has a question for Marissa?

Yes, identify yourself please?

QUESTION: (Off mike.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Can we have another mike? Is that working?

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Adena Friedman the CFO of the Carlyle Group and one of the more controversial decisions that made the press, at least, that you made that you decided on was the issue of flex time and working from home. And it’s interesting, because at our firm we have the opposite problem. There’s a bit of a culture of if you’re not here you’re not working. And as I’ve had a younger and younger group of employees, and frankly a little bit of a mini baby boom, it’s creating issues with work-life balance. So I’d like to try to understand what was your rationale forwhat was the actual decision, because it may have gotten blown out of proportion. What was your rationale in giving your attention and are you still happy you did it?

MARISSA MAYER: Sure. So our rationale is this is Yahoo!’s all hands on deck moment. And I fully except a lot of people said, well, wait people are more productive when they work on their own. And I fully accept that. But, what they aren’t is more collaborative. And when you need to innovate you need collaboration. And so when I look at things like Yahoo!’s weather app, which I hope a lot of people have on their phones, I think that what you see there is our weather team met up with the Flickr team and Flickr said, we’ve got all these geo-tagged photos, and the weather team said we need to make weather beautiful. And they brought it together. And now you see these postcards of beautiful photography from all over the world when you look at the weather, of the actual weather pattern that you’re seeing in that city that day. It’s really quite remarkable.

That wouldn’t happenit happened because two people ran into each other in the break room and got to talking. That doesn’t happen when you’re by yourself in the kitchen. But, I think that the collaboration piece is really what ultimately motivated it for us. I think it did get blown out of proportion. I think I’ve been toldI try to sort of avoid and stay blind to some of the media here just in general. But, I think that what got blown out of proportion was people felt like it was a very gender-charged decision. And in truth it was about 100 people in the company, so it was reasonably small and actually 80 to 85 percent of them were men. And so it really wasn’t something that affected a lot of women.

But, the thing that we really wanted to get our hands around was the notion of the official work from homers, and by the way we made a fair number of exceptions for exactly the work-life balance reasons that you note. So we made a fair amount of exceptions. But, I think that the other piece was there were a lot of people who would just choose to stay home on a Tuesday or on a Friday for whatever reasons, good life reasons, but the issue is when you have that happening in mass it does hurt overall productivity. And so I actually think that the person who stays home, like for me, when I stay home to wait for the cable guy, like I’m half as productive as I would have been in the office for that same period of time.

So we really wanted not only to work with the folks who were officially working from home, but also some of the unofficial time, because we really wanted to pull the energy into the business.

PATTIE SELLERS: Another question for Marissa?

Okay. I’ll ask the last question.

Ursula Burns was just talking about transparency right before us. And you’ve done something interesting. You reported earnings on Tuesday and you are now doing video earnings calls. Why are you doing that and you did something totally new on Tuesday that you had never done before in that you took Twitter questions from anyone out there.

MARISSA MAYER: Well, I’m really lucky. My CFO is the most experienced CFO in tech. Ken Goldman has been a public company CFO for 28 years. And frankly I was like what can we do to make this more interesting for Ken. And I like to innovate. And I was like, it’s got to be boring, when you’re doing the 112th earning call, or something like that. And so I said, is there a way that we can mix thing up? I like to innovate, and give us time to sort of change the format for Ken? And we said, we’re Yahoo!, we produce video content. Wouldn’t it be better if weshould we try something?

And we tried it for the first time in July, should we try video? And we really liked it. And it’s actually really quite stressful to be on camera and be taking a lot of questions. A lot of people ask us if we tape a beforehand and then just air it, and the answer is no. Whatever happens happens. And so it is quite stressful. But the really amazing thing it allows us to do is show our products, and actually show the progress. So everything from animating charts as we’re talking about those charts, to showing the product refreshes. This past quarter we did 15 major product refreshes and launches. So as I’m talking about them to be able to show them on screen and really bring them to life is something that we think is really powerful. So that part worked well.

I think that we wanted to try and do the Twitter and e-mail questions this past time to get some preservation, but also because weit’s sort of a bit of a funny system right now, because we have a conference call running in the background where we take the questions. And then we’ve got the video webcast. And we’re trying to figure out could we consolidate the two calls into one, so we’re not piping the phone call into the video call. But the real essence of it is that a lot of times you want the real time questions because the analysts are reacting to the content that you talked about earlier in the call. So I think that we’re going to end up having to have that live call in line. It’s just too hard to get the good and the best and most relevant questions beforehand via Twitter.

PATTIE SELLERS: I see, so you think you’re going to drop the Twitter idea?

MARISSA MAYER: Yes, we’ll see. As I said, we’re innovating. We’re trying on a new format. We wanted to try this. It was something new. But I overall think that the analyst questions were better and more topical on point. And there is a real value of them getting to hear the release, hear the call, and then ask in response to that.

PATTIE SELLERS: Keep on innovating.

MARISSA MAYER: Thank you.

PATTIE SELLERS: Thank you Marissa Mayer.

Thank you all.

FORTUNE —Sallie Krawcheck and Patty Stonesifer — once among the most senior women in their corporate fields know a thing or two about starting over.

Krawcheck, who famously lost her job as head of Bank of Americas BAC wealth management division during fallout from the financial crisis, this spring bought 85 Broads — a network for professional women with some 30,000 members.

Patty Stonesifer, previously the highest-ranking woman at Microsoft MSFT , who then went on to run the multi-billion dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also got a new job this year. Shes now president and CEO of Marthas Table, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C. that provides food and support services to those in need.

Are they downshifting their careers? No way, according to Stonesifer. Its a sideways move, she said Thursday at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit.The risk of my failing is greater now than it was at Microsoft.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

Both Krawcheck and Stonesifer have ambitious causes in mind. For Krawcheck, who shot up the Wall Street ranks at Citigroup C and BofA, its womens advancement in corporate life — which she sees as paramount to U.S. economic prosperity.

Every single bit of research I see says that having women in higher roles does good things, Krawcheck said — from producing strong returns and lower market volatility, to shrinking the wage gap between men and women.

And she believes 85 Broads can help with that. The number one unwritten rule for success in business is networking — for everyone, she said.

For Stonesifer, the pull of Marthas Table was helping families break out of poverty. At the Gates Foundation she got to think big, she said. But during the same decade as her tenure there, childhood poverty rates in the U.S. soared.I was done being a benevolent bureaucrat, Stonesifer said.

Once at Marthas Table, she even tried living on a food stamp budget — about $4 a day. She lasted one week. For families who have to stretch their allotment for an entire month, buying power all but dwindles by the third week. You dont even want to think about what happens when your dollars get down that low, she said.

MORE:Why the ‘Lean In’ conversation isn’t enough

As Stonesifer tackles this next set of challenges, she told the audience shes always had a keen sense of the two things that drive her. One is a desire for increasing knowledge, which is what she found so fulfilling at Microsoft. The other is social justice, where she now is focused.

To navigate the “career jungle gym well, Stonesifer advised, is to recognize that youre seeking passion in a different way.

Which also means recognizing when to walk away. Stonesifer retired from Microsoft at age 40. Even the best jobs in the world have a sell-by date, she said.

Anne-Marie Slaughters Why Women Still Cant Have It All adds a different, though far from dissenting, voice to Sandbergs “Lean In” movement. The former State Department director, who worked under Hillary Clinton, left her government job and returned to her teaching job at Princeton in hopes of spending more time with her teenage sons. Slaughters piece explains that decision and addresses the institutional and social mores that forced her to slow her career. Four days after Slaughter’s article was published by The Atlantic, the article gained one million views.

Having two intelligent women express different, well-reasoned opinions on the same topic was far too boring on its own, so the media declared it a catfight.

MORE:Marissa Mayer’s 3 biggest decisions as Yahoo CEO

On Thursday morning at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., Slaughter sat onstage with Fortunes Leigh Gallagher to clear the air. (Sandberg spoke the day before.) At 43, I could have written Lean In, Slaughter explained. At that time in her life, she said, she had not encountered a challenge she couldnt power through or solve with money. By 53, she said, things changed.

Slaughter, who is now the president and CEO of the New America Foundation, never expected her article to appeal to such a large crowd. She described the pieces target: smart, ambitious women who were forced to take a step back from the leadership track due to personal or financial reasons. Life happened to them, and they werent superhuman. Or they didnt have enough money, or they got shut out when they tried to have a more flexible workplace, she solemnly said. And the “Lean In” conversation, which puts accountability on the individual, makes these women feel like failures.

I see much less of an ambition gap and much more of a workplace and society that isnt allowing us to use the talent that is multiplied well beyond this room, said Slaughter. She invoked Bill Gates, who once said that there are two fundamental forces in human nature: competition and care for others. In society, Slaughter continued, we value competition and devalue care. Gallagher questioned her point, asking how she intends to alter institutional systems and policy to change such values. Slaughter used her mothers dinner party behavior as an example. In the 1960s, her mother used to put little vases of cigarettes out on the table. If you did that in New York today, youd be arrested. Thats a huge value change, Slaughter said. Why cant we have a sea change about the value of caring about each other and the value of competition?

Gerri Elliot, an executive vice president at Juniper (JNPR) who previously worked at IBM IBM and Microsoft MSFT , took a moment to thank Slaughter, saying she had to step back from the prime of her career due to a family issue. She then cited her interest in both Sandberg and Slaughters arguments. The only difference I see between the two of you is Sheryl has young’uns and you have teenagers and honey, they are completely different.

MORE:How companies kill creativity

Slaughter laughed, then added that she and Sandberg are not on opposite sides. She said shes a feminist to the core, and she reasoned that she went through a life experience that made me realize that there are millions of women out there who need a bigger tent. They need more than, Honey, you can do it if you try hard enough.

Only good can come from Slaughters attempt to broaden the having it all conversation. I want to have a debate [with Sandberg] where we can be both honest and encouraging at the same time. The invitation’s open for Sandberg, who will hopefully soon realize that leaning in doesnt necessarily mean you have to do so alone.

FORTUNE — Chelsea Clinton highlighted one difference between her and her father, former President Bill Clinton, when she spoke at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit on Thursday. Her dad knew he wanted to be President at the age of five and built his life around achieving his goal. Chelsea said her career path was much more fluid. “I wish I had had one galvanizing ambition that I could reverse-engineer my life toward,” she said.

Instead, the younger Clinton spent her twenties working at McKinsey and at hedge fund Avenue Capital, but found that she “didn’t want to grow up to be my boss.”

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

With an “amorphous ambition to make a difference,” Clinton continued her education — she’s currently working on a doctorate in international relations at Oxford — and joined the Clinton Foundation, where she is vice chairman. As the daughter of two politicians, Clinton often gets asked if she’ll run for office one day.

Her reply at the Most Powerful Women Summit was simple, yet candid: “I don’t know.”

FORTUNE — Earlier this week, Yahoo YHOO reported quarterly earnings, and while they indicate the Web 1.0 property still has a long slog ahead before its turnaround could be called successful, Marissa Mayerhas investors excited. Indeed, the company’s stock is up over 100% since she started in July 2012.

But as Mayer explained this week at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit, held in Washington, D.C., she believes there are actually just a few decisions a leader really needs to make, but “you need to make them perfectly.” Here are her top three for Yahoo:

A commitment to mobile

“I think Yahoo’s future is going to be mobile apps,” Mayer said. And she has the numbers to prove it. Earlier this week during the company’s earnings call, Yahoo disclosed that its mobile user base grew by 15% to 380 million monthly members over the last quarter alone. From an internal standpoint, Mayer fanned the innovation flames by swapping out the BlackBerrys BBRY still being issued to every Yahoo employee for Apple AAPL iOS and Android devices, which now dominate the global smartphone market. Basic as it may sound, the move makes sense. Says Mayer: “We call it dog-fooding … where people try the product they’re developing.”

Inject new talent

Mayer has also made a concerted effort to bring new talent to Yahoo. To wit, the company has hired 1,000 new engineers this year and at least 50 Ph.D.s since Mayer took the reins, a move that has prompted an uptick in interested applicants: Yahoo received 17,000 applications in the last quarter alone.

Buying Tumblr

Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr certainly got the industry’s attention. Although the startup founded by high school dropout David Karp hosts 136 million-plus blogs, it reportedly pulled in just $13 million in revenues last year. (It’s been said the company is aiming for $100 million for 2013.) But Mayer argues her “big bet” makes a lot of sense, comparing the relationship between Yahoo and Tumblr to complementary continents — at least geographically-speaking — like South America and Africa: Yahoo’s demographic skew older, for instance, while Tumblr’s is significantly younger. As for Karp himself? Says Mayer: “He’s really in tune with the community he has.”

What follows is an unedited transcript:

LEIGH GALLAGHER: Thank you, Nina, and congratulations to all of the mentees. We look forward to welcoming you back on the Summit stage again one day in the future.

We had hoped to hold tonight’s event at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian. But the government shutdown has altered our plans a little bit. And I have to say that I concur with the sentiment expressed on this stage last night and today that if the U.S. Congress were all female, none of the turmoil would have happened over the past couple weeks, and we would all, in fact, be sitting at the Smithsonian right now. (Laughter.) So let’s just get that out of the way. (Applause.)

I’m very excited to introduce tonight’s featured interview with Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Justice Kagan is the fourth woman in history to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. She clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall, she was the editor of Harvard Law Review, and she was the first female dean of Harvard University Law School. In 2009, she became the first female solicitor general for the United States and she served until her appointment to the Supreme Court in 2010.

It is my great pleasure to welcome Pattie Sellers and U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan. (Cheers, applause, music. )

PATTIE SELLERS: Thank you, Leigh.

ELENA KAGAN: Thank you. Thank you very much. It’s really great to be here.

PATTIE SELLERS: And you know what? While the government has been shut down –

ELENA KAGAN: We’ve been doing our work. (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: How does that work that you are at work when the government is shut down?

ELENA KAGAN: Well, we had a little bit of extra money in the pot and we just thought, “We’re going to keep doing what we do.” You know? (Applause.) We work pretty well.

PATTIE SELLERS: So we were actually talking about this backstage, and I said, “Does the Supreme Court have like a CFO who has managed the piggy bank well?”

ELENA KAGAN: I said we have a great, great administrative staff led by the Chief Justice, who is a fantastic manager of a really complicated but really excellent organization.

PATTIE SELLERS: And you have had enough money in reserve to keep operating.

ELENA KAGAN: Yes.

PATTIE SELLERS: And tomorrow, actually –

ELENA KAGAN: I think we were going to run out tomorrow or maybe the next day. And we were going to have to start doing a little bit of furloughing.

PATTIE SELLERS: Yeah, that’s amazing. So thank you for being here tonight. And Justice Kagan asked me to call her Elena, so I’m going to call you Elena on stage, and thank you for that.

You know, in doing my research for this interview, I was very kind of struck. You were born in April 1960, I was born in April 1960.

ELENA KAGAN: You’re giving away my age.

PATTIE SELLERS: I am. I am. Well, it’s kind of public. It’s kind of known. Everybody can Google you. (Laughter.)

ELENA KAGAN: I guess most things are.

PATTIE SELLERS: And you grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. (Cheers.)

ELENA KAGAN: Right.

PATTIE SELLERS: Yes. 75th and West End.

ELENA KAGAN: 75th and West End.

PATTIE SELLERS: Yeah, fantastic, that’s my neighborhood.

ELENA KAGAN: It’s a very different neighborhood then. You know, it was a little bit more humble.

PATTIE SELLERS: It was.

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah.

PATTIE SELLERS: It was, absolutely.

ELENA KAGAN: Which is — you know, it’s not all that humble now.

PATTIE SELLERS: I moved there in ’84, you left there in –

ELENA KAGAN: I left there in ’77 when I went to college. Everybody thinks of me as a New Yorker, but in fact, I never lived there as an adult. So I grew up there and then left. But it was a great place to grow up, I loved growing up in New York.

PATTIE SELLERS: So what did your parents do?

ELENA KAGAN: My father was a lawyer. He was as much as sort of small-town lawyer as it’s possible to be in New York City. Didn’t work for a big law firm. Sort of worked solo and represented, you know, people doing — wrote people’s wills and he solved their tax problems and he represented a few small businesses.

And then he started doing some real estate law for mostly tenants in New York City as New York City became — in the 1970s, when all the buildings became co-ops, he did a lot of that work. But he did a little bit of everything. And then my mother was an elementary school teacher.

PATTIE SELLERS: And did you acquire a love of the law from your father?

ELENA KAGAN: You know, the truth is that I didn’t think I wanted to be a lawyer. And it was sort of — it didn’t seem all that interesting to me. You know? (Laughter.) I mean now I look back and I think about what he did and I really appreciate it and I see how many people he helped and why he found the job as satisfying as he did, which he did. But at the time, I thought it looked dreadfully dull. (Laughter.)

So my colleague, Justice Sodomayor, and I have talked about this because she’s told this story about how when she was growing up, the first inkling that she had that she might want to be a lawyer came from she would watch Perry Mason on TV. (Laughter.) And for those of you too young to know, you know, Perry Mason was this great trial lawyer and he pulled rabbits out of hats and there were all these great, climactic moments when he solved the case and made it clear who was the liar and who was the truth-teller.

And she watched this on TV and she thought, “I want to do that.” And I said to her, I said, “Boy, I knew that that was not what lawyering was all about.” (Laughter.) Most lawyers in the world, they are not having Perry Mason moments, right?

PATTIE SELLERS: So how did you get into this?

ELENA KAGAN: You know, so I went to law school for every — I became a dean of a law school.

PATTIE SELLERS: You went to Princeton first.

ELENA KAGAN: So, yes. But every dean of a law school will tell you, don’t go to law school if you’re only going because you dont know what else to do and you want to keep your options open. (Laughter.)

But I went to law school because I didn’t know what else to do and I wanted to keep my options open. (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: But there’s this story about how you posed for your high school yearbook in a judge’s robe.

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah. Too much is made of that story, you know? (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Was that a joke, like, on your father?

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah, you know, we were — it was a picture where we all posed in different costumes.

PATTIE SELLERS: Really?

ELENA KAGAN: And it didn’t really have anything to do with anything.

PATTIE SELLERS: Oh, that’s interesting, because it’s been –

ELENA KAGAN: It’s sort of the foundation myth, right?

PATTIE SELLERS: It is a myth. It’s like she’s wanted to be on the Supreme Court ever since she was in high school.

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah, well, you know, some things people say about you are not true. (Laughter.) I know it will shock you to learn that, but sometimes the press — you know?

PATTIE SELLERS: Yeah, we’re shocked as journalists. You went to an all-girls school. Which –

ELENA KAGAN: In New York City.

PATTIE SELLERS: Yeah, for you was a good experience?

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah, I loved my high school. It was a funny kind of high school. It was a public school, but you had to take a test to get in, it was one of these sort of special public schools. And it was all girls on top of that.

And it was a place called Hunter High School. It’s now co-ed. But then, it was this great academic place. It was really diverse. There were people from all over New York City, all races, all religions, all different income groups, but all smart girls. And it was cool to be a smart girl. (Applause.)

PATTIE SELLERS: That’s great.

ELENA KAGAN: So I look back and I think, you know, that school had a lot to do with who I am and how I grew up and what became important to me.

PATTIE SELLERS: So we have these fantastic high school students in the audience. An we’ve talked with them about what some of these women wanted to be when they were 16 years old. What did you want to be when you were 16?

ELENA KAGAN: I just told you. I didn’t have a clue.

PATTIE SELLERS: You really didn’t have a clue? Okay. (Laughter.)

So you decided to go to law school. And you, at some point, decided that you wanted to dedicate your life to the law.

ELENA KAGAN: That sounds very serious. (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Well, tell us. At what point did you imagine that you could actually someday be on the Supreme Court?

ELENA KAGAN: No, I don’t think I ever really did. I mean, because it’s such a fluky, lightning-strike kind of thing. So I don’t think anybody can really say, “I’m thinking I want to be on the Supreme Court.” You know? Because if you do, you’re destined for a lot of heartache, you know? (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: I would say so, yeah.

ELENA KAGAN: But I did, when I was — I mean, I did have this wonderful experience when I was a young lawyer. I got to clerk on the Supreme Court. And then –

PATTIE SELLERS: Thurgood Marshall.

ELENA KAGAN: Thurgood Marshall. And that was an amazing, amazing year for me. It’s a very heady experience clerking on the Supreme Court. You’ve just graduated from law school, you’re in your 20s, and there you are in this institution that’s making all the important law and deciding all the important cases.

And so for anybody, for any clerk, I think it’s a real learning experience and a wonderful year in their lives. But extra special, I was clerking for Thurgood Marshall near the end of his life, not quite. And this icon of American law, and he was at a point in his life where I think he was looking back a little bit and taking stock.

And so one of the things about clerking with him is we would go into his office every day and we would first talk about the cases and do our work. And then he would start telling stories. And he was the greatest storyteller that I have ever encountered, and he had a life full of stories. Battling segregation, battling the Jim Crow system, encountering all kind of violence and danger in the early years of his career.

And it made you understand what lawyers could do, what law could do. Nobody, I don’t think any of us walked out thinking, “I’m going to be Thurgood Marshall.” You know? Because nobody could be Thurgood Marshall. But it made you think about the value that living a life in the law could have and think about how it is that you could try to have a career in the law where you were doing something meaningful and helping to advance justice.

PATTIE SELLERS: So he kind of hooked you?

ELENA KAGAN: He kind of hooked me.

PATTIE SELLERS: From 2003 to 2009, Elena was the first woman dean of Harvard Law School. And you entered Harvard Law School at a time when it was really dysfunctional, didn’t you?

ELENA KAGAN: You know, it might be that that’s a bit exaggerated. You know, because Harvard Law School is a great institution and it’s always been. So at the time that I came in, there were incredible strengths of the school. But there were also some problems in the way people dealt with each other, in the way they treated students. So, you know, I definitely had things to do there.

PATTIE SELLERS: Well, you got a lot of praise for your management skills there. And, you know, I think most of the Supreme Court justices, I may be wrong about this, but I think most of them dont have the management experience that Elena does. And I actually did a piece which I dug up in 2010 right after you moved onto the Supreme Court. And, interestingly, we were talking earlier today about our late friend Joy Covey, the former CFO of Amazon who died tragically in September. I talked to Joy back then. You knew Joy at Harvard Law School.

ELENA KAGAN: She was an incredible woman. One of the things when you become a dean, everybody tells you, “Well, but you have to fundraise.” And then it turns out that fundraising is the best part of the job or almost because you meet such incredible people. And I met Joy because she was a very generous donor to Harvard and so interesting and intense.

PATTIE SELLERS: So interesting.

ELENA KAGAN: Just an amazing woman.

PATTIE SELLERS: She dropped out of high school, you know and went on to great things. Anyway, Joy recalled — I remember talking to Joy on the phone about you, and she recalled how Kagan, first woman to head the law school, lifted student morale there. She did her community building via small acts of kindness. Flooding a lawn on campus to create an ice rink, putting out free coffee and bagels in the morning, and redesigning spaces in Harkness Commons, the student center. This is what Joy said about you. These were things that didn’t break the bank, but said to students, “We care about you and your lives.”

ELENA KAGAN: I used to tell people that whatever I did as dean, I could hire tens of faculty, I could revamp the curriculum, I could build buildings, and that I would still be known as the “free coffee” dean. (Laughter.) Because if there was one thing that every student who went through Harvard Law School remembered is that we put out free coffee. You know, students drink a lot of coffee.

So this is one of the parts of my life that you didn’t mention was I worked in the Clinton Administration in the 1990s. I worked for four years in the Clinton White House. And do you remember how everybody said about President Clinton? Well, there were all these small-bore initiatives?

But I was a fan of small-bore initiatives. And I took that lesson from Washington and I said, “We’re going to have some small-bore initiatives.” Things that they dont break the bank, but they communicate a set of values and they make people feel as though they’re living in an institution that cares about them and cares about their concerns. So that’s what I tried to do on those things. We tried to do a few bigger things, too, but free coffee went a long way. (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: That’s great. That’s great. Is there any opportunity to affect culture on the Supreme Court, in the Supreme Court?

ELENA KAGAN: That’s a jump of a question, okay. (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: I think there’s a transition there. (Laughter.)

ELENA KAGAN: Well, the first thing is we have actually a great culture on the Supreme Court. So it was actually not by into an institution and going, “Gosh, this culture has to change.” I mean, quite the opposite. The culture is a really terrific one. And, honestly, going back to how you started, you see some institutions in Washington that don’t work all that well, and the Supreme Court works very well. We’re nine people, we disagree on a lot, sometimes we express our disagreement in fairly powerful and sharp terms, but we all like each other an enormous amount. We all respect each other an enormous amount.

And I think that most of us most of the time, or really all of us most of the time, know how to disagree without being disagreeable. And so I think we believe in the good faith of each other and that doesn’t mean that we’re going to be nine-zero in everything we do. But it means we function really very well as an institution, which I’m proud of, and which is a testament to all my colleagues.

I mean, I’m the newbie. I walked into this institution and I thought, “Wow, this is fantastic.” And it’s especially a testament to the chief justice, who sets the tone.

PATTIE SELLERS: There has been over the years a debate about whether to allow cameras into the court and let people see how the Supreme Court works. And it is an institution that seems to work.

ELENA KAGAN: Yes.

PATTIE SELLERS: So what’s your view of that?

ELENA KAGAN: Well, on the plus side, I think that that would be the plus side is we work well. I think when people come to the court and they watch us, I think that’s a pretty good show.

And it’s not just a show, it’s obviously a bunch of people doing serious business. I think what they would see is nine people who are very prepared, and who really want to get the answer right. Again, often we’re going to disagree about what that means, but if you watch us, I think you’re going to see nine people who are trying really hard to figure out the cases and to figure out the right answer in the cases.

And, you know, I think it would be — the up side is it would be terrific for people to see that and watch that, an institution of their government that’s really working.

You know, the down side is you worry that, well, it’s working now, maybe cameras would change the dynamic. And I think that there is some reason to worry about that. I’m not sure that cameras have had such a great effect on the way Congress does its business. (Laughter.) And, you know, you like to think that you would be impervious to them and nothing in your behavior would change.

But I think it’s a reason for some caution and for a little bit of step-by-step process in terms of opening ourselves up more to the public.

PATTIE SELLERS: When was the first time that you went to the Supreme Court either as a lawyer or as a spectator?

ELENA KAGAN: You know, I’m not sure if I went before I started clerking there. So clerking there.

PATTIE SELLERS: And what year was that?

ELENA KAGAN: That was 1987.

PATTIE SELLERS: Okay, so 25 years ago.

ELENA KAGAN: Almost, right.

PATTIE SELLERS: How has the court changed in those 25 years?

ELENA KAGAN: Well, in some ways, it’s changed not much at all. I mean, it’s an institution that I think because it works has been careful about the way it changes things. And it’s an institution that’s very attached to its traditions and is conservative in how it operates and the way it — there has to be a really good reason to change a way of doing business at the court. And I think that’s because people realize that we’re doing pretty well and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

PATTIE SELLERS: So to the point that the court hasn’t changed very much, you dont use e-mail there, do you?

ELENA KAGAN: We dont to each other. You know, I obviously do to my clerks, but the justices themselves do not communicate by email.

PATTIE SELLERS: So how do you communicate?

ELENA KAGAN: Well, we either talk to each other, which is not a bad thing. (Applause.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Not a bad thing.

ELENA KAGAN: Yeah. Or we write memos to each other. And, you know, you have to remember that the court is an institution where we’re not horse trading, we’re not bargaining, we’re reasoning and we’re trying to persuade people. And, often, the best way to do that is by putting things down on paper in a kind of careful and deliberate way and saying, “This is what I think.” And giving people an opportunity to read a memo and to think about it and to reflect on it.

So we do a lot of our communicating by these — it’s sort of 19th century, this very heavy ivory paper, it looks like it came out of the 1800s or something. But it seems to work pretty well. And, you know, when you think about it, how many e-mails have you sent that you wished you could take back, right? (Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Seriously.

ELENA KAGAN: So we’re careful and deliberative.

PATTIE SELLERS: The theme of the summit this year is Breakthroughs in Leadership. Since you moved into this position three years ago, is there a moment on the court that you personally or you as the court, that you feel most represents that idea of a breakthrough in leadership. Maybe a breakthrough in leadership for America.

ELENA KAGAN: Oh, gosh, you know, no. (Laughter.) Because I really just try to do the work day by day by day. And I know that there are some cases that are incredibly important and others that nobody’s heard about. But for me, I try to give all of them the best, most careful consideration I can. So I would not pick out a particular case or anything like that.

I just sort of try to do the job one case at a time and to try as best I can to get it right each time out.

PATTIE SELLERS: One question, this is my last question: One question that we discussed with these high school students is the idea that –

ELENA KAGAN: They were great, by the way.

PATTIE SELLERS: Yeah.

ELENA KAGAN: I mean, we were watching you guys, where are you?(Applause.)

PATTIE SELLERS: Inspiring.Inspiring.

ELENA KAGAN: We were watching you offstage.

PATTIE SELLERS: You’ll meet some of them tonight.

ELENA KAGAN: Congratulations, lots of luck.You were terrific.

PATTIE SELLERS: You’ll meet some of them at dinner, all of them at dinner.

We were talking about how you dont have to be good at everything — and this is a point that Warren Buffett — who is in the audience — makes.That you dont have to know everything and be good at everything.So what are you not great at and what are you really good at?(Laughter.)

ELENA KAGAN: Well, you certainly dont have to know everything. I mean, I learn new things every day. But what am I not great at? I think, you know, I used to think this when I was dean.The fun part about being dean was that you did lots and lots of different things. It’s actually not true of my job now, but as dean, that you did lots and lots of different things. And the key to being a good dean was that you could them all adequately.

And that’s actually a kind of special talent in and of itself, right? (Laughter.)A certain kind of breadth in your skill set. Even though you weren’t the best at anything, actually. But you weren’t the worst at anything either, you know?

So I used to think that, actually, that I had the capacity to do a lot of different things requiring a lot of different skills at least okay, you know?

But of course, you know, some things better than others.And I don’t know, you know, I really — I think people grow up.There was a lot I learned about how to deal with people during those years, which I really did not know at the beginning. And sometimes I had to learn through pretty serious errors.

So I think it’s funny because people now say, oh, “Elena Kagan, she has good people skills.”But that was definitely not true in large parts of my life, you know?(Laughter.)I had to develop those skills.

PATTIE SELLERS: And if you left these high school girls and these leaders from around the world with any piece of advice about just kind of developing your EQ and developing your people skills, what advice would you give?

ELENA KAGAN: I think to just sort of constantly work on yourself and to realize that you’re going to make mistakes and to try to not make them twice.So to learn from your errors and know that you’re not going to be perfect, but you can get better.

PATTIE SELLERS: And to admit your mistakes and say, “I learned from that, next.”

ELENA KAGAN: But not necessarily in this particular forum, right?(Laughter.)

PATTIE SELLERS: No, we like to admit mistakes here.Justice Elena Kagan, thank you so much for being with us.

ELENA KAGAN: Thank you. (Applause.)

FORTUNE — Xerox CEO and chairman Ursula Burns took on the having-it-all debate head-on at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit on Thursday, saying that when it comes down to it, we all just need to chill out.

As long as Ive been alive discussing this, and even before, this concept of having it all — thats not the point, she said. Pick the places where you want to be great, focus your energies there, and then go do it, she added. Understand youre not going to be great at everything, and then relax, she said.

She told the crowd of power players that it amazes her how much stress and insanity we put on ourselves. Over time she realized that pressure had rubbed off on her kids. Now Im like chill out a little bit, she said.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

In hindsight, the one thing she would have done differently is have more kids. I realize now there is more value and fun and accomplishment and real joy when I hang out with my daughter and son and two nieces, she said.

Burns is also trying to take a more Zen approach to her business, saying that shes tried to ban the word “transformation” from every speech shes made. I want to stop transforming and just start being, she said.

One hundred thousand of Xeroxs XRX 140,000 employees came to the company through acquisition, and Burns has had to focus on the commonalities rather than the differences — unless they were egregiously bad. You cant do it by saying, Everybody stop this and start this, she said. It has to morph and get to a point thats more natural than laws or rules.

Burns also offered up her view on the government shutdown, saying that the dysfunction is like a family that has an internal problem — its hard for people from the outside to get in to fix it. Burns noted that we would be thrown out on our butts if we ran anything this way, including our families. Agencies would take our children away, she said.

FORTUNE — Women have been shown to be effective board members, so why arent there more of them?

Despite the strides women are making in the C-suite and the ballot box, gender diversity on corporate boards remains an intractable problem. The issue was brought to the fore earlier this month when Twitter filed its IPO and revealed that its seven-member board was made up entirely of men. Its explanation: no qualified female candidates.

At Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit this week, Ariel Investments President Mellody Hobson called that excuse, standard for major companies, myopic.

No women available with technical expertise? No problem, said Hobson, who sits on the boards at Starbucks SBUX , DreamWorks DWA ,Este Lauder EL and Groupon GRPN . Not every single person on the board of Starbucks knows everything about making coffee, she said. The people on the board of DreamWorks with me dont all make movies.

Her suggestion for diverse board candidates at Twitter: My answer is anyone. Anyone. I mean that, she said.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

That might not be a bad idea. Recent studies have shown that having more female board members is good for more than optics. Controlling for other factors, gender diversity significantly increases profit margin. Its also easy to see how at a company such as Twitter, where the majority of users are female, womens voices could lend an added benefit. But Twitter is not alone in having a gender imbalance. Only 16.6% of board members at Fortune 500 companies are women, according to research by Catalyst.

So how do you fix the problem? Executives at Fortunes MPW Summit this week had a few ideas.

Start with one.

Landing a board seat has a lot to do with networking, so one position is likely to lead to another. After the first board position, it does get easier, said Ilene Gordon, chair president and CEO of Ingredion.

It also helps to have at least one woman director to get other women to join. For her first five board jobs, Gordon was the first female member. From there, What I pushed for was the second woman. Progress can beget progress. Having the first woman is key, and then from there you can push over time to get that balance, Gordon said.

Companies want operating experience.

Lee Hanson, VC of global financial services and CEO & Board of Directors Practices at Heidrick & Struggles, laid out what companies today are looking for when they recruit. Often, companies are actively looking for diversity on boards. But more than anything, it helps if a candidate has operational experience as a general manager. Boards also prioritize candidates with technology experience (particularly in Silicon Valley) and candidates who are foreign nationals as well as Americans who have lived abroad.

For board hopefuls: Figure out what you could add, then go for it.

Susan Decker is a director at Berkshire Hathaway brk.a , Costco Wholesale COST , Intel INTC , and LegalZoom LGZ . Of getting those assignments, she says, it was all relationships that I had built over time. But if that feels like a catch-22 about needing connections to get connections, its possible to build those relationships from scratch, Decker says.

Decide whats important to you and what could you add, and then figure out who the board members are and figure out who you know who knows them,” Decker said. “Then get an introduction.” After that? Then you have to perform, she says. And if you perform well, there will be lots of opportunities.

The company recently added Lee Scott, the former President and CEO of Wal-Mart WMT , to its board, CEO Tory Burch told FortuneThursday morning at the Most Powerful Women Summit.

He adds a lot of spice. Hes a lot of fun, Burch said of Scott, who is joined by a handful of other new board membersincluding Richard Funes, the outgoing CFO of Estee Lauder, and investors Byron Trott, CEO of BDT Capital Partners and Bill Ford, CEO of General Atlantic.

The new members are part of Burchs effort to bring in different perspective and round out the board. I wanted to have a board that was strategic, and that would really help us look as we expanded in the U.S. and internationally.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

But new board members are only part of the story at Tory Burch, which also launched a fragrance and announced plans to make watches earlier this year. The company also settled a bitter legal battle with Burch’s ex-husband (and father of three of her children), Chris Burch, who after the divorce, founded C. Wonder, a company that looked and operated a lot like Tory Burch. As part of the settlement, Trott and Ford purchased half of Chris Burchs stake in the company, leaving Tory owning an estimated 38% of the company.

It was hard for me because of my family, said Burch, who said her objective was to settle the legal suits quickly and effectively. She also focused on leadership and maintaining composure through the ordeal. A lot of lessons came out of it. Were in a great place, she added.

How does she plan to keep that momentum going? Despite the companys go-go, global growth Burch, who started the company less than 10 years ago in her Upper East Side kitchen, remains humble. We think a lot about how to maintain that start-up mentality as the company gets bigger.

On some levels were just beginning. We look at ourselves as moving forward with momentum but always evolving, she said. We have a lot to do and a lot we want to do.

Burch will soon be joined in the fashion business by two of her stepdaughters, who are launching their own company. Her advice to them — Burch is a little bit involved — Buckle up. To be in business as a startup, you have no idea what will come your way.

Speaking at Fortune‘s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, Pritzker outlined three issues that need to be addressed to promote middle-class job growth. First up is increased infrastructure spending, which means everything “from broadband to bridges.” Pritzker said there were trillions of dollars in deferred investment in our infrastructure. With Capitol Hill essentially in gridlock, the private sector needs to step in and invest in this “enormous job creator.”

Pritzker added that there needs to be more investment in research and development. Government and the business community need to work together on this endeavor. “Business does the development,” she said, while the government provides the research.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

Finally, Pritzker emphasized the importance of encouraging more workers to go into STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, math). “Fifty percentof the workers on the smart grid are going to retire within the next five years,” she said. These middle-class jobs do not require a Ph.D., but they do need skilled workers. Training the workforce to fill these vacancies is critical.

“We need training geared towards jobs,” Pritzker said. “Which means the business sector has to get involved.”

An unedited transcript follows:

CAROL LOOMIS: Good morning, all. At some point we will not break into song. I’m not quite up to Gwen’s level. But this is an anniversary for us, Warren. It’s the fifth anniversary of your first appearing here. The first time that he was here in 2008 was an electric moment. It was early October. Lehman had failed two weeks before. AIG had been taken over by the government. The TARP bill had not been passed. It was going to be passed before the MPW was over, but it had not been passed that morning. And things were not looking good.

So I did have one preliminary comment to make to Warren, and I’ll come back to that a little bit later, but I then turned to him and said, okay, how bad is it out there? And he saidI went back and looked at the video, and he said: It’s bad. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s an economic Pearl Harbor in which creditworthy companies cannot get financing. We will pull out of it, but it’s going to take time.

So we would say looking back that that was a sound assessment, and we will come back to the recovery. Even so, here we are five years later once again in the middle of financial trouble. And I would like to ask you, and I would like to say once more, Warren, how bad is it out there?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, it’s not so bad in the economy. It’s bad for a great many of our citizens. Overall, though, the economy has done very well. It’s been a slow recovery, but it was an extreme wound that the economy had received, like none in my lifetime. So it’s not totally surprising that it’s taken us a while to come back.

But ever since the fall of 2009, the recovery has come back steadily. It hasn’t accelerated, but it hasn’t flattened out either. And that’s the way it is now, and even 2 percent a year growth, if the population grows 1 percent, that means in a generation people are living on average 20 percent better than the generation before. That is not bad. It would be better if it’s 3 percent. But we have a wonderful economy. And you’ve seen it heal faster than the other major economies around the world.

CAROL LOOMIS: Let’s come back to that in just a second. Let’s talk about the debt ceiling problem. And let me ask that question again, how bad is that?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, if it reallyif it goes on a few days and we really don’t get it resolved, then it’s actually terrible. I’ve told my children that it takes 20 years to build a reputation and it takes 20 minutes to ruin it.

CAROL LOOMIS: Five minutes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Pardon me?

CAROL LOOMIS: Five minutes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, particularly some of my kids. But we have spent 237 years since 1776 building a reputation as the most wonderful country on earth, and one that’s entrusted with having the reserve currency of the world, the one who when they say full faith and credit nobody questions it. And that couldthat is being put in jeopardy now, and it could be destroyed in a little while. And a great reputation, as I say, is like virginity, it can be preserved, but it can’t be restored. (Laughter.) At least that’s what my dad told me. (Laughter.)

So it is absolute folly to even think about it. And it will beI don’t know what the words are to describe it if we actually would default. I can’t believe it will be done because it just is so stupid. And I think the whole idea of a debt limit is a terrible, terrible mistake. I mean, if you’re going to spend more than you take in, what are you going to do except raise the debt limit.

So it becomes this political weapon of mass destruction. It really is like a nuclear bomb. It’s something maybe you can talk about, but you can’t even dream of using it. We dropped two atom bombs in 1945. We’ve never done it since. Now, we’ve been frustrated by all kinds ofwe had a war in Vietnam that we did not get a satisfactory resolution to, and we’ve had other wars, but we didn’t think about we were going to drop nuclear bombs. There are certain things that just should not be used in a civilization. And the idea of breaking the government’s promises to achieve any other end, whether it’s gun control, abortion, Obamacare, whatever it is, tying it to that is madness. You can argue those other things out, but get the debt ceiling out of the picture.

CAROL LOOMIS: And here we are, two days away from the actual moment at which we do not raise it or do raise it. And do you have a kind of scenario in mind as to how we will get from here to actually solving this problem?

WARREN BUFFETT: I think the way to solve it is just to say, the debt ceilingboth parties to say the debt ceiling will never be used as a weapon of mass destruction. It’s off the table. We’ll argue about all kinds of other things, and see how they come out, but we are not going to threaten the world and our own citizens with the fact that we aren’t going to make good on our promises to achieve some other end. It doesn’t make any sense.

CAROL LOOMIS: And seeing the political climate in Washington, can you imagine that happening in the next couple of days?

WARREN BUFFETT: I can’t imagine the full thing playing out that way, although I wish it would. But maybe this has been the demonstration project we needed. We didn’t know exactly what atomic weapons could do until we did them, and then it was an importantit was an incredible goal, obviously, at the time. But we decided we didn’t want to do that again no matter how serious things got. And I hope that comes out of it.

But I think that basically you really need the House Republicans to say, this is a weapon we shouldn’t have used, and we think Obamacare is terrible, and we’ll fight it out, and we’ll beat you in 2014 in the elections and prove it and so on. But we will not say that the United States is going to break its promises to millions and millions citizens and other countries and everything just because we’re not getting our way.

CAROL LOOMIS: And how about the prospect that it will just be pushed forward to the end of January or something?

WARREN BUFFETT: That seems to be our specialty. I mean, we’ve gotten good at that. We don’t know how to solve problems, but we sure know how to postpone them. That may be what happens. I’ll be disappointed if it does.

CAROL LOOMIS: I think all of us will just hate to go through this.

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s ridiculous, and why do it? If you have a problem, you face it, and the debt ceiling is a problem that we can get rid of it being a problem. Then we’ll have a lot of other problems, and we can fight those out on their own turf. But to just push it down the road, I mean, the people go through Christmas wondering how is all this going to come out. And they appoint the super committee, which turns out to be a mini committee, and all kinds of things. It just doesn’t make any sense.

CAROL LOOMIS: Considering the confusion we are in, has this affected your decisions about running Berkshire in any way?

WARREN BUFFETT: Not one iota. We announced an acquisition this morning, it was over in England, so it was at 3:00 a.m., I think, for a purchase for a $1.1 billion. It didn’t affect a dollar of the price that we put it. We did not put in a clause that said, if Congress does this or that, then this, because the deal hasn’t closed for a while, that the deal will be off or anything like that. It doesn’t affect anything. This country is going to do well over time. I want to participate in it. I’ll participate through owning good businesses, and if we get a chance to buy a good business, we buy it. And I will say this, Charlie Munger, my partner, and I have worked together now for 54 years. We’ve made a lot of decisions on buying businesses, we’ve made a lot of decisions on buying stocks. In the conversations that accompanied those decisions, neither one of us has ever once brought up anything of a macro nature, proving that it just doesn’t make any difference.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, or next month, or next year. I know what’s going to happen over 10 or 20 years. And why concern myself with the things I can’t know and don’t understand when the important things are something I think I do understand.

CAROL LOOMIS: And what would you say to this audience, many of them who are making decisions, real-time decisions, about what to do, how would you extend

WARREN BUFFETT: Full speed ahead.

CAROL LOOMIS: Okay. All right. I think we’ve got that message. I really didn’t expect you say anything

WARREN BUFFETT: I bought my first stock in April of 1942. After Pearl Harbor, we had nothing but bad news for six months. The headlines every day were that we were having trouble with the Corregidor Bataan, you name it. And the Dow was at about 100, and the news was terrible. But I and practically every American I knew thought we were going to win the war, and the stock I bought was cheap. It got quite a bit cheaper in the next few months. But I’ve been buying stocks ever since.

CAROL LOOMIS: Right. And always being glad in a way that it got cheaper because you can buy at a cheaper price.

WARREN BUFFETT: I love a sale. Just try me out, mark down the price of Fortune and I’ll extend my subscription for 20 years. (Laughter.)

CAROL LOOMIS: And the recovery, just to dwell on that a second, do you see it at this moment slowing any, or do you see it just going along at this steady upward pace?

WARREN BUFFETT: I can’t tell you about the last week, but I can tell you about the last month. I get figures on 70-plus companies in pretty much real-time. And the recovery ever since the fall of 2009 has been going up at a modest rate. And people talk about double dips, there wasn’t going to be any double dip. They talk about acceleration, there hasn’t been real acceleration.

The line of ascent is just about like it’s been now for five years almost, well four and a fraction years. We will, we project that our railroad, in the week of November 5th, I believe, will hit or maybe slightly exceed the car loading peak reached before Lehman. But it’s taken four or five years to get there.

We’re seeing, we own the second largest real estate brokerage firm in the country. And so I get what they call pending transactions even before they complete. And I get the median prices at which the deals are being made. And I get them from a lot of markets all over the country. And I just got them for September, and the median price is up, and the pendings are up. And the country is coming back. You can’t stop the United States. We get through everything. We got through a Civil War. We got through the Great Depression. We got through World Wars. The country works.

CAROL LOOMIS: Why is it that at every perilous moment that people start to say, this is the time that it’s really not going to?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, they get scared. The humans, 500 years from now, people will panic periodically. Fear is incredibly contagious. When people got worried about their money market funds in September of 2008, you had 30 million Americans with $3-1/2 trillion, half of all the amount of bank deposits and money market funds. A week earlier none of them were worried, and within a couple of days everyone who had a money market fund was worried. And that was something they didn’t expect to be worried about, and they looked at their neighbor and they were worried. And at that time, in three days, 5 percent of all the money marketI mean, there was a run on money market funds like you can’t believe. And I give great credit to the government for taking the actions that they did.

So fear spreads instantaneously. Confidence comes back through the door one at a time. People do notthere’s not such a thing as mass resumption of confidence, but fear just takes over. And that will happen again.

CAROL LOOMIS: And what is your rule about investing?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, you want to be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy. And I’ve got plenty of greed, so I’m just waiting or the fearful part.

CAROL LOOMIS: And just because I shouldn’t skip this real life fact, what company did you buy, announced buying today?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we bought a company from another company in England, and it’s called Cornelius. And it makes equipment which dispenses and cools wonderful beverages like Coca-Cola.

CAROL LOOMIS: Which you hope they will

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we made them put little dispensers. We’ve got a dispenser in the office, but we’ll now have an improved one.

CAROL LOOMIS: And this goes into what company within Berkshire?

WARREN BUFFETT: This goes into Marmon. Marmon itself owns probably 130 companies. It’s a huge conglomerate itself. We bought it from the Pritzker family. We’re just completing the purchase of 100 percent. And it’s an important business for Berkshire. We have five, what I call the powerhouse five, and those five willMarmon is one of themin aggregate they’ll earn well over $10 billion pre-tax this year.

CAROL LOOMIS: Good.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes, I think so. (Laughter.) The more the better.

CAROL LOOMIS: Now I’m going to switch the subject to women. I said that five years ago before I got into the matter of how bad it was in that crisis, I had made one point to the audience, and I never had any reason to change it. And that point was that among all the business executives I knew, and I have known an awful lot over the years, that Warren is the most unbiased about gender and ethnicity of any of them that I’ve ever seen. He just simply has no bias about gender. He does have a bias, a strong one, about competence, intelligence, and character. But those three things are the only ones that he thinks about, and he simply thinks about and no others.

Now, having said that, repeated that very good thing about him, I’m about to turn into a tough reporter.

WARREN BUFFETT: Okay, here we go. But

CAROL LOOMIS: Okay. The point is, and this is what I want to bring up, and first, before I do bring it up, Warren wrote an article for Fortune that ran this spring called “Warren Buffett is bullish … on Women.” And if any of you missed it, you must go back and get it. As a matter of fact, you can even get it in my book called Tap Dancing To Work, which we are just putting out in the paperback version. And I had an opportunity there writing an introduction for this article to editorialize a little bit. And so here’s what that introduction says. It says that despite these strong feelings you have about the competence of women and their ability to completely support and build the economy that you were very slow in getting on the policy train of putting women on your board.

WARREN BUFFETT: Right.

CAROL LOOMIS: Yes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Actually, I didn’t want to put anybody on the board. (Laughter.)

CAROL LOOMIS: That is true. But when you looked around, you didn’t exactly jump to put women on the board. And the first woman, Charlotte Guyman who is here, she went on, and I meant to look up the date and now I’ve forgotten what it was, 2008?

WARREN BUFFETT: It would be, ten to twelve years ago, something like that.

CAROL LOOMIS: It’s quite a while ago. And then Sue Decker went on.

WARREN BUFFETT: A majority of the people in the last ten years have been women.

CAROL LOOMIS: That’s very true. And Meryl Witman went on. So there are three out of board that has how many?

WARREN BUFFETT: Twelve.

CAROL LOOMIS: And why do you think

WARREN BUFFETT: But there are five over 80, and they’re all men. So believe me, you’ve got demographics working for you. (Laughter.)

CAROL LOOMIS: So why do you think that you were a little bit slow in doing this?

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, to be perfectly honest, who knows exactly. I will tell you why, I really didn’twe didn’t want to put anybody on the board until the rules started coming in about having independent directors, and all that. I mean, the board was not a big deal at Berkshire at all. I have a friend that used to like to own 100 percent of any company that he had, because he liked to look in the mirror and say “all my shareholders love me.” (Laughter.) That has a nice ring to it. I like to look in the mirror and say “enough of my shareholders love me,” and for a long time it was treated almost as a private business. Berkshire Hathaway came out of a partnership I ran, which I ran all by myself. I was the only general partner. So it sort of had that history.

So Charlie and I, we had a board because we were required to have a board, but the board did not do much in the past. And then certain legal requirements got added over time. And, frankly, I love the idea that of the directors that are 60 and under, half of them are women now, and there will be more.

CAROL LOOMIS: Okay. That sounds like a good answer.

WARREN BUFFETT: I’m on tape here. You can sue me later on.

CAROL LOOMIS: Okay. Now I’m going to turn to questions from the audience. If they are not crystal clear, I may, for both the audience’s benefit and Warren’s because he goes to the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting, and the first thing he always says, point to Charlie Munger who is sitting by him, he said, Charlie can’t see, and I can’t hear.

WARREN BUFFETT: That’s why we work together. I can’t remember his name anymore, and he can’t remember mine, but we need each other.

CAROL LOOMIS: I’m going to be looking for questions. It’s always difficult up here to see.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes, you can’t see much.

CAROL LOOMIS: Who has their hand up, who has a mike in their hand? Point me where I should be pointing. Over there. How about back there, okay.

QUESTION: Hi, a general question about your thoughts. You said you brought your first stock in 1942. I think right around that time, sometime after World War II, I think prior to that the sterling was the world currency. Then it switched to the U.S. dollar not too long after that. At the time any other country, very similar to markets today, you have to be able to cover your debt, you have to be able to have enough in order to borrow against at that time the sterling. And now we’re looking at a situation with the amount of debt ceiling, I think what’s different between now and ever before is there is the risk of the devaluation or the issue of the U.S. dollar not being the world currency. What’s your view? Do you see that happening, because there’s an awful lot of fear and discussion about it now?

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes, unless we do something incredibly foolish, and I don’t think we will, the dollar will be the world’s currency for a long, long, long, long time. We came out of World War II actually with a higher debt to GDP than we have now. And all of our debt is printed in our own currency. I mean that’s the key. Then the question is do you abuse that in some way so that the currency declines in value at a rapid rate. Well, interestingly enough, I was born in 1930. The dollar from 1930 is worth about six cents today.

So I’ve lived during a period where the dollar has lost 94 percent of its value in terms of purchasing power. And yet at the same time in real terms the GDP of the country per capita has gone up six for one. Six for one just think of that. One person’s lifetime, we went centuries in the world where the gains were nothing in a century, or a few percent. And six for one in one person’s lifetime, at the same time our currency has decreased bywell it went from $1 to 6 cents, 94 percent. And despite all of that, we are the world’s reserve currency and people are willing to lend us money for nothing, virtually, currently in large sums. And I do not see that changing unless we do something incredibly foolish.

Now we have to stabilize the debt as a percentage of GDP, which means we can have debt increase by 2 to 3 percent a year if GDP grows 2 to 3 percent a year. And I think that’s a very realistic possibility. We can’t keep having debt grow at a faster rate than GDP, although it can go on for a long time, and it has gone on for a long time.

Our country, the people who think it’s falling apart, that’s not remotely the case. I was just on a program this morning with Sarah Blakely and Fred Smith. I mean here are two people that took something very common, the postal service and airplanes or something, and they saw needs and they filled them. And they’re thinking of new things to do tomorrow. I mean the secret sauce in America is basically the people in this room and the fact that you’re all trying to make your life better tomorrow, and you’ll come up with ways to do it. So the country works. It may get gummed up somewhat by Washington sometimes, but it won’t get ruined.

CAROL LOOMIS: Another question, and I should have mentioned this before, would you state who you are before asking the question. Where are we? It’s so hard to see.

QUESTION: I have one here.

CAROL LOOMIS: Okay.

QUESTION: Mary Erdoes, JP Morgan Asset Management, right over on your right.

WARREN BUFFETT: All right.

QUESTION: Here we are. Good morning. So as we went through the introductions this morning there were a whole host of women who were taking about either taking their companies public and actually a few of them taking their companies private. And I thought if we could just hear from you on your thoughts on the pros and cons of the public versus private company.

WARREN BUFFETT: Carol and I belong to a group that started in 1968 called the Graham Group. We meet and one time we had a session with two enormously successful people on the panel. I assigned the topic and one of them said he’d give up half his net worth to be private again. And the other one gave exactly the reverse answer. I started out feeling like I wanted to be private. I had run a private partnership and I just enjoyed it that way. I like looking in the mirror and making decisions and not getting any negative votes. And it was a lot of fun.

When we distributed a bunch of Berkshire shares, as part of winding up the partnership and it already was a public company, it became more public then and over time I found it actually more fun to run a public company. But, it’s become a podium. It’s where I can play out my ideas and explain why I do things and have a lot of fun. And Carol edits my letter to make it more readable. And it’s a teaching mechanism, even.

I would say generally speaking that when people come to me with wonderful businesses, and they do, and they talk about selling them to me, my first advice is don’t sell them. I mean wonderful businesses they’re too rare. And if you’ve got one in your family, keep it unless something forces you to sell it. So I would say stay private unless you have a need to go public, in terms of financing, or in terms of solving the problems of ownership within a family that’s going in different directions or something.

But, you can always go public and unless there’s a compelling reason to do it, which is usually fund raising, I don’t see the reason to do it. And going private, you can do it, but that creates a lot more problems. Now you’re faced with buying out your partners unilaterally, and Michael Dell just went through that. That’s not something I would want to do. So I would stay private and then if you really get the urge to cash in I’ve got an 800 number.

CAROL LOOMIS: And just to interrupt here with a question, how about the flurry of activists that we see out there these days? What message would you have for people trying to deal with them?

WARREN BUFFETT: I believe basically that I’m running Berkshire for the people that are going to stay in and not the ones who want to get out. I mean you try to have a decent market and everything for people that want to get out, but basically I’m concerned with the people who want to stay in. And of course most of the activists want to rattle the cage and get management to do something that will give a spurt to the stock, which may not be in the long-term interest of the company.

So I’ve seen plenty of cases where managements are doing things where they deserve a little shaking up. But, I do think that the more in running a business, we don’t make quarterly estimates ever. I don’t care what the company earns this quarter. I really care about what we’re going to be 5 or 10 years from now. And it doesn’t make any difference if I ship a lot of stuff in the last day of the quarter and get some extra few pennies a share earned or something. I don’t want to be thinking that way. I don’t want our managers thinking that way. And I don’t want stockholders who expect me to think that way.

So if an activist comes along to Berkshire and says we think you ought to do this and that I’ll say fine, start your own company and you do it.

CAROL LOOMIS: So I think we can add that you have a bias against activists.

WARREN BUFFETT: Somewhat. There are plenty of managements that deserve some shaking up, too. I don’t want to come down and say that activists are all bad. But, overwhelmingly I do not believe in running a company to respond to people who want to sell their stock in the next few months.

CAROL LOOMIS: Right.

Question?

QUESTION: Hi, I’m Melody Hopson. I want to do a follow-up question to the first question about the currency issue. A lot of that is coming from rhetoric from China that the global economy should be de-Americanized and internationalized is the word that is being used. And I was in China last week where a Chinese official called this the century of the Pacific, that the last century was the century of the Atlantic, which was the U.S. and Western Europe, and this century is the century of the Pacific. I wonder what you think about China, their growing influence, them being our largest debt holder, et cetera, and what the long-term prospects are for the emerging markets.

WARREN BUFFETT: Your friend sounds to me more like an ad man than an economist. But, China is going to be enormously important. And they should be. I mean it will be an economic powerhouse, but so will the United States be. And what is important is that the two countries largely learn to live together. We are going to both be super powers and we’ve got a lot of common interests and we’ve got some things we differ on. And that will always be the case. But, the thing to remember is overwhelmingly we should figure out how to get along.

But the United States will be the super power of the world for a very, very, very long time. China will be gaining in importance for a very, very, very long time. But they start from a lower base. They also have a whole lot more people. So that in sum pointing to the aggregate, they’re going to catch us in GDP. In terms of GDP per capita, I wouldn’t want to bet on that one.

CAROL LOOMIS: Well, and their political systems, what would you say about that, assuming ours is working correctly?

WARREN BUFFETT: It’s hard for me to figure out what’s happening in this country. But the interesting thing is in 1790 we had a little under four million people; China had 300 million people. They had similar resources. They had similar climate. They worked just as hard. They were just as smart. And in the next 200 years we got so we had 25 percent of the world’s GDP, starting with these four million people; and they didn’t really go any place.

And then in the last 40 or 50 years, they have just galloped forward. And so they are starting to unleash human potential in China the same way we’ve been unleashing human potential since 1776. And I’m all for that. We should much prefer to have a prosperous China than a China that has problems. If you postulate two worlds, one in which we’re an island of prosperity, 315 million, and the rest of the world is sitting there envious; or postulate something where the rest of the world is growing even faster than we are, but we’re also benefiting, just choose which world you want. And then think about which world you want if the other guy has some nuclear weapons and happens to be envious of thee. I mean, it is in our interest that the rest of the world does well, and in particular China.

CAROL LOOMIS: Question? Right there, okay.

QUESTION: Barbara Novick with Blackrock. First of all, I love your enthusiasm, and your optimism. Have you given any thought to retirement planning and the longevity problem? Not for yourself, but facing the country? And what should we as a society be doing to help people who are clearly going to live a lot longer?

WARREN BUFFETT: I’m 83 and I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had in my life. So the main thing to do is to be involved with something you love. I tell the students that, and somethingI tell them to take the job you’d take if you were already independently rich. Well, that’s what I’ve got.

We are going to have a problem in this countrywe’re not going to have a problem in terms of turning out more and more stuff. The market system works marvelously in turning out things people want. It’s the marvel of the world. And it will continue to be. Look at just what Apple has done in recent years. The market system works on turning out stuff.

The more specialized it becomes, the more people it will leave behind in terms of getting the bounty of that, unfortunately, and frankly that’s where government has to come in. We have gone in 1982, the Forbes 400I apologize for using the term herebut the Forbes 400 had $90 billion of net worth. They had $2,020,000,000,000 this year, over 20 times as much, an all time record. The people in this room overwhelmingly are doing better than they were five years ago. The people who will serve us lunch later on are not. And the trickle down has not worked very well. It’s still better than being an economy that doesn’t go any place.

But we have solved the problem of more and more goods. We have not solved the problem of having a country with $50,000 of GDP per person, and having 20 percent of the families, 25 million families, 60 million people living in households with $21,000 of income or less. And that’s our challenge. And that gets into the problem of the aging, and all of that.

People in their working years have to take care not only of the old to some extent, but of course they take are o the young. And they sort of tie it with the old to what they produced over their life. They don’t tie that way in the young. If you have ten children, you still get school places for each one of them, and all of that. So that will be the challenge.

I think we’ll be up to that challenge, and we’ve certainly got the ingredients to be up to that challenge. We are wealthy. We are a wealthy family. A number of the members of the family aren’t really sharing in that the way I would hope they would.

CAROL LOOMIS: And you, of course, have spoken out quite loudly about this problem, and your viewpoint about what should be done about taxes.

WARREN BUFFETT: Yes.

CAROL LOOMIS: Any change in what you think about that?

WARREN BUFFETT: No. No. I hesitate bringing it up, but even last year my tax rate counting payroll taxes was the lowest in the office of 25 people, and I have no tax shelters. I just thank you lobbyists. They’ve taken care of me.

I’ve filed a tax return every year since I was 13. And we took the years by decades and compared taxes to taxable income. And the last decade, and believe me it’s been my best decade, has been just about the lowest of any decade in terms of my tax rate. It was tougher when I was selling shirts are Penney’s.

CAROL LOOMIS: And a big part of this problem is that people never stop to think about the employment taxes.

WARREN BUFFETT: The payroll tax is $900 billion. It’s 30 percent of our total government expenditures, very roughly. And it quits at $105,000, or something like that. So it’s regressive, basically. My payroll tax as a percentage of my total income is zilch. The payroll tax of most of the people in the office as a percentage is now again 15 plus percent. And if they’ve got spouses working, you can have a household of $200,000 of income, and they’ve got 15 percent payroll taxes right off the bat.

It’s gotten pretty extreme. If you look at the distribution of taxes since World War II, the payroll tax has just consistently gone up as a percentage of the total revenues of the government. And corporate income taxes have gone down dramatically. Corporate income taxes used to be 4 percent of GDP, they’re now 1-1/2 percent of GDP. Corporate profits are at an all-time record. But we hear all the lobbyists for the corporations telling us how we’re not competitive with the rest of the world, and everything, which is a lot of baloney

CAROL LOOMIS: So there.

WARREN BUFFETT: Put me down as undecided.

CAROL LOOMIS: Another question right here.

QUESTION: Hi, Alexandra Lebenthal, Lebenthal and Company. You entered the municipal bond insurance business at an interesting time, and I think subsequently had some second thoughts about it. And I would love to know your feelings on that industry now, especially given where certain cities and commonwealths are.

WARREN BUFFETT: We did start guaranteeing municipals five years ago or so. AT the time we were getting premiums of probably over 3 percent, averaging over 3 percent, sometimes 4 or 5 percent. And in almost all cases, we had other municipal bond insurers that came ahead of us. So we were second to pay, third to pay, fourth to pay sometimes, and getting this pretty fat rate. And then the rates went down dramatically, and for the same risk within a year or two we would have probably only been getting a quarter of the premium. And insurance is attractive at one price, and it’s not attractive at another price. So when rates leave us, we leave the business, basically, and that’s what we did. If rates were high enough, or appropriate in our view as to the risk involved, we would ensure municipals again. I mean, we’re selective about it. But we just weren’t getting paid enough.

QUESTION: Can I say one thing, I have the mike on, for the sake of the Buffett family, for Susie, for other friends of Warren, Buffett is B-u-f-f-e-t-t. So if you’re tweeting, Warren is verified, so I just wanted to say that. Thank you.

WARREN BUFFETT: Unless you’re saying anything bad, in which case spell it any damned way you please.

CAROL LOOMIS: And I have a history, as you well know, of the first time I ever mentioned the name Buffett in Fortune in 1966 I misspelled it.

WARREN BUFFETT: I forgive you.

CAROL LOOMIS: All right, I’m over it. Okay. Over here.

QUESTION: Warren, I’m glad you

CAROL LOOMIS: Who are you?

QUESTION: I’m sorry Janice Ellig, with Chadick Ellig, an executive search firm. We have such a wealth of talent in this room, and I’m really glad that you’re bullish on women. But don’t you think we have a corporate governance issue in corporate America?

You know, there are so many studies about if you have more women in the C suite and more women in the boardroom you have higher performance. Credit Suisse Research Institute in surveying 2,400 companies globally proved that. And so did McKinsey in other research that’s been done. But, we have nearly 40 percent of the Fortune 500 have zero or one women in the boardroom. So how are we going to get this moving in the boardrooms with more women in the C suite? I know you’re a big proponent, but how is this going to happen?

WARREN BUFFETT: I do like Berkshire as a teaching mechanism. And we’ll show that to some extent and have been at Berkshire. But listen, people in power don’t give it up easily. That’s true in religion. It’s true in the military. It’s true every place. And to some extent it just doesn’t surface much and that’s one of the reasons I wrote the article and I addressed it specifically to men at the end. I think, I said it in the article; it makes me very bullish on America. When I think of how far this country came using half of its talent, I mean just think of what the potential is using all of its talent. And we did just use half of the talent for a long time. I mean even the 19th Amendment didn’t affect change that fast. My sisters were born a couple of years each side of me in 1930. And they are absolutely as smart as I am and more personable and they did not have the same chances. It wasn’tmy parents loved them equally, the teachers sort of felt they were all entitled to the same chance, but it was just 1,000 different ways they were told that their job was to marry well, or maybe get a job as a secretary, or a nurse, and all of that talent went to waste. And I was lucky, because I was only competing against half of the country. And I don’t think it should stay that way. And it’s moved a fair distance but it’s got a long way to go, too. I don’t know about in Europe there’s been some legislation of percentages of women directors. I don’t know whether that’s the best way to go or not, but I think Berkshire is going to prove that a lot of women, talented women can accomplish a whole lot for the shareholders.

CAROL LOOMIS: And talk just for a moment about the point you’ve made that education and you and I benefited personally from the fact that women had so few careers open to us when you and I were growing up.

WARREN BUFFETT: I went to public school in the mid to late ’30s, in grammar school, and I had nothing but women teachers, and they were terrific. And of course, they should have been terrific, because half of the talent of the country was being compressed into these few occupations, teachers, nurses, secretaries, and retail clerks. And if you forced all of the men to become accountants you would have had one hell of a group of accountants. But, you would have wasted all kinds of talent.

I mean the idea of setting limits as to what talented people can do is just crazy. And that was being done in the ’30s and it benefited me, because I would not havethose same teachers would have had jobs that paid better, many of them would have had jobs that paid better and society would have been better off. But, in terms of my own personal equation I got the benefit of the fact that wonderfully talented people were just being pushed into the slot that said teacher.

CAROL LOOMIS: We have time for one more quick question, right here.

QUESTION: Hi, Elizabeth Gore, resident entrepreneur at the United Nations Foundation. We admire so much your legacy and philanthropy and your children’s philanthropy. I’d love to just hear your philosophy around that.

WARREN BUFFETT: Well, my friend Charlie gave away some money the other day; he said it won’t do me much good where I’m going. So I’ve got everything in life I want. And it uses a very tiny percentage of my resources. So I have some stock certificates that I bought 40 or 50 years ago down in a safe deposit box and they have no utility to me. They can’t buy anything for me that I need or want. I can go down and fondle them occasionally or something of the sort. But, other than that they’re just pieces of paper.

They have enormous utility for other people, particularly if used wisely. They have no utility for me. So why in the world should I sit there and let them sit in a box and I have never given away a penny that has affected my life in any way, shape, or form. There’s people that this Sunday will drop $5 into a collection plate and it makes the difference between whether they go out for dinner or something, or go to a movie. I’ve never done any of that. But, if you have this incredible surplus and in our Giving Pledge we call thesewe only call on people with $1 billion, and I’m only asking them for half. So I say to them when they turn me down I say, you know, I’m going to write a book on how to live on $500 million, because there’s apparently a big need for this. (Laughter, applause.)

I found I can live on $500 million and a lot less. So all the rest is surplus and why not do it. If it can provide vaccines, or education, or whatever it may be, or a better life for women, I mean why not use it?

CAROL LOOMIS: I think we’re at the end of this and I hope you’ll join with me in thanking Warren for having been here. (Cheers, applause.)

WARREN BUFFETT: Thank you.

END

The youngest member of the Court, Kagan became a high court justice in 2010. Before catching President Obamas eye, she was Harvard Law Schools first female dean. She became famous for small acts that lifted students morale — like flooding a campus lawn to create an ice rink or free coffee in the morning.

The thinking behind the spirit-boosting stemmed from her time working in the Clinton administration in the 1990s. Clinton had plenty of critics regarding his small-bore initiatives, but Kagan was a fan. Those tiny treats didnt break the bank, she told the crowd, and let the law students know that theyre living in an institution that cared about them and their concerns. She then joked that no matter what she does in her career, she would still be known as the Free Coffee Dean.

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With a prominent new title that may expunge her label as the Free Coffee Dean, Kagan remains regarded as a great boss. She finds that thinking funny. That was definitely not true in large parts of my life. I had to develop those skills. Running Harvards law school taught her a great amount about dealing with a variety of personality types — and she also learned from some serious errors. I think people grow up, she added.

Upon joining the nine-person U.S. Supreme Court, Kagan applauded the institutions culture. You see some institutions in Washington that dont work that well, she said, alluding to thelegislative branch. Were nine people, we disagree a lot. But we all like each other an enormous amount and respect each other an enormous amount. Though that sort of relationship doesnt equate to a 9-0 vote on every issue, Kagan said it oils the institution’s operations, and she credits Chief Justice Roberts for setting the agreeable tone.

The Justices’ healthy relationships perhaps stem from the fact that their in-boxes will never be cluttered with rash emails from one another. They communicate by memos on heavy ivory paper (Its sort of 19^th century, Kagan teased) or they simply talk to each other in person, which is not a bad thing, she added. How many emails have you sent that you wish you could take back? she then asked the crowd of business executives. The slower method forces the Justices to communicate in a more deliberate and reasonable way.

Kagan also said the lack of cameras at the Supreme Court assist with its functionality. Though opening cases up to the media has its plus side — I think its a pretty good show. [Its] nine people who are very prepared, who really want to get the answer right. — there are the obvious downsides. Im not sure cameras have had such a great effect on the way Congress does its business, Kagan said.

Despite the Supreme Courts apparent organizational success, Kagan was quick to acknowledge her faults. Learn from your errors and know that youre not going to be perfect, but you can get better, she advised the audience. Its healthy to discuss mistakes — and with a laugh she added, but not necessarily in this particular [Most Powerful Women] forum.

At Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., HSN HSNI CEO Mindy Grossman, President of Disney/ABC Television Group DIS Anne Sweeney, and Instagram FB director of business operations Emily White dove into the subject heads-first, talking about the evolution of online communities and how to best create them today.

In 2005, Disney closed its first deal with iTunes, and Sweeney remembered realizing the accessibility opportunities her divisions shows suddenly possessed. This past year, she launched WATCH, a platform that allows certain Disney and ABC subscribers to watch programs on any device. Such technological developments help scale the shows viewer bases, but they dont necessarily create community. Social media, instead, allows for a conversation around the programs. Thats the community, the gathering effect, Sweeney explained, referring to social clouds surrounding shows likeScandalandPretty Little Liars.

MORE:Complete coverage of the Most Powerful Women Summit

To create even more meaningful conversations, while also helping the bottom line, Sweeneys division thoughtfully approaches partnerships. For instance, Revenge worked with Target TGT and Neiman Marcus last year to produce products. The brands exclusively created the Gift of Revenge, the only commercials played during last years November 11 episode, and viewers could follow the mysterious storyline online and purchase the advertised items. Youre hosting the party initially, explained Sweeney. But if youre good at it, you truly become a part of that community.

Grossman agreed, citing how HSN uses great storytelling to push its products. (During Fashion Week last year, the company partnered with Conde Nast brands like Allure, Lucky, and Wired to strengthen its fashion and technology story.) Grossman also emphasized the need to listen to the communities her company creates. If you invite a community in and ask for feedback, you better be responsive, she said. HSN has several platforms that allow for customers to submit feedback and contribute to the companys product development. Were not just a receptacle for feedback.

That shift from audience-community to a collaborative-community is right up White and Instagrams alley. The companys users built its voice, White said. In its early days, it created an environment of beautiful but selective images. The simplicity of the Instagram product allowed the community to expand without feeling like the company was controlling its growth direction.

White currently is focusing on monetizing Instagram, which means advertisers will soon be part of the community mix. That disruption presents a challenge, but her previous experience at Facebook prepared her. Early at Facebook, advertisers pumped out information and refused to let users comment on it for fear of the negative. But smart ones came back, she added, and said community is about engagement.

Regardless of the type of community a company’s building, control is difficult for it to give up. Theres not a generalized best practice, said White. It depends on the situation. But transparency is the first step. [Communities] want to interact with you, Sweeney agreed. You cant hold everything back if you expect to have a relationship.

FORTUNE — How do you do it all? Its a familiar question often directed toward women who attempt to balance a career with family. Implicit is the assumption that of course something is being sacrificed. If the kids are happy, the job is suffering. And if along the way, you also write a best-selling book and launch a foundation to help promote the cause, then surely everything must be close to implosion.

Unless, of course, youre Sheryl Sandberg.

Ranking number five on Fortunes list of The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business, Facebooks FB chief operating officer spoke Oct. 17 at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. Her message was clear: Its time to turn the question on men.

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We live in a world of and for men, said Sandberg. Men can have careers and families. We are always asking women, How can you have it all?’ Lots of men write books while they are in big jobs.

Sandberg has had a mammoth year.Lean In, her book on women and leadership, has become a rallying cry for a generation of ambitious women attempting to balance the constantly shifting demands of parenting and building a career. She has recently launched a foundation with a staff dedicated to supporting women (and men) as they start Lean In circles, small voluntary groups in which members offer each other career support. As my colleague Miguel Helft wrote in his Oct. 7 cover story on Sandberg, she is making feminism mainstream again. She has done all of this while leaning in herself; Sandberg is the chief dealmaker at Facebook FB , which has seen its stock jump roughly 140% in the past year to around $50.

With so much professional momentum, Sandberg was pushed hard to answer the question everyone always asks: Whats next? Plenty of speculators have posited that Sandberg, having begun her career at the U. S. Treasury Department, might get into politics. But she told Fortunes audience she has no plans to run for office. For the moment, she is happy working for a company she cares about. Facebooks mission to connect everyone in the world offers her a cause she can rally behind — and the flexibility to pursue new causes of her own.

Shes had to put 2,000 employees on furlough at the worlds largest defense contractor, and that number will grow the longer the shutdown goes on, she said at Fortunes Most Powerful Womens Summit on Wednesday. Im encouraged that it looks like were going to get to some kind of deal, she said.

Hewson also voiced her concerns around budget sequestration, taking issue with its across-the-board cuts. Its a law and policy thats not good for our nation or national security, she said. We need to address long-term fiscal problems, but we need to do it in way that lines up with national security strategy. The $47 billion defense company works on more than just missiles, she noted, projects that could also be impacted by cuts: the next generation of GPS, satellites that let you monitor the weather, and air traffic control, to name a few.

Hewson, who took over as CEO of Lockheed in January, is one of three women heading up U.S. defense companies. She pointed out that a quarter of Lockheeds workforce is comprised of women. I dont think its the ultimate boys club anymore, if it ever was, she said.

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Also headed by a woman: Lockheeds F-35 fighter jet business, the largest weapons program in U.S. history, which makes up 15% of the companys sales. The program has come under attack as a symbol of government waste, but Hewson said its been on an excellent trajectory for the last three years. Production is ramping up, and it now has 10,000 hours of flight time.

Hewson also brought up one woman whos had a major influence on her life — her 94-year-old mother. Hewsons father passed away when she was nine years old, and her mother worked two jobs to support her five children. Hewsons mother used to hand her a grocery list with $7 worth of groceries and a $5 bill and tell her to make it work. Her expectation was, I dont want to hear excuses, she says. Just handle it. She instilled in her daughter a sense of resilience and self-reliance. My dad was a successful man, and all of a sudden there she was, she said. It taught me nothings forever.

Lockheed Martin moved Hewson through a plethora of roles, with the CEO job ranking as her 20th at the company. That kind of talent development is ingrained throughout the defense contractor, she said. Im a product of that succession planning process, she added. Hewson was set to be COO, a position that would likely have been her last at the company, until the CEO-in-waiting resigned over an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate.

FORTUNE — With the debt default threat seemingly receding, its time to take stock of how this near-disaster came to pass. Theres been no shortage of culprits named. Heres a new one: testosterone. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) took the stage at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit to make the case that increasing the ranks of women in Congressional leadership would decrease the toxic acrimony that almost pitched us over the brink.

It is absolutely the case in my opinion that so many more women are willing to work together and find consensus and when youre trying to figure it out and achieve a goal or youre struggling with different opinions, most of the time, a woman is not interested in obliterating the woman on the other side of the table, she said to laughter. Thats not always the case when you negotiate with men or men are trying to reach common ground.

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Wasserman Schultz, who also chairs the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged shes also a committed partisan. But she said shes been working on setting it aside to get to know her colleagues across the aisle on a personal level. And as a woman she said shes better equipped to find common ground: We joke among House members if they had just locked all the women in a room for a few hours, we would have had this done ages ago.

FORTUNE — If Olympia Snowe were House Speaker John Boehner, she would have done a few things differently.

I would never have agreed to the strategy of delaying or defunding the Affordable Care Act, she said. It certainly wasnt a winning strategy. And it clearly wasnt an achievable strategy in a divided government.

Her other would-be priority for Congress, is doing your job. The House and Senate should have passed budget and appropriations bills without extensive delays, she said. I believe in getting in front of the train, she said. Not being run over by it.

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Snowe, a Republican senator from Maine who resigned last year over frustrations about partisan gridlock and inaction, spoke Wednesday at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit. Her comments came as lawmakers showed signs of reaching a long overdue debt-ceiling deal, just hours before the government would lose the ability to manage its debts.

Snowe offered a dour assessment of the legislatures recent track record. We have deferred every major issue for the last two years, she said. This will be regarded as the lost year.

In order to give Congress a greater incentive to act, Snowe has advocated that lawmakers not get paychecks unless they pass a budget. Right now, were in the fourth year in which the United States of America is operating without a budget, she said. Instead of working through the countrys challenges, many key issues are simply never discussed, let alone solved.

It was that frustration over Congresss inability to make even simple decisions that drove her to quit, Snowe said Wednesday. It wasnt an easy call.She said she woke up worried in the middle of the night shortly before she had to turn in her signatures to secure a place on the ballot. She was all set for her reelection bid, but she couldnt reconcile the type of work she wanted to do with the type of workplace the Senate had become. Snowe said she ultimately resigned partially to reaffirm peoples frustration, but more than that, to tell America how you can change it. Voters should not settle for the lowest common denominator in terms of leadership, she said.

The solution? More political engagement. The alternative is little to no accountability, particularly for the more volatile factions within the House and Senate. We get the government we demand, Snowe said. If we value bipartisanship and collaboration, well get it. But if we dont, we wont.

The choice for voters is stark, she said: If we allow our political system to be subjugated to the fringe factions or to ideological interests or the podium-thumping belligerents that were witnessing today, then thats the government were going to get.

FORTUNE — With a last-minute debt deal winding its way through the legislature, the worst of the uncertainty that has roiled global markets in recent weeks may be past. But the upheaval has already undermined confidence in the U.S., even as the economy shows signs of life. Under the shadow of a looming U.S. default in September, Mary Erdoes, head of J.P. Morgans JPM $2.2 trillion asset management business, sold every treasury she held that matured in the month of October or that had a coupon payment in the month of October. And we had a lot of them, she said.

She didnt do it because she thought there would be a debt-ceiling breach — she felt the possibility of a U.S. default was low. But with the relentless uncertainty in Washington, Thats what your day is all about, youre just stress-testing all those tail events, she said. Erdoes spoke Tuesday at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. She joined a panel of other fund managers to speak about what the recent political uncertainty means for their businesses. The short answer: It makes the job a lot harder.

After Erdoes sold the funds treasuries, it put the money in basically just overnight cash stuff so we can wait to get through this time period, she said.

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Carol Deckbar, EVP and COO of asset management at TIAA-CREF, said that she and her team felt the market would be liquid enough and did not sell. But thats partially because, The choices for what we could buy down the road were no better, she said.

Despite the severity of the self-inflicted problems in the U.S., there are still opportunities amid the confusion. The really smart people will just buy stocks, Erdoes said. Theyre just waiting for that moment when the market really starts to worry. One of her greatest stresses as a fund manager is convincing investors to get back in the market, she says, or theyre going to miss it.”

Of course, its not so easy to outsmart the tribe. Congress has cried wolf with the markets many times, said Karen Finerman, author and CEO of Metropolitan Capital Advisors. I think even if you told me exactly what was going to happen on Thursday right now, I wouldnt know if the market would go up or down because I dont know if the market has digested that already.

That doesn’t mean company valuations are driven only by fundamentals. Politics still wields big influence over stocks. Weve been in a macro-driven market for years now, Finerman said. We were just starting to get out of it before the shutdown.

MORE: Who is willing to train tomorrow’s workers?

Despite the political chaos, the money managers Tuesday agreed that the U.S. is on the road to recovery. Personal debt levels are back down to 1985 levels, Erdoes says, putting greater power behind consumer spending. Also, the countrys economy is still growing some 2% annually, a rate that might be as much as 1.5 percentage points higher if it werent for uncertainty over macro issues such as instability in Europe and U.S. political gridlock.

For investors, that growth is good news even better than Congress pending last-minute temporary debt deal. The U.S. is going through a renaissance, said Wellington Denahan, CEO at Annaly Capital Management. As long as policy makers dont screw that up, I do think the momentum can continue.

FORTUNE — Baroness Shriti Vadera, a former U.K. cabinet office minister, delivered some sober news on Wednesday: The United States is one of two or three countries where older people have higher level skills than younger people.

And there was more: We might be the only generation to not bequeath a better life to the next one, she said.

Speaking at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., Vadera, who was an economic adviser to former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hit on the issue of the skills gap — the mismatch between what background and expertise employers need from employees and the skills that job candidates possess.

The skills gap is considered a hurdle in the U.S.’s efforts to fully recover from its most recent recession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that despite the fact that 12 million Americans are currently looking for work, U.S. companies have nearly 4 million open jobs. Last year, for instance, Microsoft MSFT announced that it was having trouble filling its 6,000 open positions because it couldnt find job candidates in the U.S. with adequate qualifications.

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According to Vadera, the skills gap spells trouble America’s future ability to compete in the global market. Its also bad news for the countrys long-term prosperity since people not living up to their potential permanently puts a depression on the economy, she said.

Vadera shared the stage at the summit with Joyce Russell, president of Adecco Staffing U.S., who advocated for companies’ use of flexible workers, the kind who are employed by staffing firms like Adecco, which loans workers to its client companies. Russell argued that such arrangements allow companies and workers to try each other on for size and often lead to full-time employment.

Vadera argued that the use of such flexible workers contributes to the growing skills gap. If a company employs temporary workers, its not going to put resources towards advancing their skills. Why would you invest in [employees] skills if theyre just going to leave? she asked.

Corporations investment in worker skills is crucial, Vadera said, since you cant expect the public sector to address workforce training needs on its own.

FORTUNE — Economic experts gathering in Washington, D.C., to puzzle over where the global recovery is headed understandably circled back to its gravest immediate threat. After all, the menace of a U.S. debt default has seemed to be rumbling just outside and all around Fortunes Most Powerful Womens Summit, convened at a Mandarin Oriental perched between the White House and the Capitol. Even as lawmakers neared a resolution up the street, the proximity to the epicenter of what would be a world-rattling economic temblor elicited broad agreement about what we should be doing instead from top advisors to Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

Laura Tyson, a top Obama brain now teaching at UC Berkeley, said she is embarrassed in the international community by the default brinkmanship. Economic and financial leaders in the global community really do right this moment see the greatest threat to global economic health residing in our Congress and its unwillingness to make clear to the world we stand behind our Treasuries and our debt. Susan Schwab, who served as Bushs top trade negotiator, was less alarmist, contending business leaders have rightly seen past the posturing to operate under the assumption lawmakers wont willfully precipitate a meltdown.

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But otherwise, they agreed — on pursuing trade policy that opens foreign markets to U.S. exports; on improving our K-12 schools to close the skills gap depressing employment; on the transformative promise of our shale boom; on the need for immigration and tax reform, and on. No doubt digging deeper would expose some profound divergences in approach. But the broad outlines of this competitiveness agenda have been uttered so often by conference panelists of all political stripes itd be banal by now if it werent for the fact that policymakers havent so much as scratched its surface. Lately, theyve been too busy trying to defuse the bomb Tea Party-backed Republicans were trying to detonate under the economy in the name of a misbegotten, unformed demand for fairness.

Thats a point Tyson made after her other co-panelist, Campbell Soup Co. CPB CEO Denise Morrison, listed a familiar to-do list for Washington (tax reform, immigration reform, energy, innovation, and technology) and suggested swallowing it whole. Its not that people wouldnt agree with the agenda you just set out, Tyson said, but even sensible moves like streamlining the corporate tax code quickly become entrenched ideological struggles. Thats my biggest concern. We agree on an agenda but we politically cant find a way to make decisions to pursue them. Its a point confirmed starkly by the events unfolding around the conference.

Diana Nyad is not one to downplay her accomplishments. On her record-setting swim from Cuba to Key West: “Without sounding too full of hubris, it was epic,” she said of her 110-mile journey. In a conversation with Chelsea Handler, Nyad regaled the audience at Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday with tales of her childhood and how her best friend Bonnie Stoll inspired her to swim just five strokes more when she thought she couldn’t go any further.

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An unedited transcript follows:

ANDY SERWER: And now it is my great pleasure to introduce the Honorable Christine Lagarde, Chairman of the IMF.

Just a word about her first, though. She, obviously, is a singular human being. An incredible intellect, super accomplished, fascinating person. There are just so many facets of Christine. She was a synchronized swimmer. Went to school here in the United States.

Her first job, by the way, was the same first job that Susan Collins had. They were both staffers for William Cohen, of course the defense secretary, U.S. Senator from Maine, and in Christine’s case, congressman from Maine. Nina has some more interesting details about that as well.

I had the chance to have dinner with Christine at the French Embassy last year and she told me wonderful stories about traveling around America on a Greyhound bus when she was a young woman, really getting to know the United States, she said, “Better than many of you I bet.”

She ended up in San Francisco where she worked at a restaurant that ostensibly was serving French food, she says, but it was so terrible that she quit. (Laughter.) And she ended up, listen to this, it’s amazing. She ended up being a tour guide for French tourists touring Alcatraz. (Laughter.) True.

Then she became a lapsed prison tour guide, a lapsed prison tour guide, and went into the law. Went on to lead Baker and McKenzie, where she worked with all kinds of incredible legal talent, including my brother.

Then, of course, she went to France where she became trade minister and finance minister as well. Jumped over to the IMF and became the chairman there in 2011.

It’s not a coincidence that Christine Lagarde is at the very fore of trying to solve the world’s economic problems with that kind of background and intellect. And I think it’s very interesting that her and Angela Merkel over in Europe and then Susan Collins and her colleagues in the Senate, as well as now Janet Yellen, are part of the solution. Whereas I think you can make the case that there are certain men in the House of Representatives are still part of the problem. (Applause.)

Anyway, without any further ado, please welcome the Honorable Christine Lagarde, Chairman of the IMF, and Nina Easton. (Applause.)

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NINA EASTON: Well, good evening. We are so delighted to have Madame Lagarde. We’ve tried a few times before, and I want to give a good shout-out to our mutual friend, Ambassador Sue Schwab (ph.) for convincing you to come. (Applause.)

So Andy shared with us, obviously, needless to say, there’s a lot of financial crisis issues that we have to deal with in this conversation. But as is our prerogative at Most Powerful Women’s Summit, we want to get to know you a little bit first.

Andy started that process, and of course everybody knows the “firsts” about you. The first chair of Baker and McKenzie law firm, first finance minister of a G8 country, first female IMF director.

But there are a lot of little-known facts about your time here in America. You did work for William Cohen where you opened mail during the Watergate period you got from French Canadian citizens from Maine and you had to do “impeach Nixon, don’t impeach Nixon” that was sort of your job.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Right.

NINA EASTON: The other interesting thing about you is that you spent a year at Holton Arms. You were pretty daring, you smoked cigarettes, you used chamomile in your hair to make it blonder. You ate copious amounts of yogurt.

But here’s the most interesting fact to me: You hated math. And, in fact, in the yearbook you said, “Please, no more math.” (Laughter.) How did someone who hates math become the most important woman on the international financial scene? (Laughter.) (Applause.)

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, thank you very much for the introduction. (Laughter.)

I did. And, actually, I think I still do. But I think the way math was taught both at Holton and prior to that in French school was certainly not conducive to people not so inclined to actually like math.

When I then studied law and economics actually a bit, there are lots of things that I liked about having a more scientific approach, but I still don’t like math to this day. And I’m delighted that I have really fantastic econometrists, experts in modeling, people who know it all about math. And I listen to them and I pick their brain.

NINA EASTON: It gives us all hope, us math haters. (Laughter.) So you know, when you interview for this — the IMF job, it wasn’t just given. I mean, you went through a pretty grueling process. Can you describe that?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, the process had to do with having the support of as many countries as possible. And there were a few competitors to begin with. The most serious one was my friend Augustin Carstens, who is now governor of the Central Bank of Mexico.

So he was zig-zagging the world in one direction, and I was zig-zagging the world in the other direction to make sure that we did not meet. And yet, we had to cover the same authorities and the same countries around the world.

So I never traveled as extensively as I did at that time. And then that was followed once the sort of the short list was arrived at, that was followed by an interview with members of the board, which was quite, quite an experience because that board still today only has one — it’s a board of 24 members, and there is only one woman on the board. There are a few alternates, but as far as members are concerned, there is only one female member, and that’s the U.S. representative.

But that day, Meg had to attend the Article 4 review with Treasury and the Fed, so she was not sitting at the table. As a result of which, I was interviewed by 24 men, which was an interesting phenomenon when you are yourself minister of finance, you’ve handled the presidency by France of the G20, you’ve gone through the crisis of 2008-2009, and there you are facing 24 very courteous, respectful, and nice men. (Laughter.) It came as a shock. Yeah.

NINA EASTON: And did you have to cram? I mean, was it a difficult learning process to get through that?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: It was exhausting because prior to the 24 board setting, I had to spend half an hour with each of the 24 over a course of two days. So that was a bit –

NINA EASTON: Nothing comes easy, even in your life.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: No. No. No.

NINA EASTON: And it’s interesting, some career choices have been made — or at least one was made for you in that the male-dominated French school that churns out French politicians and bureaucrats and so forth, you were turned down twice by that school.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes.

NINA EASTON: Talk about that. But also some career choices that — decisions that you’ve had to make along the way, and what was the best advice you ever got?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, I think having been turned down twice, first time for incompetency, the second for having missed the deadline. (Laughter.)

NINA EASTON: What do you mean by that, “incompetency”? In what way?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: I wasn’t prepared enough. I hadn’t studied hard enough. And I was in love that year, so I spent a lot more time — (laughter.)

And the second time around, I missed the deadline. And I think that was a missed — you know, whether that was a good turnout of things or not, I don’t know. But suffice it to say that I went back a few years later and I was asked to give a speech to those young, bright kids. And I have to say that that day I felt really, really powerful. You know? (Laughter.) I had flunked, and there I was coming to tell them about the legalization of society or some really obscure matter that they had no interest in, actually. (Laughter.)

But two things that I take away from that is you fail somewhere, bounce back, get on with it, have a few drinks or whatever takes you away from that. But move on. Don’t start — don’t feel sorry about yourself. Don’t lose confidence. Just move on. Move to something else.

The second time I felt exactly the same is when I interviewed in Paris at the time for one of the top law firms. And I had all the credentials and I had done all the right things and the resume was fine and I was behaving properly and all the rest of it.

And the hiring partner, who was also the managing partner, said to me, “Well, we’ll take you. We’ll take you as an associate, but don’t expect ever to make partnership.” And that was a really, really very high-standing, excellent law firm. And I said, “Well, why is that?” That was back in ’79. And he said, “Well, because you’re a woman.”

So, again, you know, I packed up my things and I just run. I didn’t want to have anything to do with these people. So sometimes you have to pick your fight and really persist. But on other occasions, if people don’t deserve you, just go, move on. (Applause.)

NINA EASTON: Did you get advice along the way, or did you create your advice?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: You know, in those days, there was not much by way of mentoring, coaching, and support. So I had my mother to support me. And she was an extraordinary support.

NINA EASTON: And you lost your father when you were just 16?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yeah. And I constantly opposed my mother, but she was nonetheless a great support and I didn’t really know it, but she was a role model. And I constantly had my fights with her, but we often do that. Daughters’ and mothers’ relationships are complicated.

But then I was hired by a female partner back at McKenzie, and she was a role model for me. She was the strongest, she was in my view, the best lawyer in the firm. And she was always discreetly in those days, you had to do things quite discreetly. She would support the young female associates.

NINA EASTON: And “elegant” I think you said she was.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: She was, yeah, yeah. Always.

NINA EASTON: I’m going to let you say this in French, you’ve referred to this, the sort of “bite the bullet and keep smiling.” You say it.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Grit your teeth and smile.

NINA EASTON: Grit your teeth and smile. So that’s a phrase I believe you learned during synchronized swimming, a sport that you took up which, interestingly enough, you took it up in 1968 when the schools were shut down over a student protest.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes, right.

NINA EASTON: But you went into synchronized swimming.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Right.

NINA EASTON: You’ve also said that as a woman, you have to elbow your way in. What’s an example in recent years, or especially at the IMF, where you’ve had to apply both of those or either of those precepts?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: No, I’m not sure I would say “elbow your way in” because in that, there is something of sort of push people out of your way. I think you can very much progress and make your way as Holton would say (Latin phrase) if you remember.

NINA EASTON: Yeah.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: For those who don’t speak Latin on a day-to-day basis, I’ll find my way, and if I don’t find it, I will make it.

So I think you can actually make your way. You can follow your destiny without necessarily being aggressive, without pushing people. You can let other people progress as well along the way. But you should not shy away from the things that you feel strongly about.

And I’ll give you an example. When we had to deal with Greece quite a lot in the last few years. And about two years ago, we had great difficulties about what was the next step. And was the debt sustainable or not? And over what period of time would it become sustainable?

And there was a lot of disagreement, a lot of controversy, a lot of political ganging on that particular topic. But I knew we were right. I knew we had checked the numbers times and again. And I knew that the debt sustainability analysis that we were producing was sound, solid, and was a good principle on which to build to help that country restore the situation.

So I stood my ground. And when Angela Merkel said, “Christine, you know, how can you be so certain? Debt sustainability analysis is only a debt sustainability analysis, after all.” And I said, “Yeah, but that’s where you want to anchor everything you do. And if you throw zillion in a country, you want to have a good anchoring point.” So that, to me, was a bit of a defining moment when we stood our ground. Other members of the troika were not necessarily as convinced as we were. But it wasn’t elbowing my way, it was saying, “We’ve done it. We’ve reviewed it. It’s solid in terms of analysis, and we have to build around it.”

NINA EASTON: And you got some heat for that. And you got some heat for suggesting that the Greek style of paying taxes probably wasn’t up to snuff.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes.

NINA EASTON: And you got some heat when you said that the European banks were under capitalized. Let’s take that sharp eye to Europe right now and tell us what needs to be done.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: A lot needs to be done. But I want to, because it’s easy to go for the euro bashing, that’s been the game for the last two years. And they have done an awful lot.

For people who don’t understand Europe, they don’t understand what they’ve done. But I’ve been finance minister for four years, and they have done a lot. What they need to do today is keep up. Keep up the work. Keep up the reform that they have started doing. You know, that’s the case for the product and service market. It’s the case for the labor market. It’s the case particularly in the banking sector.

There’s a lot of fragmentation still going on. There is not a good monetary transmission going on. They have to work on that. They have to continue the job that they have started. They will be doing a lot of what they call balance sheet assessment, asset quality review, stress testing, and all the rest of it.

I don’t think we should start from the basis that they’re going to do a bad job. We should give them the credit of wanting to do it seriously, wanting to coordinate the work from the ECB where Mario Draghi has done an extraordinary job to rescue that zone.

But now that they want to do it, it’s going to be messy. There will be obstacles. There will be hiccups on the way. There will be bumps on the road. The media will say how terrible it is. At the end of the day, they will make it. I’m convinced of it, and I think that there is the political will, the political urge to actually keep it together.

Those people, some of them have suffered in their flesh, in their family from what’s happened back 70 years ago, they’re not going to let it drop like that because of lack of courage. Their courage will be eventually there to respond to the challenge.

It’s a huge challenge. You bring 18 countries together. I’m talking about the Eurozone here. You bring 18 countries with 18 different flags, 18 different national anthems, 18 different defense, and you ask them to have one single currency, one single set of fiscal policies that are compatible with each other and to bring their banking system under one roof with one resolution system. It’s a big job.

NINA EASTON: Yeah, I’d love to go beyond this, there’s so much more to say about this. (Applause.)

Time is short, so we do have to turn your attention a little closer to this town. I thought of your precept, grit my teeth, when you had all the ministers here this weekend and you watched what was going on on the Hill.

I wonder, you know, but you’ve also spent a lot of time here and understand the political system here.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: I’m not sure about that.

NINA EASTON: Were you explaining it or tearing your hear out? You don’t understand it, go ahead.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: You know, what was complicated this week, actually, is that we had about 300 ministers of finance and governance of central bank from all around the world. And we had a focus, which was essentially unconventional monetary policy and consequences for the rest of the world. How do we develop — anchor the recovery? How do we make sure that emerging markets are going to continue to do well without suffering from tapering and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah?

And the only thing that was on their mind was when is this going to end? What is this discussion about the debt ceiling? It really completely overwhelmed the discussion. And believe me, it’s difficult to explain.

I mean, you can explain the sort of direct fiscal consequences. You can try to imagine what the indirect consequences would be. You can try to speculate about what a mess it will be on the markets. You can imagine the accident. You can assume that it’s going to be worse than previous events. But it’s difficult to explain the rationale behind it.

NINA EASTON: And you’ve warned, of course, over the last couple days of massive disruption if Thursday passes and there isn’t a deal.

But what if there’s a deal which most likely will happen where the deadline is just pushed off for another two months, another three months? Doesn’t that create an uncertainty in the markets in and of itself? What’s the danger of putting off the deadline?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, it’s going to put Susan Collins and her friends back –

NINA EASTON: And Senator Klobuchar.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes. Back to the drawing board yet again because I think that it will reactivate the same sort of trepidation, anxiety, and worries.

What’s amazing is that the United States of America, first largest economy in the world, is still and will probably continue to be regarded as a save haven to which money can flow back when there’s trouble.

Now, you know, it’s a bit like a rubber band. When you pull, you pull, you pull, you pull, it works. It works. It works. But who wants to take the risk of that breaking?

NINA EASTON: So, again, so there’s danger to even putting off the deadline to January?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: You’d just reactivate the same debate over.

NINA EASTON: Right. And is there a danger to the economy, the U.S. economy, and the world economy by not addressing the debt? I don’t mean — I mean not, you know, taking steps to address the U.S. debt? Do you consider that a damper on the economic growth?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes. I mean, it’s the most serious thing that could happen. If it is not addressed, if it’s not tackled, it will be very, very damaging, and not just for the U.S. economy, for all economies.

NINA EASTON: I guess I mean like reform to bring spending and borrowing into line. Do you consider that –

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, that’s another debate. I think the most critical one is the issue of the debt ceiling. The issue of default, no default, what’s a technical default, what’s a real default? And so on and so forth.

NINA EASTON: So that’s what you’re talking about?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: That’s the most urgent matter. The rest — the fiscal policy of the United States of America, I summarize it for my simple mind as slow down, but hurry up. (Laughter.)

NINA EASTON: And describe that.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Well, slow down means no brutal, heavy duty fiscal consolidation in the short run because you’re going to prevent recovery from taking roots and strengthening. But hurry up to take the measures now that are going to deal with the long-term liabilities that will come to haunt the United States back in 2020. Whether it’s entitlement or whether it’s high interest, that will come to haunt the economy in 2020 if nothing is done before.

So that’s why we say hurry up, do it now. Because it will produce results in the years to come, and it will address the situation that would otherwise be very difficult in 2020.

NINA EASTON: There’s a lot of talk about a new normal in the U.S., and frankly, in the global economy where we’re going to have — even when we have economic growth, it’s not going to be followed by job growth.

Do you see unemployment rates getting to pre-recession levels, and at what point?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: If you look at numbers in this country, and if you look at unemployment numbers, it has progressed enormously. It has gone from the highest at 10 percent down to 7.3 percent. So, granted, the participation rate is probably lower, and the number that we should also look at is unemployment numbers.

But there has been progress and jobs are being created. It’s the same in other countries, not very fast in Europe, and in the Eurozone in particular. But they’re all signs of hope. Where those jobs will be, what will be the job content, how the economic model is going to change to what business model are we heading to? I think we are facing huge transitions at the moment. And they’d better have jobs, because otherwise we’re not just facing economic problems, we’ll be facing social problems.

NINA EASTON: And you’ve warned about a rush to the exit for the Fed’s, what you call “unconventional” monetary policies. $85 billion a month in the QE program. Is that something you communicated to Ben Bernanke before their decision to stay the course?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Central banks are independent. But what I have said, including in Jackson Hole where all central bankers get together, is that given that the Fed’s decision has impact across the world, it would be appropriate not just to communicate well, not just to gradually phase out, but also to cooperate with other central bankers so that they understand what precautions they have to take, what consequences it will be for them, and they can prepare better. I’m not sure they’re all happy to cooperate. I think they would be well advised to do so.

NINA EASTON: And I know you wanted to mention the IMF came out with a gender study, which is the first time I believe that you’ve looked at the impact of gender in the world economy.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes.

NINA EASTON: Can you talk about Japan in particular, was an interesting case study of what — for cultural reasons women aren’t in that economy to the level they are in other industrialized countries. What has that done to growth in Japan?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: I’m looking at it the other way. What could it give to growth in Japan? And we just recently published for the first time a study of this called Women, Work, and the Economy. But we also did a special chapter on Japan because Japan has a very specific issue. They have an aging population. They’re not particularly immigration prone, to say the least. And currently, Japanese women are not participating in society as much as the average OECD country.

So the resources that the Japanese people can tap into are the Japanese women. But for all sorts of reasons, including cultural, lack of institutions that can help with childcare and a general sort of attitude of society towards female participation, it’s not happening.

Now, as a follow-up to that study that we published exactly a year ago, I’m pleased to report that maybe not attributable to us, but Prime Minister Abe has made it part of his budget and commitment to actually really fund childcare centers in Japan and to encourage women to join the workforce. They are far better educated than Japanese males. They really can contribute to the growth of society. And by our account, and I don’t claim the math credit to it, but the teams are doing it, the GDP of Japan could increase by about 9 percent just as a result of their participation and that before the end of the decade. So that’s really important. (Applause.)

NINA EASTON: Two more quick questions before we get the cane, and quick answer to this. You’ve gone from describing quotas for women in terms of Europe for women board members as offensive to saying it should be a temporary measure at least, correct?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: What should be a temporary measure?

NINA EASTON: I’m sorry, quotas for women and board members.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Oh, yes, yes.

NINA EASTON: Sorry, I switched on you. We’re back to Europe.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Yes.

NINA EASTON: So you think they’re important as a temporary measure?

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: But, look, it’s working. When I was finance minister, we supported a bill that went through that requires that there be at least 20 percent women on the board of companies by 2014 and that there be 40 percent by 2020. They’ve exceeded the threshold of 20 percent already. So I think quotas should not be a long-lasting feature because we can do better than that. But at least in the first stage, when you have such a big step to take, yes, temporarily, I think it’s very helpful and we should use it. It will be used, by the way, on the pan-European basis.

NINA EASTON: Since you won’t answer this last question, I’ll ask the audience to answer it: Madame Lagarde as French president? (Cheers, applause.)

Thank you so much, it’s been an honor. Thank you.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE: Thank you. (Applause.)

As Chairman and CEO of IBM IBM , Rometty has seen the danger firsthand. Having spent more than 30 years at the company, she lived through the near-death experience of the early 1990s and is now just the ninth CEO in the companys 102-year history. It’s this role that has earned Rometty, 56, the top spot on Fortune‘s list of the Most Powerful Women in Business.

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Speaking October 16 at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., Rometty outlined five areas on which she depends to help her prepare IBM for future markets. First, theres research, an area in which the company has long been a leader. The company employs 3,000 Ph.D.s — the largest research outfit in the technology industry — and has been the global patent leader for the past 20 years. Just as important are relationships with clients, who are increasingly partnering more closely with IBM on innovation initiatives. Rometty also nurtures relationships with universities and with the venture capital community. And, thanks to new social tools, Rometty has been able to connect more deeply with IBMs 400,000 employees to unearth ideas bubbling up internally.

One secret to IBMs success has been the discipline it applies to nurturing these relationships and harvesting insights from them. For example, Rometty described the companys global technology outlook, a document that researchers prepare annually to map out future trends. Rometty depends on it to informstrategy, and each year grades past GTOs for their success in predicting trends.

Its this discipline that leads to breakthrough computing paradigms like Watson. Its been two-and-a-half years since the Jeopardy-winning computer beat a couple of brainiacs on national television — and demonstrated that computing tools could store and sift through copious amounts of information, respond to natural language, and learn from its mistakes. Its technology that represents decades of work in IBMs labs, and the company is just beginning to commercialize it. I wrote about IBMs efforts to bring it to market in a recent Fortune feature .

Now, says Rometty, Watson is off to medical school. The technology will be deployed at the Cleveland Clinic to help medical students better understand medical literature.

Meanwhile, in IBMs labs, scientists are working to improve Watson. A Watson 2.0 will see — pictures of things, says Rometty. And a Watson 3.0 can reason with humans.

FORTUNE — Mary Barra has one directive for her employees: The simple thing I say to them is, No more crappy cars, and that resonates.

The phrase is part of a broader approach GMs EVP of global product development and global purchasing and supply chain has taken in empowering her employees. Before boundaries were put on them, and we didnt give them the recipe for success, she said during Fortunes Most Powerful Women Summit on Wednesday. Now were saying no excuses. The results, she says, are visible on the road today for GM.

Barra, who is a top contender to eventually run the company, is considered to have one of the hardest jobs in the global auto industry. You have to slash development costs and still build exciting cars, noted interviewer Becky Quick, co-anchor of CNBC’s Squawk Box.

Before taking on her current role, Barra was vice president of global human resources. It was a critical time for the company as it came out of bankruptcy. I wanted to drive a new culture, she says.

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The bankruptcy gave the company a chance to reset and do things differently. Barra significantly cut the number of HR reports and paperwork that needed to be filled out, and she relaxed the dress code. That was probably the most interesting change and biggest learning I had into the culture, she said. Previously the dress code had been 10 pages long. The company was entrusting its employees with million-dollar budgets, but it didnt believe they could dress themselves for work without detailed instructions. She changed the policy simply to dress appropriately. It became a window into the change we needed to make at General Motors, she said.

Barra spent 30 years as an engineer and was the first female chief product officer at GM. Barra loved math and science from fifth grade on and decided on a career in engineering because it applied math. Going into the automotive industry was an easy decision — it was in her blood. Her father worked for GM GM for 39 years.

FORTUNE — Theres no debating this: Buzzy emerging markets have lost some of their zip. The question for both American government and business is why — and what to do about it.

The explanations unsurprisingly are manifold. In a panel discussion at Fortunes Most Powerful Womens summit (subtitled The Hype is Over — Now What?), JPMorgan JPM managing director Jing Ulrich ticked them off: structural problems like crushing debt loads that are devaluing currency, a trickle-down effect from Chinas lagging growth, and, from the developed world, the threat of the stimulus spigot finally wrenching off. The evidence of the impact is clear in the numbers. The golden era of double-digit growth in China is behind us, and could fall as low as 5% in the next five years, Ulrich said, while India faces a halved rate of 4% and Brazil and Russia will plod forward at 2%.

One response simply takes the long view. If youre playing in emerging markets, you need to be a medium- to long-term player, Arison Investments CEO Efrat Peled said. The indicators are slowing down, but its all relative to whats happening in the rest of the world. But Anne-Marie Slaughter, a top advisor to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now serving as president of the New America Foundation, warned companies need to be mindful that sudden political conflagrations can take over from the economic rationality. Her worst night at the State Department came when the Japanese coast guard captured a Chinese fishing vessel — the sort of random event packed with potential for an escalating series of reprisals that would require a U.S. military response.

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Along those lines, Ulrich sounded a hopeful note that the new Chinese leadership team will embark this fall on market reforms designed to ease foreign investment — while Slaughter was less sanguine. Another way to look at this is youve got a new government in place with a lot of rising social demands, a lot of dissatisfaction with things like the food safety, drug safety, and the environment, and it is easier to point the finger at a multinational company than a local company, Slaughter said. I see a huge pressure to scapegoat foreign companies over domestic companies, and I think that will be hard to resist.

Meanwhile, as we look to compete with the Chinese in the developing world, we should borrow a page from their book, Slaughter said. Paraphrasing an insight she heard from an African official, she said, When Americans see a picture of African kids without shoes, they think, How do we organize a charity drive? When Chinese see pictures of Africans without shoes, they immediately think, Whats the income level and how can we price the shoes to sell? The point is an important one for business: Africans prefer to be treated as a market than a charity.

Everson noted that a little more than a year ago Facebooks business fundamentally changed. Southeast Asia and Africa had always seen more access to the social media platform via mobile, but last summer the curve switched in both Europe and the U.S. as well.

Thats a huge positive for Facebook, as people on average check their mobile devices 100 times a day, Everson said. Its now instinctual. Its literally become as though we blink our eyes, she added. For our business thats an incredible driver of growth. From a marketing point of view, she said, the mobile device is now the most important screen.

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China is a key example of this development. Jennifer Li, chief financial officer at Beijing-based search engine company Baidu BIDU , said that 80% of Chinas 590 million internet users are accessing the web via their mobile devices. And last year in July, user time spent on mobile surpassed desktops, and time on mobile is now double that of PCs.

Its important for businesses to recognize that trend, Li noted. Baidu is working to educate advertisers on how to leverage the platform to catch the attention of consumers. She added, We really have to hand-hold them and have to encourage them to build mobile friendly sites.

FORTUNE — As Congress scrambles to lift the nations borrowing limit and avoid the risks of defaulting on its debt, billionaire investor Warren Buffett joined critics of the debt ceiling, calling the 1930s law originally intended to give the government more flexibility to borrow funds a weapon of mass destruction.

It really is like a nuclear bomb,” says Buffett onWednesday atFortunesannualMost Powerful Women Summitin Washington, D.C.”Its something that maybe you talk about but never dream of using.”

Buffett’s not alone. He joins the likes of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who argue the debt ceiling makes no sense and wishes it didnt exist. In recent years, politicos (ahem, Republicans) have gotten in the awful habit of framing the debt ceiling as a debate over excessive government spending, when in fact, the law has nothing to do with future spending. The debt ceiling simply gives the U.S. Treasury the flexibility to borrow for spending that Congress has already approved.

Despite all the fear and political wrangling in Washington, Buffett says its absolutely folly to even think the U.S. will default on its debt because it is so stupid.

In true Buffett fashion, the Oracle of Omaha had positive views of the U.S. economy. The recovery hasnt stalled, and its still a good time to invest.

“The country is coming back,” he says. “You cant stop the United States. We get through everything. The country works.”

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Buffett recalled buying his first stock in April 1942 shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the U.S. into World War II. The Dow sank to 100 at the time, but he says that didn’t discourage him from investing in the stock market. He has been buying stocks since.

A lesson for investors: “You want to be greedy when others are fearful … I’ve got plenty of greed.”

Buffett touched on several other topics, from the economic rise of China to women in corporate America. On China, he says the world’s second-biggest economy will be “enormously important and they should be,” but the U.S. will be “the superpower of the world for a very, very, very long time.

“What’s important is that the two countries largely learn to live together,” says Buffett about tensions between the U.S. and China.

Widely considered the best investor of the 20th Century, Buffett, 83, attributes part of his success to luck and timing. He built his career at a time when most women were either teachers or nurses or secretaries or housewives. “I was lucky I was only competing with half the country,” he says, adding that he’s focused on attracting more talented women to his firm, Berkshire Hathaway.

“Berkshire is going to prove that a lot of talented women could accomplish a whole lot.”

Tim Cook’s pick to head his retail operations may be famous in the fashion business, but it took Apple AAPL watchers — most of whom have never set foot in a Burberry outlet — much of Tuesday to figure out who Angela Ahrendts is.

Then the pundits weighed in.

Henry Blodget, Business Insider: “One question that arose after the news broke was why Ahrendts would go from CEO of Burberry to SVP of an Apple division a seeming step down on the corporate hierarchy. There are likely at least two answers to this. The first is that Apple’s retail business is vastly larger than Burberry, with about $16 billion in annual sales vs. Burberry’s ~$2+ billion. The second is that, if Ahrendts fits into Apple’s culture and does an excellent job running its retail business, she probably has a good chance to become the company’s next CEO.”

John Paczkowski, AllThingsD: “Coming as it does following the ouster of former Apple retail boss John Browett, who was shown the door after just nine months on the job, Ahrendtss appointment is a crucial one for the company. Apples retail business is a keystone of its success, and, according to an early morning all-hands memo from CEO Tim Cook, theres no better person in the world to run it than Ahrendts.”

Simon Ungless, San Francisco Academy of Art: Its about being able to tap into trends — not just fashion trends, but what people want in their lives, what theyre talking about — while maintaining a sense of the brand. I think thats what shes done at Burberry very well, and that feels like something theyve lost at Apple. (via NYT)

Om Malik, GigaOm: “I have said it before and I will say it again: Apple doesnt really have the internet gene, and it shows up time and again in how its products intersect with the internet and online services. A lot of that has to do with Apples culture. Apple is a company that is notoriously closed and insular in terms of ideas, both adopting and adapting to them; just look at Apples presence on social. Burberry under Ahrendts seemed the exact opposite.”

Jessica Lessin, Jessica Lessin: “Apples new retail chief Angela Ahrendts is a watch lady, say people who know her. I am certainly not implying that Apple, which is developing the iWatch, nabbed this high-profile executive because she loves watches or because one of her most recent additions to the Burberry line was a very high-end watch brand (both true). I also hear she took particular interest in the watch retailing space in Burberry stores. Lets just say her passion for watches is a coincidence. Or maybe just a plus. Needless to say the merchandising around the iWatch, whenever it arrives, will be remarkable.”

Danielle Levitas, IDC: “What they need is someone like (Ahrendts) to say ‘No woman is ever going to wear that,’ They’re not just making tech gadgets for tech geeks.” (via Mercury News)

Carolina Milanesi, Gartner: “I think Apple looked at Burberry and the challenges they had in the market, and saw her as the one who brought back that aspirational brand and then grew it in places like China, Korea and elsewhere. Those speak to the challenges Apple is having. Like Burberry, Apple has to deal with the fact that its brand is everywhere because of the iPhone, but they cannot run the risk that the brand is seen as cheap.” (via Computerworld)

John Gruber, Daring Fireball: “From Apples perspective, theres no such thing as an ‘emerging market’. There are certainly cultural differences between consumers in different countries, but the bottom line is that there are people who can afford iPhones and iPads, and people who cant. The class of people who can afford Apple products is growing faster in China than it is anywhere else… Apples hirings of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts (to head Apples online and retail stores) and former Yves Saint Laurent CEO Paul Deneve (special projects) fit right into this dynamic. Apples path to success in China (and much of the rest of the world) is not to lower itself and compete purely on price against low-cost commodity Android devices. It is the opposite: to further separate its products, in terms of branding and quality, from its competition. The sweet spot for Apple in China is the same as it is in the U.S. and elsewhere: attainable, affordable, casual luxury.”

Ben Thompson, Stratechery: “Weve clearly never seen a tech company like this before. Perhaps its time to stop using tired PC tech company metaphors to predict their future.”