Pattie Sellers is a former assistant managing editor of Fortune and currently executive director of Fortune Most Powerful Women Summits and Live Content at Time Inc. An award-winning magazine writer, interviewer and multimedia journalist, she has written more than 20 cover stories during her three-decade career at Fortune. Her resume includes groundbreaking interviews with Warren Buffett, Rupert Murdoch, and General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, and definitive profiles of Melinda Gates, Ted Turner, former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Oprah Winfrey, Coca-Cola Chairman Muhtar Kent, Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, Heineken heir Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, and many other leaders in global business and other fields.
Sellers is co-founder with Nina Easton of Sellers Easton Media (SEM), a media company dedicated to producing enduring stories of outstanding achievers who understand that what matters most is impact: how you make a difference in the world, how ideas change lives, and how a life well-lived can give meaning to others. They help individuals, companies and organizations capture and preserve their legacy on film, online, and in print, to reach their select audiences.
Sellers co-founded and now oversees Fortune Most Powerful Women (MPW) events and programs. MPW began in 1998 as an annual ranking of the top women in the business, and has grown to be the magazine’s largest and most valuable franchise. Fortune MPW now includes six conferences annually across the globe. She also co-founded and directs various MPW programs, including the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Mentoring Partnership and the Goldman Sachs-Fortune Global Women Leaders Award.
In 2013, Sellers won Time Inc.’s prestigious MVP (Most Valuable Performer) award for her innovative work at Fortune and her broad contributions across its parent company. She was celebrated in a Washington Post profile of her entitled, The Rolodex that Redefined Power, as it described her unmatched talent for interviewing and writing about very successful people.
As the co-founder and executive director of Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summits, Pattie Sellers uses her sharp intellect and comfortable conversation style to play host, emcee and moderator to the preeminent gatherings of women leaders in business, philanthropy, government, media and the arts. With warmth, humor and extensive knowledge on the latest trends in global business, Sellers deftly engages panels—and her audience—in vibrant discussions that create provocative and memorable and programs.
The most successful people think of their careers as jungle gyms, where the rewards come from moving in various directions and not just up. Sounds scary, but particularly in this fast-changing and unpredictable world, you should not think of your career as just climbing a ladder. More than ever, you need peripheral vision and the ability to think broadly. An expert on the traits needed to navigate a successful career, Pattie Sellers shows how flexibility—in both managing and being managed—is an increasingly critical trait in today’s workplaces. Success favors the highly adaptable who are ready to swing to opportunities over here and over there.
Entrepreneurs drive economic recovery—and women are key. While Sellers has spent most of her 26 years at Fortune writing about leaders of large companies, her purview is much broader. She has written definitive (and exclusive) cover stories on world-changing entrepreneurs and leaders from across the business spectrum. Sellers talks about the common traits of outstanding business-builders and also explores stories of prominent people who have discovered fresh passion to start new lives after their careers in business.
Women leaders tend to think about power horizontally—and manage that way too. Having spent the past 20 years studying women leaders—and building Most Powerful Women into Fortune’s biggest and most valuable franchise—Pattie Sellers has gained unparalleled access to America’s top women leaders and has keen insights into what makes women successful (and not) in business, philanthropy, government and beyond. Her views are provocative and can be controversial: The concept of the glass ceiling is overplayed, she believes, and women hold themselves back by feeling uncomfortable with power. Wise women leaders embrace power—in different ways than most men do.
