The 50 Women to Watch 2008

One day this past April, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair saw a stark reminder of the human side of the foreclosure crisis.

Attending a foreclosure-prevention workshop in Los Angeles, she saw hundreds of homeowners of all backgrounds lined up for hours to be admitted to the event, where they desperately hoped to receive help or advice that would allow them to keep their homes.

For Ms. Bair, the outspoken and politically savvy head of the FDIC, the images of so many borrowers trying to salvage their lives left an impression.

"This myth of all these people making sophisticated calculations and trying to game the system, that wasn't it," Ms. Bair says of the event hosted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. "These were just regular people, working families trying to hold onto their homes. They were scared and I saw a lot of fear on their faces, and I think that struck me more than anything."

The event, like many others, solidified in Ms. Bair's mind that the federal government needed to take much more aggressive action to stem the record numbers of foreclosures at the center of the growing economic crisis. It also reinforced her belief that compassion should be a key part of the equation for policymakers.

"People say we should punish all these people because they got these mortgages they couldn't afford. Why? Who is that going to help?" Ms. Bair says in an interview in her office overlooking the Old Executive Office Building in Washington D.C. "It's just going to put more empty houses on the market, and more houses where the lawn maybe isn't going to get mowed and the windows may be broken, or the owner isn't there so they aren't paying taxes."

Her outspoken support for efforts to prevent foreclosures and her role as protector of the nation's bank accounts have catapulted Ms. Bair onto the national stage. Alongside Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the 54-year-old veteran of Treasury and Capitol Hill posts has become the public face of the government's response to the deepening financial crisis.

"She very likely will be the only agency head to come out of this crisis with an enhanced reputation," says Camden Fine, president and chief executive of the Independent Community Bankers of America. "She may go down in history as one of the top two FDIC chairmen ever."

A Steady Hand

Ms. Bair gained further prominence last July after the FDIC was forced to take over Pasadena, Calif.-based IndyMac Bank in one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history. The collapse of the massive thrift, with $32 billion in assets, set off a panic during which hundreds of customers lined up outside IndyMac branches, worried they were going to lose their money, while TV news programs suggested the possibility of a broader failure of the U.S. banking system.

"I'm watching CNN going, 'What are they talking about?'" Ms. Bair says. The FDIC had no way of anticipating that IndyMac's customers would start a run on the bank after it had been taken over by the federal government, she says. To prevent further shocks to consumer confidence, Ms. Bair convened a series of staff conference calls over that weekend that resulted in a strongly worded statement from her, emphasizing the FDIC's ability to protect all insured deposits, and an aggressive agency outreach to customers in California. FDIC employees stood in the summer heat to hand out water and information to worried customers, answering innumerable questions about deposit insurance levels.

"I think we were on our toes," Ms. Bair says. "We've been ahead of the curve on so much."

Ms. Bair's actions, particularly her move to modify thousands of IndyMac loans and the FDIC's role in the government-orchestrated sale of Washington Mutual to JPMorgan Chase JPM 1.82 % & Co., have earned her high marks throughout Washington. Though she's a Republican, Democrats have embraced her for her propensity to buck the White House and to seek more aggressive solutions to foreclosure issues.

"She's been great," says House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat. "She's shown you can be concerned about consumers and not skimp on your job as a regulator."

Mr. Frank and Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, recently wrote to President George W. Bush requesting that Ms. Bair be put in charge of all federal efforts to prevent foreclosures. The two suggested that "giving one official clear responsibility, particularly one as knowledgeable on the subject as Chairman Bair, will improve the effectiveness of the efforts of the federal government."

Ms. Bair's aggressive policy proposals and the praise from Democrats don't always sit well with her own party. The FDIC and White House are in a heated battle over a new plan authored by the FDIC to help homeowners. The Bush administration has swiftly pushed back and is in the process of creating its own proposal.

Ms. Bair, for her part, is wary of the politics of the situation. She has been mentioned as a possible candidate for the next Treasury secretary or another high-ranking position under President-elect Barack Obama. That includes staying on at the FDIC, where her term as chairman runs through 2011.

She has said she would stay on if asked. Beyond that, she won't speculate. "It's nice," she says of the rumors. "But my philosophy is, you do your job and you don't try and position yourself. I really am focused on doing this job, and then we will see."

That directness is vintage Bair. Back in May, she didn't mince words when asked about the efforts being made to keep cash-strapped borrowers in their homes. Mortgage companies "are overwhelmed, and the counselors are overwhelmed. ... It's a train wreck," she told reporters after a speech to banking supervisors in Florida.

People who've sat across the table from her during negotiations praise her knack for being forceful, but also her ability to deftly maneuver between politics and policy on even the most contentious issues.

"She's extremely skilled at playing the game," says Mr. Fine, the community banks association CEO. "We don't always agree, but her door has always been open and she consults with everyone."

Back to Basics

Ms. Bair, born in Wichita and raised in Kansas, says former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole has had a lasting influence on her career. Working for the Republican senator from Kansas for seven years, she says, taught her the value of building a consensus on complicated policy issues and operating from a safe and secure position, so that the politics of a situation do not color the results as much.

She still occasionally seeks advice from Mr. Dole, and from billionaire investor Warren Buffett, among others, she says. She tries to consult equally with consumer and industry groups, she adds.

Ms. Bair is optimistic that the U.S. will emerge from the current morass stronger than it was just a few years ago. Institutions and consumers were overleveraged, she says, and the current crisis should usher in a new era of "wise and prudent consumption" and a focus on the "basic notion of thrift."

"Getting back to basics, saving before you buy, thinking through expenditures, and not getting too deep into debt," Ms. Bair says. "We need to get back in touch with those cultural values."

—Damian Paletta contributed to this article.

Confronted this year by high commodity prices, a downturn in U.S. beverage sales, and other consequences of the souring economy, Indra Nooyi didn't shy from some bold steps. PepsiCo Inc. PEP 1.12 % 's chairman and chief executive launched an aggressive belt-tightening program this fall to generate more than $1.2 billion in savings over the next three years.

Ms. Nooyi, 53 years old, says the tough measures -- including the elimination of 3,300 jobs and the closing of some plants -- were necessary to put PepsiCo ahead of the curve in a fast-changing economic environment. She has been pushing the Purchase, N.Y., company in new directions since arriving 14 years ago as head of corporate strategy. Her drive to get Pepsi to buy Tropicana and Quaker Oats helped shift the company's soda- and-potato-chip-dominated portfolio toward healthier drinks and snacks.

Most of the savings from cost-cutting will be plowed into expanding in fast-growing emerging markets, the U.S. beverage business, and accelerating development of new beverages and snacks. Ms. Nooyi is convinced she can bring U.S. consumers back to soda, partly by finding a new zero-calorie sweetener. "People still love bubbles," she says.

Visiting her native India in September, Ms. Nooyi announced a three-year, $500 million investment to expand manufacturing, improve research and development and introduce new products. On a visit to China a few weeks ago, she pledged to spend $1 billion over four years on similar initiatives there. Growth in emerging markets is cooling but still "robust," she says.

Ms. Nooyi is also pushing for foods and drinks that offer more health benefits. An endocrinologist and internal-medicine specialist whom she tapped as the company's chief scientific officer will head a new nutrition lab.

--Betsy McKay

When he appointed Barbara Desoer to run the largest mortgage lender in the U.S., Bank of America BAC 2.06 % Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis signaled his confidence in the 56-year-old executive. Now, whether the bank's rising star eventually succeeds Mr. Lewis will hinge in part on her ability to squeeze value out of Countrywide Financial Corp., the distressed mortgage lender that Bank of America acquired in July.

Before ascending to her current post in July, Ms. Desoer was chief technology and operations officer, responsible for the infrastructure holding together the bank's 6,100 branches, 18,500 ATMs and online-banking system.

In her new post, she is overseeing 7,500 job cuts to integrate Countrywide and Bank of America's mortgage operations and has negotiated a settlement with 14 state attorneys general targeting Countrywide's lending practices. The $8.4 billion legal agreement seeks to modify loans by reducing principal owed or lowering interest rates for 400,000 subprime and adjustable-rate borrowers.

Despite the troubled economy, Ms. Desoer says her operation "is open for business every hour of every day" and that "we are making every loan we can," citing more than $50 billion in mortgages made in the third quarter on more than 250,000 homes. She predicts falling housing prices will begin to stabilize in the middle of 2009.

Ms. Desoer acknowledges that much is at stake with her new job. Bank of America could see large gains if mortgages recover. But no one yet knows how long the housing downturn will last or how bad losses will get.

Her new post "required a cross-country move, working under intense media and government scrutiny and regenerating an ailing industry," she said during an October speech. "There were plenty of reasons to hesitate. But I said 'yes' on the spot."

--Dan Fitzpatrick

She is hardly a household name. But Hu Xiaolian, the deputy governor of the People's Bank of China as well as the administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, is one of the most powerful people in the world.

In particular, Ms. Hu's role as manager of China's massive foreign-exchange reserves -- the world's largest, on track to surpass $2 trillion soon -- is especially pivotal now as the global financial crisis unfolds. China is believed to be the largest holder of U.S. Treasury debt, and its continued purchases of new Treasury bonds will be crucial to helping the U.S. finance the rescue of the financial system.

While there has been some grumbling within China about the low returns on the investment, many observers don't expect the reserves to be pulled out of the U.S. on a large scale.

Though an estimated 44% of women in China work, few hold positions in the highest ranks of government. Ms. Hu, 50, has been immersed in currency and financial-system policy in China since graduating from the People's Bank of China graduate school in the 1980s. In addition, her mentor, Liu Hongru, is credited with helping to create China's stock market.

The holdings of China's foreign-exchange reserves are top secret. But Ms. Hu is playing an increasingly visible role in international-finance circles as China's influence grows in the global economy. In a recent speech in Argentina, she urged nations to work more closely together, while acknowledging that China faces great economic challenges due to the global financial crisis

"With the deepening of economic globalization [and] increased spillover of financial risks, all countries will face increasing challenges in terms of macroeconomic policy making, especially in the area of monetary policy, so we need further coordination," said Ms. Hu.

-- Rebecca Blumenstein

Since she became finance minister last year, the 52-year-old Christine Lagarde has been on a mission to revolutionize the French economy and stave off the biggest financial crisis her country has faced in decades.

Ms. Lagarde's post makes her responsible for one of the world's largest economies. Under French President Nicolas Sarkozy, one of her goals is for Paris to supplant London as Europe's finance hub.

But in the meantime, she has had to spearhead a raft of rescue measures, including a multibillion-euro cash injection into French banks and a series of tax cuts for French businesses, and to overcome critics both in government and in the media who questioned whether she had the necessary political experience.

Ms. Lagarde is France's first woman finance minister, and unlike most of her predecessors, she is not a political grandee. Her background is in business, something that helped persuade President Sarkozy to appoint her.

Before becoming trade minister in 2005, she spent five years in Chicago as chairwoman of international law firm Baker & McKenzie. With her fluent English and media-friendly style, Ms. Lagarde is fast becoming the international face of a more business-friendly France.

Since becoming finance minister, she has stuck to the straight-talking style that made her so popular in the private sector. Soon after her appointment in June 2007, she criticized France's inflexible labor markets and asked the national assembly to start acting instead of thinking.

However, with the economic situation worsening and French unemployment on the rise, Ms. Lagarde will have to balance calls for increased state spending with the need to keep France's ballooning budget deficit in check.

-- Max Colchester

Irene Rosenfeld, chief executive of the largest food maker in the U.S., is coming off one of the toughest years in a long time for food-company executives.

Food makers have faced soaring costs for every commodity from milk to corn this year as supplies tightened and global demand for food grew. Kraft Foods Inc. had a particularly tough time battling high commodity costs, because rising dairy prices took a toll on the company's cheese business, which comprises about one-fifth of Kraft's annual sales.

Now that the costs of food ingredients and fuel are settling down, investors will be watching to see if Kraft can widen its margins and regain some of the market share lost to store-brand goods. Investors also will be paying attention to how Ms. Rosenfeld, 55, reacts if the economy slips into a prolonged recession. Already Kraft has been touting the value of its lower-priced but high-margin products, such as Kool-Aid powdered beverages. A continuing economic slowdown could benefit food companies like Kraft, which are often viewed as safe havens for investors, especially as consumers cut their restaurant visits in favor of dining at home.

Another thing to watch for in the coming year is whether Ms. Rosenfeld's efforts to make the food giant more nimble and entrepreneurial will pay off. Progress has been made in China, with Kraft's iconic Oreo cookies. Marketers there learned the cookie was too sweet for Chinese tastes, so they reformulated it and also developed Oreos in a new wafer format. Kraft doubled its Oreo revenue in China as a result.

"I think within this challenging environment we're well positioned to win," Ms. Rosenfeld says. "Our categories are consumer staples, we have an increasingly broad geographic footprint and a strong value proposition."

-- Julie Jargon

Ho Ching runs a portfolio of more than $134 billion at Singapore's state-owned investment firm, Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd. And she is pushing Temasek, one of the world's most sophisticated sovereign wealth funds, further onto the global stage. Ms. Ho, who is the wife of Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, shook up Temasek's management after taking over as chief executive in 2004 and installing a new team of investment professionals culled from the private sector.

But her tenure hasn't always been smooth. Tax issues arising from Temasek's purchase of a controlling stake in Thai telecom firm Shin Corp. contributed to the overthrow and exile of Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006. The company also has been accused of monopolizing Indonesia's telecom industry through subsidiaries. Temasek says the accusations are baseless.

Ms. Ho is now reshaping Temasek from an Asia-focused deal machine into a global heavyweight -- selling some Asian assets, setting up outposts in Latin America and buying into Western banks.

Temasek's portfolio will undoubtedly suffer from declining equity markets world-wide given its heavy weighting in banks. Ms. Ho's biggest challenge will be to steer Temasek through the global financial crisis and keep its investments afloat. She also will need to effectively use her new staff's global experience to find the right investment opportunities.

She dodged a bullet on a $5 billion investment in Merrill Lynch & Co. in December. A "reset clause" in the deal allowed Temasek to get a refund on the difference between the price it paid and the price new investors paid if Merrill raised more capital. That happened when Merrill tapped the equity markets in July. Ms. Ho now looks to break even or profit slightly on the investment given Bank of America Corp.'s BAC 2.06 % purchase of Merrill.

-- Rick Carew

As a high-ranking executive, Ellen Kullman helped shift DuPont Co. DD 1.26 % 's focus from oil-based chemicals to high-tech businesses such as alternative energy and biotechnology.

When she takes the reins of the company next year, she will be responsible for ensuring that the huge investments the company has made in those areas pan out.

DuPont has pumped large sums of money into developing new biofuels, building a solar-power business and creating higher-yielding seeds.

The results are starting to show. The company's agriculture business has grown at a rapid pace because of robust demand for grain and seeds. Sales of components used in solar cells are strong, and the company recently broke ground on a pilot plant to develop cellulosic ethanol, a type of biofuel made from nonfood plant sources.

"Our plans are focused on delivering science-based solutions to an energy and resource-constrained world, and to continue to capture especially strong growth in emerging markets," Ms. Kullman told analysts during a conference call after she was named chief executive officer in September.

But the economic slump and plunging commodity prices could affect those plans. A drop in oil prices could potentially taper interest in alternatives such as biofuels and solar energy. There also are signs that strong growth in developing countries, which helped DuPont offset the slowdown in the U.S., is starting to wane.

Ms. Kullman, 52, sees the current state of the economy as a temporary challenge that won't derail the company's long-term focus on science. The 20-year DuPont veteran has said investing in science to create innovative products is what sets the company apart from its competitors.

Still, she has vowed to keep costs in check.

"We've got great science but it's got to be very competitive out in the marketplace," she said at the conference.

--Ana Campoy

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Anne Mulcahy has received accolades for her success in pulling Xerox Corp. XRX 1.94 % back from the brink of bankruptcy in 2002 by dint of major cost cutting and restructuring. But she is keenly aware that for the past four years, investors have been increasingly impatient with the company's failure to deliver significant revenue growth.

That appeared to be turning around during the first half of this year, when Xerox revenue grew 10%, thanks to Ms. Mulcahy's biggest acquisition ever -- of a market-leading office-equipment seller -- and growth in developing markets. But the economic slowdown hit Xerox hard in the third quarter, and Ms. Mulcahy announced that for the near future, Xerox will have to return to cost cutting while laying off some 3,000 workers.

"We're assuming a deterioration of the economic environment," she said recently, but the cost cuts should allow Xerox to keep increasing earnings.

Ms. Mulcahy had been looking forward to focusing more on growth by pressing for greater innovation. She bragged recently that Xerox won more than 900 patents last year. And she has leaned hard on subordinates to increase the pace of new-product introductions. "We've launched over 100 products in the last three years, or one every 11 days," Ms. Mulcahy said.

Since she became CEO, she has also sought to increase revenue by building up a services and consulting business. Among other things, Xerox consultants advise customers on how to reduce paper and printing costs by replacing hundreds of desk-top printers (often made by rival Hewlett-Packard) with a small number of more efficient Xerox multifunction devices that can be shared by dozens of employees.

Ms. Mulcahy, 56 years old, hasn't given any indication that she plans to retire. But last year, the board elevated Ursula Burns to the post of president, providing an heir apparent.

--William M. Bulkeley

Laura Tyson helped navigate the White House's deficit-reduction and trade-liberalization efforts as President Bill Clinton's chief economic adviser during his first term.

Now as an adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, she could return to Washington facing a new set of economic challenges and a political landscape more skeptical of free trade.

Ms. Tyson, a business and public-policy professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, could play a prominent role in an Obama administration. She has strongly argued for greater emphasis on policies that benefit the middle class, a focus that Sen. Obama has cited as critical.

Ms. Tyson, a former dean of Haas, has served as dean of London Business School and has been a Morgan Stanley director since 1997.

As a Clinton adviser, Ms. Tyson focused on international finance and served as an adviser on deficit reduction and the 1994-95 Mexican peso crisis. "Until we change human nature, we are not going to get rid of crises in capitalism," she later recalled in a PBS interview. "So the question is, what do you do when you confront one?"

Ms. Tyson is a deficit hawk and urged a lowering of trade barriers as an adviser to Mr. Clinton, but had been critical of his health-care plan. She began the presidential campaign season as a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton, and joined the Obama team after he won the Democratic primary.

Although an academic, she was never fully removed from politics. She has been critical of the Bush administration's economic proposals, calling the plan for a voluntary interest-rate freeze by lenders inadequate and urging bolder measures, including a freeze on interest-rate resets on subprime loans or a temporary foreclosure moratorium.

-- Nick Timiraos

As the suspense over Procter & Gamble Co. PG 1.32 % 's succession race builds, keep an eye on Susan Arnold.

Though she has long been considered a contender to succeed 61-year-old Chief Executive Officer A.G. Lafley, who must step down by the time he turns 65, Ms. Arnold increasingly is gaining the attention of recruiters hoping to tempt her into running another company.

There are signs that Ms. Arnold, 54, is looking outward to heighten her professional profile. This year, she joined the board of McDonald's Corp., following a board appointment at Walt Disney Co. last year. A participant in the Clinton Global Initiative, the charitable organization led by former President Bill Clinton, Ms. Arnold has convened with world leaders and other high-profile executives to discuss issues such as poverty and sustainability at the group's annual conferences.

As the head of P&G's global business units, Ms. Arnold oversees more than 300 brands, which in total generate about $83.5 billion in annual sales. With investors increasingly clamoring for proof that P&G can find sales and profit gains in a difficult economic environment, it falls to Ms. Arnold to find it within the company's global empire.

Ms. Arnold's rise through P&G's ranks, where she has spent her entire 28-year career, included a stint as the leader of P&G's global beauty business, where she led the transformation of Olay into a billion-dollar skincare blockbuster. Later, as vice chairman, Ms. Arnold was charged with leading the two most important growth initiatives at the company -- its health and beauty businesses.

Ms. Arnold attended the University of Pennsylvania as an undergraduate, and received a master's in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

-- Ellen Byron

Clara Furse came under fire this year for not defending London Stock Exchange Group LSE 0.20 % PLC's 300-year-old business from a slew of new competitors.

Now the embattled chief executive may have a bigger challenge: steering the exchange through a global economic downturn that is threatening the stock-trading business and London's status as a financial center.

She may not have endless time to do it. An exchange spokesman says that while no decision has been made regarding a possible departure by Ms. Furse, the LSE is laying the groundwork for a succession search.

The first female head of Europe's biggest exchange, Ms. Furse, 51, has said she believes the LSE's operations will be "resilient" in the face of "highly uncertain market conditions."

A prolonged economic downturn can push investors out of the market entirely, leaving exchanges in a worse position than other companies.

In a worrisome sign, the LSE has reported a slowdown in the growth of its average daily trading volume in London. The LSE also has seen a roughly 70% drop in international listings in terms of capitalization this year as the downturn keeps some companies from going public and others opt to list at home.

Tough challenges are nothing new for Ms. Furse. A Canadian born to Dutch parents, she assumed the LSE's top job in January 2001 after years in investment banking. She has won acclaim for defending London's exchange from a wave of takeover attempts. In the past year, with new European rules boosting competition, she has moved to cut prices on some services, bring costs down and improve technology.

But investors are concerned that Ms. Furse doesn't have a winning battle plan against lower-cost, tech-savvy rivals like Chi-X Europe Ltd. and Turquoise. A sharp economic downturn could help her here, however, by taking the wind out of these competitors.

-- Neil Shah

After vaulting to the position of president of Yahoo Inc. YHOO 0.54 % last June, Susan Decker must now prove she can steer the Internet giant out of its slump.

The 45-year-old executive and former chief financial officer has drafted a series of restructuring and cost-cutting measures to revive Yahoo. Now she is managing the plan -- which involves cutting out layers of management and consolidating resources -- and may need to accelerate it to cope with tighter spending from advertisers.

At the same time, she must make tough choices about which products for advertisers and consumers the Sunnyvale, Calif., company should invest in to best compete with giants like Google and a number of nimble start-ups.

How Ms. Decker performs is critical for Yahoo, which has faced a particularly rocky time of late. Earlier this year, the company rebuffed a takeover offer from Microsoft Corp., drawing shareholder ire. Yahoo has also continued to lose share of the online advertising market to Google Inc. Its stock has plunged about 48% so far this year.

Yahoo's woes have tarnished Ms. Decker's reputation among at least some shareholders and employees. But she's still well-regarded by Yahoo's board of directors, and almost certain to be on a short list of possible candidates to replace Yahoo chief executive and co-founder Jerry Yang if he decides to step aside.

Prior to joining Yahoo, Ms. Decker was a highly regarded equity analyst and served as global director of equity research for Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment bank that was acquired by Credit Suisse.

Ms. Decker has declined to speculate about her future.

"I'm thrilled with what I'm doing right now," she said in an interview earlier this year.

-- Jessica E. Vascellaro

Linda Cook is one of the few women to have made it in the macho world of Big Oil.

A 50-year-old native of Shawnee, Kansas, she is executive director of gas and power at Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil company. Natural gas was once a sideline for Shell. But it's now one of its core businesses, and as its importance has grown, so has Ms. Cook's stature within Shell and the industry at large.

Indeed, she was hotly rumored for a time to be in line to replace Jeroen van der Veer, who retires as chief executive of Shell next year. In the end, the job went to chief financial officer Peter Voser. But Ms. Cook remains firmly in the Shell inner circle.

A 28-year Shell veteran, Ms. Cook has always stuck out in a male-dominated industry. At the University of Kansas in the 1970s, for instance, she was one of the few women in her petroleum-engineering class.

Joining Shell in Houston in 1980, she held a string of managerial and technical positions in the U.S., and in 2000 was named head of gas and power, based in London. Three years later, she headed up Shell's Canadian division, leading the company's oil-sands venture -- now seen as one of the pillars of future production growth.

The following year was critical for Shell: The company was rocked by scandal when it emerged that it had overstated its energy reserves. There followed a major restructuring, which catapulted Ms. Cook to the top echelons of Shell management.

Ms. Cook says women are beginning to make more of a mark in the oil patch than when she started out. "I was in the minority, but that's changing," she says. "You go to engineering schools today -- it's not yet 50%," but the share of women students is rising. That's important, with the industry in the throes of a skills shortage and many experienced engineers close to retirement age. "We need all the people we can get," she says.

-- Guy Chazan

Angela Braly's first 18 months at the helm of WellPoint Inc. have been a trial by fire: The health-insurance titan missed its first ever earnings projection this spring and its stock has fallen more than 50% this year.

That has tested Ms. Braly's mettle for perhaps bigger challenges next year. The economic slump threatens to shrink the market of people with health benefits with each new wave of layoffs and employer cutbacks in health benefits. And in Washington's new political landscape, calls for further cuts to private Medicare plans and health-coverage reform are intensifying.

Ms. Braly's task will be to protect her company's interests amid those forces.

She also is trying to make the case to both customers and lawmakers that WellPoint, the U.S.'s largest health insurer, is best positioned to control medical costs and improve quality of care.

The 47-year-old Texas native has argued against some reform proposals. That includes calls to require insurers spend a certain percentage of the premiums they collect on medical expenses, which she says shifts incentives away from improving quality and reducing costs. But she has been an advocate of expanding government programs for children and the poor, such as Medicaid-a business in which WellPoint is a big player.

Last spring, WellPoint was the first of several insurers to spot and declare that higher-than-expected medical costs would dent 2008 profits, sparking a fire sale in managed-care stocks.

Ms. Braly moved swiftly to try to restore investor confidence in her relatively new management team and bolster margins -- speeding up medical-claims payments to get a better handle on cost trends and boosting premiums for some plans.

To stanch the defection of some customers to lower-priced rivals, as well as attract new members, WellPoint also has introduced a number of lower-priced plans in some states.

-- Vanessa Fuhrmans

The 50-year-old Ursula M. Burns is the No. 2 official at the copier giant, and is widely regarded as heir apparent whenever Chairman and Chief Executive Anne Mulcahy steps aside.

For now, entering her second year as president of the company, she faces the gloomy task of cutting 3,000 jobs, or 5% of the work force, as Xerox Corp. XRX 1.94 % copes with the world-wide economic crisis.

Ms. Burns has gone through this before, successfully negotiating with company unions to eliminate or outsource thousands of jobs in 2001, when Xerox was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. The cost-cutting of that era paved the way for a stock rebound and growing profits despite lackluster sales growth until this year.

Ms. Burns grew up in a New York City public housing project and got a master's degree in engineering from Columbia University. She started her Xerox career as an engineer in 1980. She vaulted into executive ranks after a stint as a special assistant to Xerox's former chief executive, Paul Allaire.

She says she is proud to be a Xerox lifer with a deep appreciation of the culture that preached "diversity, quality...and pride in the brand."

But she learned to distrust other aspects of the culture -- "things like resistance to change, lack of speed and bureaucracy," she says. Ms. Burns fights those trends with blunt directness in speech and actions.

As one of the highest ranking African-American women in corporate life today, Ms. Burns credits Xerox's 25-year history of recruiting broadly for her own opportunity to rise to the top of an iconic American company.

But she says Xerox is careful not to reserve certain jobs for particular genders or ethnicities. And she preaches that all executives must "value the success of Xerox more than our own egos."

-- William M. Bulkeley

When Terri Dial agreed last March to join Citigroup Inc., C 1.59 % the 58-year-old banking veteran knew she would have her hands full trying to rejuvenate the New York company's U.S. retail business.

But Ms. Dial's task, as Citigroup's global head of consumer strategy, has grown immeasurably tougher over the past eight months.

Not only has the U.S. economy deteriorated, dragging down Citigroup's domestic branch-banking operations, but the carnage is spreading world-wide. That is imperiling the economies of some of the 106 countries where Citigroup does business. Analysts and investors are worried that Citigroup's long-prized prowess outside the U.S. could become the latest area to bedevil the bank.

The global financial turmoil has elevated the importance of Ms. Dial's job, which she took after three years running Lloyds TSB Group's U.K. retail-banking business. Before that, the California native had spent her entire banking career at Wells Fargo & Co., which she joined in 1973 as a teller.

At Citigroup, Ms. Dial has kept a low profile.

She wasn't intimately involved in the company's planned purchase of Wachovia Corp. WB 1.46 % The deal collapsed last month when Wells Fargo submitted a higher bid -- a debacle that triggered a round of recriminations within Citigroup. Ms. Dial's limited role helped her dodge the finger-pointing.

The Northwestern University graduate, who majored in political science, has yet to unveil any significant changes to Citigroup's struggling U.S. banking business. Ms. Dial has avoided meetings with Wall Street analysts, saying that she hasn't finalized her plans for the business.

Through a spokesman, Ms. Dial declined to comment.

-- David Enrich

Julie Larson-Green has one of the technology industry's biggest responsibilities right now: readying a new version of Microsoft Corp.'s MSFT 3.68 % ubiquitous operating system, called Windows 7.

Not only is Windows 7 likely to be the software environment employed by tens of millions of users to operate their personal computers, it will also be a test of whether Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., can more smoothly hopscotch to the latest release of Windows than in the recent past. Windows Vista, the previous version of the software, has been dinged by critics for sluggish performance and incompatibilities with some accessories like digital cameras and printers.

As Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows experience, the 46-year-old Ms. Larson-Green oversees the teams designing the user interface for Windows 7 as well as the testing and research that goes into making sure the software is ready to ship, something Microsoft has said it expects to do by January 2010. One big priority for Ms. Larson-Green: minimizing the steps in Windows 7, such as mouse clicks, that users have to take to do common activities.

"It's an awesome opportunity to have an awesome impact on millions and millions of peoples' lives," she says.

Ms. Larson-Green, a 16-year veteran of Microsoft and a rare female software engineer there, earned recognition for her involvement in a major redesign of Microsoft's flagship Office suite of applications, which won praise from many reviewers.

When she moved full time to the Windows team in January 2007, her duties multiplied significantly. Ms. Larson-Green now oversees about 430 people, instead of the 13 people whom she managed while working on Office.

-- Nick Wingfield

Oracle Corp. ORCL 2.05 % President Safra Catz has a challenge on her hands: keeping the software company's winning streak going.

In early 2005, Oracle pledged to deliver at least 20% earnings growth for five straight years. The world's largest business-software maker has so far made good on its promise. But as the economy slumps and businesses cut the amount they spend on technology, continuing that performance will become tougher.

Leading the effort will be the 46-year-old Ms. Catz. While Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison is the face of the company, Ms. Catz oversees day-to-day operations. She has led the Redwood Shores, Calif., company through close to 50 acquisitions over the past several years, including 10 in 2008. She also served as chief financial officer from 2005 until September.

Because of her breadth of experience at Oracle, Ms. Catz is uniquely positioned to recognize where the company can make cuts and gain economies of scale in order to maintain its profit margin.

"She knows where all the bodies are buried at Oracle," says Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities Inc.

At a recent event for Wall Street analysts, it was up to Ms. Catz to reassure the audience that Oracle would weather an economic slowdown. She explained that Oracle's business model has it well-positioned to keep profits up even if new sales falter. That's because the company's fees from annual software updates and support -- which are independent of new sales -- account for almost half of the company's revenue.

Ms. Catz joined Oracle in 1999 as senior vice president. In 2004, she became one of two co-presidents; the other is Charles Phillips. She is on the company's board and in May joined the board of HSBC Holdings PLC.

-- Ben Worthen

As a merger wave tore through the mining sector this year, one company opted out of the party -- Anglo American PLC. Instead, its CEO, Cynthia Carroll, looked inward, focusing her efforts on an internal overhaul of the giant but fusty mining group.

The first female and non-South African to head Anglo, Ms. Carroll, a 51-year-old American geologist, had a mandate to shake things up at a company long dominated by conservative white Afrikaners. When she arrived in March 2007 she found a loose, sprawling conglomerate that had spread from its core mining operations into areas like paper and packaging and aggregates. Different divisions were run almost like independent businesses.

Under the banner "One Anglo," Ms. Carroll tried to instill a common sense of purpose, direction and values across the group. While Anglo's rivals indulged in merger mania, she made improving frayed relations with the South African government a top priority. Since she joined Anglo, it has signed a series of deals under South Africa's Black Economic Empowerment Scheme aimed at transferring ownership and management of companies to the black majority.

Safety has also become a watchword at Anglo, one of the world's biggest producers of platinum, diamonds, nickel, coal and iron ore. In a presentation in April, Ms. Carroll said death and injuries at Anglo's mines remained "shockingly high" and pledged to improve them.

Observers say her outsider status has allowed her to tackle so many taboos at Anglo. She came to the company from Canadian aluminum producer Alcan Inc. Before that, she worked as a petroleum geologist for oil giant Amoco, now part of BP PLC.

So far she's determined to sit out the M&A boom in mining. "We are the eighth-largest company in the FTSE 100," she said in one recent interview. "How much larger do we have to be?"

-- Guy Chazan

In the past year, Internet executive Sheryl Sandberg has become a bigger fish in a smaller pond.

Ms. Sandberg recently left her job running Google Inc.'s online sales channels to become chief operating officer of Facebook Inc., a closely held social-networking Web site based in Palo Alto, Calif. The company, which allows people to create personal profiles to share information about themselves with others on its site, is widely regarded as one of Silicon Valley's best Internet candidates for an initial public offering somewhere down the line.

One of the first things Ms. Sandberg has had to manage at Facebook is an age gap. At 39, Ms. Sandberg is older than many of Facebook's employees, including the company's 24-year-old chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg. Mr. Zuckerberg founded the company while a student at Harvard, Ms. Sandberg's alma mater as well.

But her colleagues say Ms. Sandberg, who once served as a chief of staff for the U.S. Treasury Department, is off to a strong start assembling and managing the team that will take the 700-person company from a hot start-up to a profitable business.

Under Ms. Sandberg's watch so far, Facebook has announced plans to open a new international headquarters in Ireland, and implemented a number of new management procedures, such as employee reviews.

High on Ms. Sandberg's agenda is also coming up with a new advertising model for the site that can lure dollars away from competitors like Google and Yahoo Inc. But she faces hurdles, such as a turbulent economy and fierce competition for online advertising dollars from other start-ups and rivals.

Ms. Sandberg says she's patient. "Ads are an iterative game," she said in a recent interview.

-- Jessica E. Vascellaro

Nicole Seligman plays a crucial role behind the scenes at Sony Corp., overseeing legal, compliance and internal-audit issues across the Japanese company's broad range of businesses, from electronics to movies and music, in all of its markets around the world.

That puts her at the center of Sony's efforts to re-establish its leadership in the electronics industry. Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer has talked about his interest in creating new businesses to address needs in the energy, environmental and medical sectors. Ms. Seligman will almost certainly have a prominent place in those discussions, especially if they involve acquisitions.

The 52-year-old executive has been involved in almost every important development at the company in recent years. Most recently, she helped navigate Sony through antitrust legislation when it negotiated a deal with Bertelsmann AG to buy the half of Sony BMG Music Entertainment it didn't own, an acquisition that was completed last month.

When Sony, the leading Blu-ray proponent, was battling Toshiba Corp. over what would be the next dominant DVD format, Ms. Seligman worked closely with the various Sony business groups involved to ensure that the company's strategy didn't raise legal issues, and advised executives on fair-competition, copy-protection and intellectual-property issues.

Two years ago, when Sony recalled a huge number of laptop-computer batteries because of a problem with the manufacturing process, Ms. Seligman guided the company through the regulatory issues.

She's doing all this in a country where women executives are rare. Ms. Seligman is the first woman and the first foreigner to become Sony's general counsel. She is the highest-ranking woman ever at Sony and one of the highest-ranking women at any major Japanese corporation.

-- Yukari Iwatani Kane

The next year will be a test of the crisis-management skills of Gulzhan Moldazhanova, a former secretary who runs Basic Element, one of Russia's largest industrial conglomerates.

Her task is daunting: protecting the assets of billionaire businessman Oleg Deripaska amid financial turmoil. Mr. Deripaska controls a vast industrial empire that has grown from a single aluminum smelter in Siberia to be a dominant or major player in six different sectors. His assets include a controlling stake in aluminum behemoth Rusal and a 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel, the world's biggest producer of the metal.

Ms. Moldazhanova, 43, is Mr. Deripaska's top lieutenant. She is one of only a tiny handful of female CEOs in the upper echelons of Russian business. In the almost four years that she has been in day-to-day charge of Basic Element, she has helped mastermind a series of mergers and acquisitions that have fueled double-digit growth.

Her job now is to try to keep Mr. Deripaska's empire intact -- by refinancing billions of dollars in debt and by rationalizing existing businesses.

Conditions are tough. Margin calls and plummeting asset values have already forced Basic Element to shed sizable stakes in a Canadian auto-parts maker and a German builder. Plans to float stakes in a number of subsidiaries on international markets have also been delayed.

Ms. Moldazhanova has the advantage of knowing the business inside out. She began working for Mr. Deripaska as a secretary in 1994 on just $200 a month. In the decade that followed, she occupied increasingly senior positions until Mr. Deripaska appointed her CEO in early 2005.

The holder of four graduate and postgraduate degrees, including an M.B.A., she is famously work-focused. People who have met her say she is hard to read, sarcastic and can be fiery.

-- Andrew Osborn

Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of the French nuclear-engineering company with global ambitions, Areva SA, is under new pressure at home following two minor accidents at Areva plants in France this summer.

The incidents, both of which involved small radiation leaks, occurred several weeks apart at separate plants in southern France and helped reignite debate in France about the safety of nuclear power.

The 49-year-old Ms. Lauvergeon has continued to argue that nuclear power is one of the safest and cleanest energies around. But the renewed controversy at home comes at a delicate time for her company, which last year won an &euro;8 billion ($10.2 billion) contract in China, and currently is in the race for contracts to build nuclear reactors in the U.K., U.S. and South Africa. A spike in energy costs has led many countries to look again at nuclear power, and Ms. Lauvergeon has been only too happy to oblige.

She has been on a mission to jazz up the industry's image. After being made chief executive of Areva in 2001, she hired a former executive from fashion house Herm&egrave;s and ran TV ads in France with the slogan: "We've got nothing to hide. Come see." Ms. Lauvergeon even had cameras installed at a nuclear-waste recycling plant in Normandy, the world's largest repository of radioactive material. The cameras transmitted live shots of the plant's interior to a Web site for public viewing.

This dynamism has made Ms. Lauvergeon one of the rare women to have shattered France's glass ceiling. A graduate of France's prestigious Ecole Normale Sup&eacute;rieure and a former aide to the late French President Fran&ccedil;ois Mitterrand, she was appointed to head state-owned nuclear-waste recycler Cogema in 1999. She then persuaded the French government to merge Cogema with its state-owned sibling, reactor maker Framatome, to create the world's largest nuclear-energy company, Areva, in 2001.

-- Max Colchester

Lynn Laverty Elsenhans only stepped into the top job at Sunoco Inc. SUN 0.44 % in August, but she's already shaking up the independent refiner's conservative culture. She's reshuffled top management and hired consulting firm McKinsey & Co. to help Sunoco review its assets and cut costs.

"We're going through the throes...trying to take the platform that we have and say, 'How do we take this company to the next step to create value?' " Ms. Elsenhans said at a conference earlier this year.

Ms. Elsenhans, 52, faces a slew of obstacles to get there, from the wobbly economy to poor profit margins in the refining industry.

She has plenty of experience in the business. She oversaw Royal Dutch Shell PLC's refining and chemical operations from 2005 until she joined Sunoco this summer. But running an independent refiner poses a different set of challenges than being part of an integrated oil company.

While profits for majors like Shell ballooned as oil prices ran up, Sunoco's profit declined 97% in the first half of this year from a year earlier as the higher cost for crude and lackluster demand for gasoline squeezed its margins. The company's stock has lost more than 50% of its value this year.

Now that oil prices are falling, profit margins have improved somewhat. Still, demand for Sunoco's main product remains weak, because consumers continue to conserve gasoline due to the worsening economy.

The company is also at a disadvantage to competitors that invested heavily in refinery equipment to process cheaper, heavy grades of crude. Sunoco mostly relies on the more-expensive lighter and sweeter grades.

Ms. Elsenhans is mulling the possibility of setting up partnerships, potentially with oil producers, to help foot the bill for the expensive refinery upgrades needed to process the cheaper crude varieties.

-- Ana Campoy

Ruth Porat, the head financial-institutions banker for Morgan Stanley, advised the U.S. Treasury on its Sept. 7 decision to take over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

A week later came another assignment: She and a team of bankers at the New York investment bank would be needed to help the Federal Reserve handle the potential failure of insurance firm American International Group.

The two government rescue plans helped send the stock market into a tailspin and spurred national governments' unprecedented buying spree of stakes in large banks.

Morgan Stanley's government work puts the bank in a unique spot to understand where the financial crisis may go next. And it makes the 50-year-old Ms. Porat a key player in helping reshape financial services in the coming year. Having represented big companies like General Electric Co. and Blackstone Group LP as well as the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department, she is in position to provide advice that could help determine the winners and losers in the continuing shakeout in the vital banking sector.

Ms. Porat and most others didn't predict how deep or wide this crisis would grow. But in August 2007 she called some of her bankers back from vacations as subprime mortgage problems grew more serious. "We're in a crisis," she recalls saying, before her group hit the phones to find out more about how clients were faring.

Morgan Stanley has seen its own stock plunge this year amid concerns about its exposure to bad loans and borrowed money. To shore up its balance sheet, the firm has taken investments from the U.S. government and Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

Financial institutions will continue to raise capital and pursue mergers in an effort to weather the current environment, Ms. Porat predicts.

-- Aaron Lucchetti

This has been a roller-coaster year for Patricia Woertz, chief executive of grain giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. ADM 0.65 % Booming demand globally for food and biofuels rewarded the company with record profits, and turned the once-unglamorous company into the tony stock on Wall Street.

Now, amid a slowing global economy and volatile grain markets, the company's stock has fallen to levels not seen for years, as investors fear the Decatur, Ill., company is losing its luster.

The challenge for Ms. Woertz in the coming year will be to persuade investors to look past market gloom and instead focus on ADM's products that she describes as "vital to the world": food and energy.

At its core, ADM, with $70 billion in revenue, buys crops from farmers and then transforms them into an array of products, like animal feed, corn syrup and biofuels.

Ms. Woertz points out that global demand for food will double by 2050 as a result of population growth and improved diets. Also, as nations work to find energy sources other than fossil fuels, ADM has positioned itself to provide a variety of alternatives, including corn-based ethanol and soybean-based biodiesel.

While the long-term trends seem to favor ADM, it's the short term that has investors worried. In recent months grain prices have been extremely volatile, which makes the commodity business a difficult one to navigate.

Now the credit crisis in the U.S. is straining economies across the globe. That could cause lower meat and milk consumption, which would mean less demand for the grains needed to make those products. Also the stronger U.S. dollar could slow U.S. agriculture exports, which have been a big driver of growth at ADM.

Ms. Woertz says she is using "bifocal vision" at the company as a way to keep in focus both the long-term and short-term trends.

-- Lauren Etter

Mary Parent is in the midst of trying to pull off a giant Hollywood makeover: helping to transform Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. MGM 1.96 % from a movie-distribution company back into a full-fledged movie studio.

The company hired Ms. Parent, 41 years old, earlier this year as chairman of its world-wide motion-picture group, and she will help oversee efforts to gin up a full slate of films and franchises. That will include the return of the James Bond franchise to MGM after this winter. Ms. Parent will also oversee other coming projects, including "The Hobbit" and reimaginings of older MGM titles like "Robocop."

A native of nearby Santa Barbara, Calif., Ms. Parent got her start in Hollywood at age 25 as an agent trainee at ICM, one of the top talent agencies in the business. From there, she went to New Line Cinema in 1994, where she helped put together smaller films like "Pleasantville" and "Trial and Error." At New Line, Ms. Parent began building her reputation as a tireless executive with a sharp eye for content.

Ms. Parent joined Universal at age 30 in 1997 as a senior vice president of production, and rose to become the studio's president of production in 2000, and finally vice chairman of world-wide production in 2003.

During her eight years as an executive at the studio, she supervised more than 90 films -- more than 20 of which took in more than $100 million domestically each -- including "Meet the Fockers," "The 40-Year-Old Virgin," "Seabiscuit" and "The Bourne Supremacy."

At the end of 2005, she left her executive post for a rich producing pact with friend and business partner Scott Stuber and Universal. Named Stuber/Parent Productions, the shingle established one of the most lucrative producer deals in Hollywood.

-- Lauren A.E. Schuker

As a top operating executive at General Electric Co. GE 2.89 % , Charlene Begley, 42, is learning the importance of being flexible: She's adjusting to her third title in two years as GE shuffles its portfolio.

Ms. Begley currently heads GE's Enterprise Solutions group, which includes its security, intelligent platforms, digital-energy and sensing and technology businesses. Despite its low profile inside the sprawling conglomerate, the group generates $5 billion in annual revenue and employs 17,000 people.

Ms. Begley knows the group faces challenges because of the economic slowdown and potential curbs on government spending -- both of which would hurt GE's security business. So she's cutting costs by freezing hiring, limiting travel and potentially consolidating offices, among other things.

"We have to make sure we protect those investments," she says.

Ms. Begley says the hope is that these moves will prevent more drastic cost savings and will preserve cash to make acquisitions for growth in coming months.

She is respected within GE for her judgment calls. She's a "quick and facile business leader," says John Lynch, senior vice president for human resources. "She's driven, decisive and is passionate about results."

A graduate of the University of Vermont and a GE veteran since 1988, Ms. Begley has worked in GE's finance, automation, transportation, and plastics units. She was GE's youngest corporate officer at age 32, the first woman to lead a major business unit and the first woman senior vice president.

She ran the plastics unit from July 2005 until GE sold it in 2007. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt then tapped her to head GE Industrial and Enterprise Solutions. That job morphed again last summer, when GE said it would spin off a portion of the group that includes appliances and light bulbs.

-- Paul Glader

As one half of the first couple of philanthropy, Melinda Gates has been instrumental in setting the ambitious goals of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest private philanthropy with about $35 billion.

Over the next year, Ms. Gates, 44, will need to be increasingly vigilant in shaping how the foundation will try to achieve those goals

With her husband, Microsoft Corp. MSFT 3.68 % co-founder Bill Gates, she is betting that her foundation's vast endowment can help discover new vaccines, better educate more children and bring basic financial services to the poor around the world.

Ms. Gates has been an increasingly public voice in raising awareness of those challenges through speeches and trips to troubled communities around the world. That role will continue apace next year -- public appearances for 2009 will include a trip to Africa and the meeting of world leaders in Davos, Switzerland.

The next year also will likely pull Ms. Gates more deeply inside the foundation as it rapidly expands. Thanks to a $31 billion donation that Warren Buffett made to the Gates Foundation in 2006, the philanthropy is hiring -- it will have about 1,000 employees sometime next year, up from about 600 now -- and expanding into select new areas of giving.

Ms. Gates and her husband this year brought in a top executive from Microsoft to grapple with the day-to-day management of that expansion. But Ms. Gates will need to play a role just as critical: guiding the evolution of the philanthropy's culture.

A few years ago, the foundation was a small, tightly run group that easily followed the values and principles that guide the Gates family's philosophy of giving. Among them: "Be humble and mindful."

Ms. Gates embodies such values. Her task now is to assure that hundreds of new staff share them.

-- Robert A. Guth

At a conference in late September, Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO 2.11 % Chief Executive John Chambers laid out an array of markets, services and products that he said his company would target to fuel growth. His champion for the vision: Padmasree Warrior.

Ms. Warrior, 47 years old, was chief technology officer of Motorola Inc. before joining Cisco as chief technology officer earlier this year, making her one of the few outsiders brought into the San Jose, Calif., company's top management in recent years. Now she must help identify acquisition targets for Cisco, as well as emerging technology trends to exploit. She must also communicate Cisco's technology strategy to corporate customers and industry partners.

It isn't an easy task. Cisco -- known for making networking gear such as routers and switches that move Internet traffic around the world -- is seeking to become more than just an Internet infrastructure business. The company is particularly targeting three new growth areas: business-oriented Web tools such as instant messaging tied together with Web conferencing; the online video market; and the market for data-center virtualization software, which lets server-computers and storage devices run multiple operating systems.

Mr. Chambers says he wants Cisco to enter these new markets quickly and simultaneously. That presents a challenge for Ms. Warrior, because Mr. Chambers has also set up a system under which decisions have to be reached by consensus among executives. As a result, Ms. Warrior may find it difficult early on to set her own course.

Through a Cisco spokeswoman, Ms. Warrior says she's developing a technology system that will be accessible to all the company's engineers, managers and executives. She plans to use the system to communicate with Cisco employees, allowing her to cut through the bureaucracy to make decisions on strategy, she says.

-- Bobby White

As one of Boeing Co. BA 2.50 % 's top-ranking female executives, Carolyn Corvi is known around the aerospace company as the Queen of Lean. Lean manufacturing, that is.

The 57-year-old executive is widely credited with adapting Toyota Motor Co.'s techniques for turning out large numbers of high-quality cars to the production of extremely complex airplanes.

Former Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Alan Mullally said during an interview in 2005 that much of Ms. Corvi's early success in Boeing's plants was accomplished "sometimes through sheer willpower alone" as she challenged reluctant managers and machinists to learn new ways. She led the move to convert Boeing's 737 factory into a moving production line, where as many as six of the twin-engine jetliners roll nose-to-tail through the plant in an aluminum conga line.

Not only has Boeing cut the time it takes to turn out a 737 by more than half -- from 22 days in 1999 to 10 days in 2008 -- the company has generated record profits while simultaneously investing billions of dollars in new products such as the 787 Dreamliner.

Now in charge of Boeing's overall production, Ms. Corvi has the challenge of duplicating her 737 success on much larger jetliners, such as the widebody 777 and 747. The results so far have been mixed while engineers invent ergonomically friendly ways to do away with heavy tooling that holds these 200-ton behemoths in place while they are being pieced together.

Because Boeing relies increasingly on suppliers to build larger sections of its airplanes, Ms. Corvi must also find ways to get them to buy into Boeing's successful manufacturing techniques.

In an interview last year, Ms. Corvi said the one thing she liked about her job is that it's never finished. "No matter how efficient you are today, you can always do better," she said.

-- J. Lynn Lunsford

Facing one of the most difficult investment environments in generations, Harvard University this year handed over the reins of the nation's largest and perhaps most prestigious endowment to Jane Mendillo.

"This position is the pinnacle of the profession," Ms. Mendillo, 50, said, after being named president and chief executive of Harvard Management Co., the company that manages the endowment. She began in July with $36.9 billion in the fund.

Ms. Mendillo, a Yale graduate, held a number of positions at the company from 1987 to 2002. She returns after about five years running the Wellesley College endowment, where she chalked up a 13.5% average annual return, beating her peer group's median return over that period by more than a percentage point, but trailing Harvard's by nearly five percentage points.

"Jane is an excellent pick," says Jack Meyer, head of Harvard Management from 1990 to 2005. "She is smart, soft-spoken but tough as nails, experienced in all asset classes, a first-rate manager and she knows Harvard."

Ms. Mendillo may need all of these skills in the months ahead. Even during a financial crisis, the Harvard fund is expected by everyone to outperform its peers, thanks to quality staff, top pay, and its access to top hedge funds and private-equity partnerships that most investors can't get near. In this past fiscal year, ended in June, Harvard put up a return of 8.6%.

Unlike the $1 billion fund she took over at Wellesley, the behemoth Harvard endowment isn't very nimble; and some investments that powered Harvard last year have turned south. She also inherits a controversy over the recent seven-figure payouts to top Harvard Management executives that have provoked criticism from alumni. Her compensation and that of and her top managers is tied to performance.

These are among the issues the new chief faces. "Harvard is lucky to have Jane address them," Mr. Meyer says.

-- Craig Karmin

About six months ago, Laura Desmond took the helm of one of the biggest media-buying firms in the world. Starcom MediaVest Group, a unit of Paris-based Publicis Groupe SA, is responsible for buying almost $30 billion a year in media time and space for deep-pocketed marketers such as Procter & Gamble Co., General Motors Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Coca-Cola Co.

Aside from negotiating prices for ad placement, the firm must figure out which media are best for marketers to use -- a harder task these days with the explosion of media options.

But the challenges don't end there. Ms. Desmond has taken the top job at Starcom MediaVest at a critical juncture in the ad business, as it tries to reinvent itself in hopes of keeping its relevancy in the digital world. What that means for the media-buying sector remains unclear.

For years the media-buying business was the ugly stepchild to the firms that create advertising campaigns, but that is no longer the case. Media-buying firms now have a major seat at the table. The problem is the table is getting crowded.

Companies such as Google Inc., for instance, are threatening the entire business model by trying to automate the task of buying ad time on TV, radio and in magazines. Google recently forged a deal with General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal to sell some of its ad time. Meanwhile, media companies themselves pose a growing threat, as they increasingly circumvent media-buying firms and instead work directly with marketers.

To help her deal with these challenges, Ms. Desmond has made luring talent with digital roots a top priority, though it remains to be seen how much hiring she'll be able to do amid the current economic slump.

-- Suzanne Vranica

Pamela Daley has her work cut out for her in coming months. She's the top deal maker at General Electric Co. GE 2.89 % as the conglomerate looks to complete two big transactions: selling its $30 billion credit-card business and selling or spinning off its industrial division that includes its iconic lightbulb and appliances.

Ms. Daley, 56, has been part of every major GE transaction in recent years, including its $14 billion deal to buy a controlling stake in Universal Studios from France's Vivendi in 2003, its $9.5 billion acquisition of British health-care company Amersham PLC the same year, and the 2007 sale of its plastics unit to a Saudi Arabian company for $11.6 billion.

A senior vice president for corporate business development since 2004, Ms. Daley reports to Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt. He and other GE executives rely on her knowledge in taxation, her expertise in corporate strategy and her sense of timing amid volatile financial markets.

Ms. Daley describes her job as "a direct, roll-up-your-sleeves role in large or particularly strategic acquisitions and dispositions." Susan Peters, GE's vice president of executive development, calls her "an extremely focused and tenacious leader" who has helped to reshape GE.

Ms. Daley also teaches and coaches other GE executives in its famed leadership-development programs. The Princeton University graduate honed teaching skills as an adjunct professor at University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she graduated top of her class and edited the law review.

A tax lawyer by training, she was a partner at the Philadelphia office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in 1989 when GE attorneys recruited her. A year later, she was GE's top mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer.

Her tax specialty may come in handy as the company considers how to maintain its favorable tax position with a new presidential administration.

-- Paul Glader

After 30 years at Time Inc., Ann Moore is facing one of the most challenging stretches of her career, and in the process may put her stamp more firmly on the magazine giant.

Ms. Moore, 58, is ushering in a radical management overhaul that pushes the lone-wolf pieces of Time Inc. to work more closely together, and she's trimming hundreds of positions as advertising declines. "I care about two things going forward," Ms. Moore says. "Get the cost out, grow revenue."

The restructuring may be resetting the clock on her career. Ms. Moore appeared to be on the ropes 18 months ago, but insiders say she has turned around her reputation. Last year, Ms. Moore told BusinessWeek she planned to leave when her contract expires in 2010. She now says she doesn't plan to retire and never really did.

Once considered an Internet neophyte, she shepherded Web sites such as People.com, SI.com and CNNMoney.com, cementing Time Inc. as the savviest of the otherwise digital-backwater magazine industry.

Still, Time Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc., TWX 1.51 % faces challenges. Traditional media continues to lose its iron grip on ad dollars, and the rocky economy is an even bigger threat.

Since starting in the finance ranks of Time Inc. in 1978, Ms. Moore has risen to the top with a reputation for hitting financial targets. She holds a Harvard M.B.A. but by temperament is more akin to another Ann: the late voluble former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, whom Ms. Moore has called a mentor.

There remain questions about the role of Time Inc. within Time Warner. Chief Executive Jeff Bewkes is under pressure to fix a wobbly enterprise, and although Time Inc. generates cash and reported about $5 billion in revenue last year -- 10% of Time Warner's total -- it's unclear if the unit fits with Time Warner's entertainment businesses.

-- Shira Ovide

Gail Kelly isn't cowed by global economic turbulence. Three months after taking the top job at Australia's Westpac Banking Corp. WBK 3.48 % , she turned around and made an offer to buy her former employer, St. George Bank.

The bold move, announced in May, put the 52-year-old native of South Africa on the map. If St. George shareholders approve the deal, as expected, it would be the largest merger in Australian history and would create the nation's largest bank by assets.

She already knows what she intends to tackle: an upgrade of information-technology systems and an improvement in customer service. She also faces a challenge in navigating the credit crisis, which has been kinder to most Australian banks than it has to their peers but has still made the operating environment more difficult.

Ms. Kelly moved to Australia in 1997, with her husband, a medical doctor, and four children. She began at Commonwealth Bank of Australia as head of strategic marketing. Missteps integrating an acquisition at Commonwealth have shaped her approach to her present task at Westpac. In addition to selecting her own team, Ms. Kelly, who is now an Australian citizen, emphasizes the importance of "making decisions quickly and then getting on with it."

She also learned from her post-apartheid experiences in South Africa.

As head of human resources at South Africa's Nedbank, Ms. Kelly hired a number of anti-apartheid exiles suddenly allowed to return to their country in 1990. Integrating the newcomers with existing staff, she says, was hard but impressed on her the urgency of creating a team-based environment wherever she goes.

"Many had Ph.D.s, but had been out of the country for so long," Ms. Kelly said in a May interview. "I loved that role," she says of the job. "I learned about diversity and change and how to get things done."

-- Laura Santini

One measure of Mellody Hobson's success is the famous people who figure in her life.

The exuberant 39-year-old will need all of her charm as she tries to win and keep big institutional investors for Ariel Investments, where she's president. The flagship Ariel Fund at the company, which bills itself as the nation's leading African-American money manager, was down 48% for the year as of Thursday. According to Morningstar Inc., that's better than only 14% of the funds in its category, Mid-Cap Blend, which focus on midsize companies and use value and growth strategies.

Ms. Hobson recently said that the intensity of her current effort "is significantly higher than in my most prolific year from the past. But we're seeing values we've never seen before, and we expect to come out of it strong."

Ariel had $7.1 billion under management as of Sept. 30. Ms. Hobson presides over the noninvestment portions of the business from her office overlooking Chicago's Grant Park and downtown boat harbor. Her mentor and fellow Princeton graduate, Chief Executive John Rogers Jr., runs the research and investment side.

Ms. Hobson is dating filmmaker George Lucas. But her connections to the famous began when she was still in high school. She was invited to a fund-raising breakfast for then-Sen. Bill Bradley, who afterwards helped convince her to attend Princeton University.

Later, she raised money for Sen. Bradley, and has been a fund-raiser for Barack Obama since he first ran for the Illinois senate. Through Mr. Bradley, she met Starbucks Corp. SBUX 3.29 % Chief Executive Howard Schultz. Now she is a director of Starbucks, Estee Lauder EL 1.96 % Cos. Inc., the Sundance Institute, the Investment Company Institute and Dreamworks Animation SKG Inc. DWA 3.60 % Her other boards include the Chicago Public Education Fund.

"I'm a capitalist through and through," she says. "But I do believe in helping other people."

-- Thomas M. Burton

Meredith Whitney says investors shouldn't be surprised at what's happening in the economy.

As a managing director at Oppenheimer OPY -2.47 % & Co., Ms. Whitney has been warning for more than a year that banks are in dire shape. She also forecast that unless they fess up to the true worth of their troubled mortgage assets, their woes would rapidly ripple through global markets.

Such predictions have unfortunately turned out to be true. Ms. Whitney, 38 years old, covers about 20 financial institutions, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and American Express Co. She doesn't have buy ratings on any of them. Instead, she has become one of Wall Street's premier bank analysts thanks to several prescient gloomy calls.

She was down on Wachovia Corp., Merrill Lynch & Co., Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. long before they all collapsed or were taken over this year. She warned last winter that bond insurers like Ambac Financial Group Inc. and MBIA Inc. would face big troubles this year, and they did.

These days, ask who she's most bullish on, and Ms. Whitney replies, "No one." Ask who she's most bearish on, and she cites Citigroup Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co.

Meanwhile, she is convinced "the fourth quarter will be massively disruptive." Ms. Whitney expects U.S. unemployment will top 8% by 2009, including 30% staff reductions at Wall Street firms by year end.

She is particularly pessimistic about the U.S. government's historic actions to bail out banks with massive capital injections. Such plans have "little hope" of improving core fundamentals, she noted in September.

"All financials are going to underperform" for a while, Ms. Whitney says. "It's just a question to what degree."

-- Diya Gullapalli

Growing up in Dearborn, Mich., home of Ford Motor Co. F 1.09 % , Mary Ann Wright wanted to be an automotive engineer. Today, she's trying to engineer an automotive revolution.

As chief executive of JCI-Saft Advanced Power Solutions, Ms. Wright, 46 years old, is running one of the few producers of battery packs for hybrid cars and electric vehicles. It's a fledgling industry that many investors and analysts believe will eventually take off.

The company is a joint venture of Johnson Controls Inc., JCI 1.46 % Milwaukee, Wis., a supplier of batteries and other automotive components, and Saft Groupe SA, a producer of energy storage devices for the defense and aerospace industries.

Earlier this year, JCI-Saft began production of lithium-ion battery packs at its plant in France. It will supply them to Mercedes-Benz and BMW AG for hybrid cars they are planning.

JCI-Saft, Ms. Wright says, is gearing up to produce 15,000 battery packs a year, but is betting on a bright future. "The next 10 years, we could see the market for hybrids grow to eight million to 10 million vehicles a year," she says.

As a kid, Ms. Wright spent hours tinkering in the garage with her father, a Ford engineer, and was hooked. After earning degrees in economics, engineering and business administration, she landed a job at Ford in 1988. But her big break didn't come until 2000, when she was put in charge of the redesign of the Ford Taurus, a $1 billion project. After the vehicle launched with improved quality, she was named chief engineer for another strategic program -- the launch of a hybrid version of Ford's small sport-utility vehicle, the Escape.

In 2005, Ms. Wright left Ford to take time off. She then did a short stint at a supplier before Johnson Controls came looking for someone familiar with hybrids to run its new battery joint venture. "It didn't take too long to convince me," she says.

-- Neal E. Boudette

As the chief executive of INX Media Ltd., 36-year-old Indrani Mukerjea is India's first female media mogul.

Her upstart TV company, founded in 2007 with funding from private-equity firms Temasek Holdings and New Silk Route Advisers, is betting on growth in a country with 120 million television homes and millions more who still don't own one. While spending on advertising is slowing or declining in other parts of the world, analysts expect it to grow in India for years to come.

INX Media currently runs three channels in India, including news and general entertainment channels and the popular 9XM video music channel. Ms. Mukerjea plans to launch nine more channels by the end of 2009. Working in male-dominated Bollywood "has been a challenge, to be very honest," says Ms. Mukerjea, "but you fight on regardless."

In 1996 she created her own executive-recruitment firm, INX Services, which blossomed into one of India's largest. After marrying the then-head of News Corp.'s Star TV India, Peter Mukerjea, she decided to expand the INX empire into media. Mr. Mukerjea, who left Star, later became INX's chairman. (News Corp. owns The Wall Street Journal.)

Her biggest media venture, a Hindi-language general entertainment channel called 9X, drew strong ratings initially but has lately fallen out of the top five amid a flurry of new competition and skyrocketing production costs.

Ms. Mukerjea says that financial discipline will help her channels survive in the long run. "We will keep experimenting, while at the same time being cost-conscious," she says. "While everyone else is talking about outspending each other, I think the way to survive in this business is to tighten your belt. In the middle of the global economic meltdown, that helps you be looked upon as a prudent leader."

-- Geoffrey A. Fowler

Marcia Goldstein sits atop what is arguably the hottest legal practice of the moment.

The New York lawyer is head of bankruptcy and restructuring at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, which has long advised many of the nation's biggest debtors.

The sagging economy has many companies beating a path to Ms. Goldstein's door. She is advising American International Group in an out-of-court restructuring. In court, she is lead bankruptcy counsel to Washington Mutual Inc. and LandSource Inc., a Louisiana-based land-development company. And her team is also handling many other massive matters, including the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, which alone has occupied hundreds of lawyers.

The future, meanwhile, looks bright as well, at least if you are a lawyer who is busy when times are bad. "I foresee a continuation of companies in distress in a variety of sectors for the next 24 months," Ms. Goldstein says. Financial firms have been hardest hit so far, she says, but "the full impact of lending institutions not lending hasn't yet been felt by Main Street, such as retailers."

Still, Ms. Goldstein faces challenges. There was a time, not long ago, when Weil had few serious competitors when it came to landing high-profile bankruptcy assignments. Now, some other top law firms are in the mix. Ms. Goldstein doesn't seem ruffled. "There are some competitors out there," she says, "but any indication that we were being overtaken by [others], I think, has been put to rest."

Ms. Goldstein, age 56, who attended Cornell University for college and law school, has practiced with Weil for more than 30 years. Some of her past greatest hits include serving as bankruptcy counsel for WorldCom Inc. (which was later subsumed into Verizon Communications Inc.) and Parmalat Finanziaria SpA.

-- Nathan Koppel

When she graduated with a degree in math from San Francisco State University in 1982, Maha Al Ghunaim was already something of a pioneer among Kuwaiti women. When she joined the fledging ranks of investment bankers in her country, she set off on a revolutionary path.

Today Mrs. Al Ghunaim, chairwoman of Global Investment House, is the only woman heading a Middle Eastern investment bank, and one of the top go-to bankers in the region. Her reputation in a culture where the glass ceiling has few cracks was hard won. She learned the trade by climbing through the ranks of Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, the Kuwaiti Investment Authority, before deciding to strike out on her own.

Her maverick spirit and cultural sensitivities have aided in her success. When she and a male colleague founded Global in 1998, she agreed he would be chairman, understanding that a Kuwaiti woman couldn't attend the all-male evening gatherings during which business deals are commonly sealed. But that changed last year. Her experience spoke louder than her gender, and she took over the top post at her company.

By then, Global had become a regional giant, running brokerage and investment-banking services in 16 countries. In May, it became the first Kuwaiti company to list on the London Stock Exchange, raising $1.2 billion. In October, Global reported pretax profits of $385.9 million for the first nine months of 2008, a jump of 66% from the year-earlier period, and its assets under management passed $10 billion -- all at a time when regional stock markets have been falling precipitously.

Global managed a $600 million private placement in July for a Saudi real-estate company. Mrs. Al Ghunaim says she hopes that Global will close six more private equity deals before the end of the year.

-- Margaret Coker

Emma Marcegaglia was earlier this year appointed president of Confindustria, the powerful Italian business federation, becoming a rare example of a women in a top business position in Italy.

Like most of Italy's business elite, Ms. Marcegaglia is a graduate of Bocconi University in Milan. She also holds a master's in business administration from New York University's Stern School of Business. Born on Christmas Eve in 1965, Ms. Marcegaglia is not only the first woman to run Confindustria but is also one of the youngest of its presidents. Past leaders have included car designer Sergio Pininfarina and longtime chairman of Fiat Giovanni Agnelli.

In a country where trade unions have a say in most government decisions, so does Confindustria, which helps negotiate wages. Confindustria promotes free-market reforms and increased competition through its representatives around the country and via the pages of business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, which it owns. In her opening speech, Ms. Marcegaglia called for an increase in Italy's retirement age, a return to nuclear energy and family-friendly welfare policies to boost female employment in Italy.

Her new post means Ms. Marcegaglia will have less time to look after Marcegaglia SpA, the steel-products company her father founded in 1959, of which she is co-chief executive. She handles the financial side of her family's business, sharing CEO responsibilities with her brother. The Marcegaglia group -- which produces steel pipes, builds boilers and also runs tourism resorts -- is one of Italy's industrial success stories, a company that has thrived despite competition from developing countries by diversifying products and aggressively expanding abroad. Ms. Marcegaglia's contribution to that success is largely what led to her Confindustria appointment.

-- Davide Berretta

When Saideh Ghods's two-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer nearly two decades ago, Ms. Ghods learned that some lower-income families in Iran, particularly those from remote provinces, were quietly letting their cancer-stricken children die. They couldn't afford the cost of treatment or the expense of traveling to the children's hospitals in Tehran where treatment is available.

In response, Ms. Ghods, 57, founded in 1991 a charity called Mahak to support the treatment of children with cancer. From the initial handful of volunteers the charity has grown into one of the largest nongovernmental organizations in Iran, helping some 12,000 Iranian children since its inception, as well as thousands of Iraqi and Afghan refugee children with cancer.

Now, Ms. Ghods aims to continue expanding her efforts with the help of funding from Iranian-Americans and others in the U.S., but first she must win permission from the U.S. Treasury for contributions to Mahak from donors in the U.S. Such contributions currently are blocked by U.S. sanctions against Iran.

Ms. Ghods also co-founded the International Society for Children with Cancer, a charity based in Los Angeles that focuses on children in developing countries. And she is starting a nonprofit organization dedicated to Iranian women suffering from breast cancer.

Since Mahak's creation, the mortality rate among children with cancer in Iran has steadily declined. Five years ago, the charity completed the construction of the Mahak Hospital and Rehabilitation Center, a pediatric oncology facility with 120 beds.

Ms. Ghods is widely credited with spearheading the expansion of nongovernmental organizations in Iran beyond traditional religious-based charities to include broader-based civil-service organizations. And she has become a role model for young Iranian women who want to take an active role in society.

-- Farnaz Fassihi

Tomoko Namba, a strong competitor among Japanese cellphone-content providers, has recently extended her playing field to the U.S.

The company she founded, DeNA Co., two years ago launched a hit service with Japan's mobile-savvy young generation -- a Web site of games, chat rooms and virtual characters accessible by cellphone. Now she's trying to repeat that success in the U.S., with a recently launched pilot Web site called MobaMingle, which features free blogging, social networking and avatars.

The service is closely modeled after the original, which caught on using a different strategy from other cellphone-game providers in Japan. Ms. Namba insisted on making her games free, but required customers to first sign up for the site's social-networking service and to create online avatars, or virtual characters, for themselves. DeNA then sold elaborately designed clothes and other accessories for these avatars. That got young customers hooked.

The 46-year-old, a graduate of Harvard Business School and a former McKinsey & Co. partner, has gambled before -- and lost. A Web auction site she founded in 1999 never took off and almost bankrupted DeNA. But soon after that, Ms. Namba locked her sights on mobile technology.

The economic slowdown, meanwhile, has forced DeNA to slash its profit forecast for the year ending in March by 11% to 7.8 billion yen ($79 million). Some younger users in Japan are starting to get bored of their avatars, Ms. Namba told investors recently. To respark interest, she plans to overhaul that site with 3D avatars that move -- and wear new clothes.

Ms. Namba writes a blog in Japan that is popular among working women. Recently, she mused about becoming a triathlete, asking, "How do I find the time to train?"

-- Hiroko Tabuchi

Phuti Malabie, 37, plays a key leadership role in the growth of Africa's rapidly developing energy sector, and in the future of some of the continent's possible corporate leaders as well.

Ms. Malabie is the managing director of Shanduka Energy, a subsidiary of South Africa-based Shanduka Group, an investment company owned by Cyril Ramaphosa, onetime presidential contender and wealthy businessman.

Born in South Africa, but educated in the U.S. and U.K., Ms. Malabie started working for Fieldstone in South Africa, an international boutique investment firm that focuses on energy companies. From there, she moved on to the Development Bank of Southern Africa, financing infrastructure projects. Four years ago she came to Shanduka Group to head its energy division.

The recent commodities boom has helped spur demand for electricity in sub-Saharan Africa, overwhelming the power infrastructure's current capacity in the region. Governments have turned increasingly to private equity to help finance new power projects such as coal plants, hydroelectric dams and oil pipelines.

Under Ms. Malabie, Shanduka Energy has pursued partnerships with companies investing in Mozambique and South Africa, both of which are expected to grow despite the global financial crisis. Ms. Malabie is also leading the hunt for what she sees as undervalued assets on the continent.

Some assume that many blacks in business in South Africa are there not by merit but because of a law that requires companies to hire a certain percentage of black employees. Ms. Malabie says she still confronts such attitudes. "You're constantly having to prove your credibility," she says.

She's put that experience to use, mentoring young black men and women who hope to gain a foothold in corporate South Africa.

-- Sarah Childress

Romi Haan quit a secure job at a government agency to start her own company nine years ago. The move is so rare in South Korea that one prospective lender asked if she was fronting a business for her husband.

Today, Haan Corp. is another rarity in South Korea: a company that went from start-up to midsize in an industry dominated by giant conglomerates like Samsung and LG. Haan makes home-cleaning appliances and, last year, started operations in the U.S.

Ms. Haan, 44 years old, designed her company's original steam cleaner herself. "It was so tiring to wipe the floor," she says.

Her initial plan was ambitious: to develop a steam mop in six months with 50 million to 60 million won, or about $40,000. She wound up spending nearly 10 times that much before shipping her first product in 2001. It failed.

Nearly three years later, a steam cleaner priced at about $80 became a hit product on home shopping channels in South Korea. Orders from retailers followed and Haan began turning profits. "After five years, in November 2004, I finally could pay salaries and bills on time," Ms. Haan says. Last year, revenue hit 120 billion won, or about $90 million. The company has since added more steam-based appliances, including garment irons.

"I personally think Korean customers, particularly housewives, are very picky," she says. "They can't stand a little inconvenience, and their complaints are actually very helpful."

Ms. Haan is a celebrity in South Korea, where she is one of the few women to have become rich without inheriting wealth, making it big in show business or succeeding in golf.

"I try hard to make the business environment better for women entrepreneurs," she says.

Last year, Ms. Haan established a U.S. subsidiary. "If I succeed in the U.S. market, I think I can go anywhere," she says.

-- SungHa Park

When BankBoston's luxurious S&atilde;o Paulo headquarters was sold in 2007, the blind auction brought in more than 14 sealed bids, and the office tower sold for an estimated $150 million, a record for South America.

Handling the transaction was Celina Antunes, CEO for South America of Cushman & Wakefield, the commercial real-estate firm that the 45-year-old manager has led to dominance in the Latin region.

A native of S&atilde;o Paulo, South America's largest city, Ms. Antunes says her father was a "frustrated architect" who worked as a manager for big companies. "I didn't want to follow in his footsteps," she says, "but my strength was always relating to people, winning over clients." So when Cushman offered her a position in 1994, she chose to sell her own 450-person architecture and design firm.

At the time, Brazil was still a real-estate backwater. Ms. Antunes recalls that finding reliable security, maintenance or even cleaning companies was nearly impossible.

All that has changed. Brazil's real-estate market is booming -- particularly malls and office projects -- as foreign investors have pumped money into emerging markets over the past few years. Under Ms. Antunes, the company's Brazil business has been growing at about 40% annually, the fastest of any region where Cushman operates.

Now Ms. Antunes, who oversees a fifth of Cushman's 15,000 employees world-wide, will need to lead her company through the fallout from the credit crunch, which hit Brazil hard in October. Cushman's lucrative brokerage business will decline, but its property-management service -- which makes up the bulk of revenue -- is likely to remain solid.

Just to make sure, Ms. Antunes says, she recently placed personal calls to all of Cushman's clients in the region.

-- Antonio Regalado

Joanne Smith helped Delta Air Lines Inc. DAL 5.07 % get through lean times for the company by offering travelers a better experience on its planes. Now, with a rejuvenated Delta becoming the busiest airline in the world in terms of passenger traffic after its acquisition of Northwest Airlines last month, her challenge is to help the company thrive with a vastly expanded fleet.

Ms. Smith has plenty of experience to build on. When Delta launched a low-cost carrier called Song a few years ago, she quickly turned it into a laboratory to experiment with better service. A onetime flight attendant herself to help pay her way through college, Ms. Smith steered Song away from the staid, homogenous atmosphere found in the cabins of most major airlines. She introduced youthful music, snazzy cocktails and seatback entertainment systems. Some longtime Delta passengers even grew to prefer Song.

Delta's financial woes led it to shut down Song in 2005. But Ms. Smith, who is now 50, moved on to help Delta jazz up the look and feel of its own planes to attract passengers as the airline went through a 19-month stay in bankruptcy-court protection that ended in 2007. Faded carpets were replaced, worn-out fabric seats gave way to leather upholstery, flight attendants donned new uniforms by designer Richard Tyler, and custom drinks like the "Mile High Mojito" were introduced. Instead of rote greetings and in-flight announcements, attendants were encouraged "to realize you don't have to read absolutely everything from a book," says Ms. Smith. "We want them to liven it up a bit and know that they can have fun."

Now, Ms. Smith gets to work with the flight attendants at Northwest, which has a long history of tense labor relations. For starters, Delta attendants are serving some of the airline's signature cocktails at Northwest employee gatherings, and Northwest attendants have begun getting fitted for their new designer uniforms.

-- Paulo Prada