Professional experience: Thornton joined the $37.9 billion, Boise, Idaho-based grocery chain in August 2001, after a stint at The Kroger Co., where she was group vice president of retail operations. Before that, Thornton spent seven years at Ralphs Grocery Co. in various roles in corporate planning, strategic projects, finance and administration. She also was involved in the $15 billion merger in 1998 between Ralphs and Fred Meyer Inc. and the $5 billion merger in 1995 of Ralphs and Food 4 Less (Kroger acquired Ralphs parent Fred Meyer in 1999). In addition, Thornton has held finance positions at Stride Rite Corp., Denny's Inc. and Paramount Pictures Corp.

Education: Bachelor's degree in economics, Santa Clara University; M.B.A., University of Southern California

Best Buy Co.

Darren R. Jackson, 37

Executive vice president of finance and treasury and CFO

Professional experience: Jackson joined the $19.6 billion, Eden Prairie, Minn.-based consumer electronics retailer in September 2000 as senior vice president of finance and treasury. He was promoted to CFO in 2001 and named executive vice president in April 2002. He came to Best Buy after spending two years at Nordstrom Inc., where he held several finance positions, including CFO of the retailer's full-line stores. Before that, Jackson was promoted to CFO at Carson Pirie Scott & Co., another retailer for which he worked for seven years.

Education: B.A., Marquette University

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CBRE Holding Inc.

Gil Borok, 34

Vice president and controller

By nearly anyone's measure, Gil Borok's career should probably be described in terms of trajectories–certainly not slow, steady steps. The evidence: In the 10 years since he graduated college, Borok became corporate controller of Dole Food Co., the Westlake Village, Calif.-based household brand synonymous with pineapples, bananas and other fruit. Now he is set to take a similar job at another well-known name in the world of commercial real estate: CBRE Holding Inc., better known as CB Richard Ellis.

Yet when Borok, who is 34, looks back on what has been an impressive ride by any measure, he's pretty laid back about the whole thing. "Do I ever think, 'Do I deserve all this [at my age]?' No," Borok says. "Age has nothing to do with this. It has to do with the work."

Borok, who worked at Dole from December 1997 until early October 2002, credits CEO David Murdock with having taken a risk on him in 1999 when he named Borok controller of the $4.5 billion company–at age 31. Borok says he appreciated the weight of the situation and worked hard to earn the confidence that Murdock had heaped on him. "I really grew in the role and had the confidence of upper management, which helped a lot," he says.

That confidence was echoed by former Dole CFO Kenneth Kay, who recruited Borok to join him at CB Richard Ellis, where Kay is now CFO. While he has nothing but kind things to say about his experience at Dole, Borok said the move to CB Richard Ellis represented an opportunity to make a change at a time when he is currently enrolled at the University of California at Los Angeles to earn his M.B.A.

Borok says he is excited about his new job at the nation's largest commercial real estate company and is unconcerned about making the jump from working at a consumer company to one that specializes in office space. "Accounting is accounting," he says, adding that he initially audited real estate while an accountant at Arthur Andersen LLP.

A graduate of the University of Pittsburgh with a B.A. in economics and business, South African-born Borok began his career in 1991 at Teledyne Inc. as an internal auditor. A year later, Borok joined Andersen as a staff auditor. By 1997 he had become a manager in its commercial division. At Dole, Borok was hired as manager of corporate reporting and was promoted in August 1998 to assistant controller. A year later, he got the controller title. In June 2001, he added on the title of vice president.

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C.H. Robinson Worldwide Inc.

Chad M. Lindbloom, 38

Vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Lindbloom joined the Eden Prairie, Minn.-based third-party logistics provider in 1990 as a staff accountant, advancing to become the $3.1 billion company's corporate controller in June 1998. He was promoted to CFO in December 1999.

Education: B.S. in accounting and M.B.A., University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management

Cisco Systems Inc.

Jennifer Ceran, 39

Assistant treasurer

Professional experience: Ceran joined the San Jose, Calif.-based telecommunications giant in January 2000 as head of Cisco's Europe, Middle East and Africa treasury operations based in Dublin, Ireland. There, she supervised an effort to build an international financial services unit that supported a region with $6 billion in annual revenues. In February 2001, Ceran moved to the company's San Jose headquarters to oversee Cisco's global treasury operations, which included cash management, foreign exchange and banking relationships for the entire company. Then, this past March, she was promoted to assistant treasurer, concentrating on corporate finance. Ceran came to Cisco after 10 years at Sara Lee Corp., where she rose from senior analyst in corporate development to assistant treasurer in the company's Amsterdam office. Before that, Ceran spent two years as a securities analyst for Merrill Lynch & Co.

Education: B.A. in communications and French, Vanderbilt University; M.B.A., University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business

Citgo Petroleum Corp.

Geoff Reid, 32

Assistant treasurer

Professional experience: Reid arrived at the Tulsa, Okla.-based, $19.7 billion unit of Petroleos de Venezuela SA in 1992 as a treasury/financial analyst. Following graduate school, he had stints as a specialist focusing on derivatives and corporate finance before being promoted to director of corporate finance in 1998, manager of revenue accounting in 2001 and assistant treasurer earlier this year.

Education: B.S. in finance, Tulsa University; Master's in economics, Georgetown University

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Clear Channel Communications Inc.

Juliana F. Hill, 33

Senior vice president of finance

In the 3 1/2 years since she arrived at Clear Channel Communications Inc., Juliana F. Hill has learned what took others in similar positions decades to absorb. She joined the $7.9 billion San Antonio, Texas-based company just as it began a buying spree that has resulted in Clear Channel becoming the largest owner of radio stations in the country, the leading provider of live entertainment, a major player in the outdoor advertising sector and an owner of 36 television stations. Now, as senior vice president of finance, Hill's challenge is to navigate the company through a severe advertising downturn sparked by the weakened economy.

It is a series of challenging lessons that Hill, 33, has tackled with aplomb–something she credits Clear Channel's culture for helping her to achieve. "Clear Channel has a wonderful culture that is the best of both worlds," she says. "We work as if we are at a startup, but we deal with issues of a big company."

Indeed, when she came to Clear Channel in the spring of 1999, she had barely unpacked her things when the company began its buying spree. She started out as a vice president of finance and strategic development, participating in the company's series of acquisitions and helping to shape Clear Channel's Internet efforts. Following the acquisition of Jacor Communications Inc., AMFM Inc., concert promoter SFX Entertainment Inc. and TV station owner The Ackerley Group Inc., CFO Randall Mays began looking to Hill to take on more of the treasury functions, which needed to be bolstered and consolidated to reflect the company's mammoth size. In May 2000, she became a senior vice president and continued to fold various treasury functions into her domain.

Changing her focus from external strategy to internal controls took on even greater importance once the economy began to sour and having the real-time numbers for the bankers became a top priority. In addition to not being afraid to ask questions about areas with which she wasn't familiar, Hill says she didn't let ego get in the way of hiring people with skills that exceeded her own in specific areas. Plus, there was good old-fashioned elbow grease. "A lot of it was rolling up my sleeves and working hard," she says.

Texas-born Hill graduated from Trinity University and, upon graduating, worked for Ernst & Young LLP for six years in San Antonio. She moved up quickly, defying the traditional five-year track to become a manager in four years. She left in 1996 to attend Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. After a brief stint at U S West, she and her husband moved back to San Antonio, where she landed the vice president's position at Clear Channel, a former client from her E&Y days.

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The Coca-Cola Co.

Marie Quintero, 36

Director of Mergers & Acquisitions, Assistant Vice President

When Marie Quintero began representing The Coca-Cola Co. in M&A negotiations overseas in the mid-1990s, negotiators from other companies would ask her to get them coffee. She blames that on her age rather than her sex, noting that some of her younger male colleagues had the same experience. "Five or six years ago, I would say that you garnered people's respect first because of age and then because of knowledge," she says.

Quintero, who became director of mergers and acquisitions for the $20 billion soft-drink company this year, is still relatively young at 36, but she has accumulated a lot of finance experience in her 10 years at Coke. When she arrived there after getting an M.B.A. at the University of Virginia, the finance department had an informal training program that rotated people through a variety of positions, and Quintero credits that with exposing her to most of the department's activities. In particular, her first job in the finance group that deals with Coke's field operations "taught me the business early on," she says.

But it's deals that Quintero speaks about most enthusiastically. The transactions she worked on in the mid-1990s were mostly acquisitions and divestitures of bottling plants, many in Latin America. Quintero notes that her first deal in 1996, involving Venezuela's Cisneros Group, was a notable one because it was the first time a major bottler switched to Coke from Pepsi.

In fact, Quintero was reluctant to leave deal-making for her next job: executive assistant to the company's CFO, serving first Coke's former CFO, James Chestnut, and then its current CFO, Gary Fayard. "I had to be convinced to take that job," she says. "But once I moved up there, I learned an enormous amount, seeing the company from a global perspective, seeing how executive management manages the overall strategy."

Today Quintero is "thrilled" to be back in M&A and says that what she learned about the company's strategy in her last job serves her well now. "Once you've done 100 transactions, 101, the execution is pretty much process," she says. "It's the whole structuring, strategic piece of it that I enjoy most."

Unfortunately, her management duties–she heads a department with 22 employees–take her out of the daily deal-making action at times. "I don't get to do as many deals." But if she's ever asked to get coffee? "Now I just use it as part of a negotiating strategy," Quintero says.

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Comverse Technology Inc.

David Kreinberg, 37

Vice president of finance and CFO

Professional experience: Kreinberg joined the Woodbury, N.Y.-based telecom-

munications company that makes voicemail software in April 1994 as a vice president of financial planning and was promoted to treasurer in April 1996. He became CFO in May 1999. Kreinberg joined the $1.3 billion company after four years at Deloitte & Touche LLP and rose to a senior manager at the accounting firm.

Education: B.S. in accounting, Yeshiva University; M.B.A., Columbia Business School

Cummins Inc.

Thomas Linebarger, 39

Vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Linebarger joined the Columbus, Ind.-based diesel-engine maker in 1994 as a program manager of the company's advanced fuel systems unit and later was named assistant to the group vice president of worldwide operations. In 1996, he became senior manager of engineering operations at Cummins' Holset unit, and was promoted to managing director of Holset a year later. In 1998 he was named vice president of supply chain management. In November 2000, he became CFO. Before Cummins, Linebarger worked at Prudential Investment Corp., most recently as an investment manager in its Hong Kong/Singapore unit.

Education: B.A. in economics, Claremont McKenna College; B.S. in mathematical engineering, Stanford University; M.S. in manufacturing systems engineering, Stanford Graduate School of Business; M.B.A., Stanford Graduate School of Business

Delphi Corp.

Pamela M. Geller, 37

Assistant treasurer

Professional experience: Geller joined the $27 billion automotive supplier in 1997 as an assistant finance director. She did year-long stints as director of capital markets, foreign exchange and commodities, and assistant controller, and ultimately was named assistant treasurer in 2001. She arrived at Troy, Mich.-based Delphi after spending five years, from 1992 to 1997, in General Motors Corp.'s fabled treasury department in various positions, including manager of business development and overseas borrowing analyst. Before that, Geller spent two years at Chemical Bank, where her last job was manager of investment banking.

Education: B.A., economics, Wellesley College; M.B.A., Columbia Business School

Domino's Inc.

Jeffrey D. Lawrence, 28

Corporate controller

Professional experience: Lawrence joined the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based pizza delivery chain in May 2000 as senior director of financial reporting and in April 2002, he was promoted to controller and vice president. Before joining Domino's–the nation's No. 1 pizza delivery chain and No. 2 pizza chain overall–Lawrence was an audit manager in the Detroit office of Arthur Andersen LLP.

Education: B.B.A. in accounting, Wayne State University

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Exide Technologies Inc.

Lisa Donahue, 38

CFO and chief restructuring officer

When a company gets into trouble, the conventional wisdom recently has been to pull seasoned executives out of retirement to help get things back on track. Lisa Donahue flies in the face of that logic.

At 38, Donahue is the chief restructuring officer and CFO of Exide Technologies Inc., the $2.4 billion battery manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy protection in early 2002. And though she may be younger than a lot of the folks tapped to rescue troubled companies, Donahue says she has gained the kind of experience often reserved for people considerably older, thanks to good timing, good mentors and a desire to always challenge herself.

For example, her work as a turnaround specialist has given her the flexibility to work in a variety of settings that have gotten more complicated over time. "I have been lucky to have good mentors who have supported me and pulled me out of my comfort zones," says Donahue, who is also a principal at turnaround firm AlixPartners. It also helps that Donahue is a quick learner by her own description, an ability that addresses any concerns that she might be too young to handle a task. "Results are the best answer," she says.

That combination of mentors and being a quick study has helped her devise restructuring plans for companies with businesses as disparate as clothing and car batteries. Though she has worked on several projects, including restructuring medical products maker Graham-Field Health Products and cinema chain Regal Cinemas Inc., she says the work she did with apparel maker Umbro Holdings Ltd. stands out as a highlight for her. "It was a British company that grew too fast through acquisition," she says. "We changed the model. We took an old line textile manufacturing company and turned it into a brand marketing and licensing company. We closed plants and expanded the company's international licensing agreements." Within 16 months of her arrival, Umbro was back on track.

She is hoping to do the same for Princeton, N.J.-based Exide. The good news: Exide has excellent market share in key business segments, she says and even though the company has faltered under the weight of poorly executed acquisitions, it is generating Ebitda.

A Florida State University alumna with a B.A. in finance and accounting, Donahue began her career at Boston Financial & Equity Corp. and then moved to The Recovery Group, a Boston-based consulting firm.

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GE Plastics

Brian T. Gladden, 37

Vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Gladden joined General Electric Co. in 1988 and graduated from GE's financial management program. He spent five years on GE's corporate audit staff and held positions in engineering, finance and business development at GE Aerospace, GE Medical Systems and GE Plastics. He was named CFO of the plastics division this past August.

Education: B.S. in finance, Millersville University

Georgia Power Co.

Allen L. Leverett, 35

Executive vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Leverett joined the Atlanta-based utility–the largest unit of the $10.2 billion Southern Co.–in 1988 as a transmission engineer and since then has held a number of positions in the company's resource planning, strategic planning, wholesale marketing and finance. He was named vice president of the Southern Co. services unit in 1997 and was promoted to treasurer in 2000. In May 2002, Leverett was appointed CFO of Georgia Power.

Education: B.E. in electrical engineering and mathematics, Vanderbilt University; M.S. in electrical engineering, Stanford University; M.B.A., Auburn University

Great Lakes Chemical Corp.

John J. Gallagher III, 38

Senior vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Gallagher joined the $1.5 billion, Indianapolis-based chemical company in May 2001 from UOP LLC, the joint venture of Dow Chemical Co. and Honeywell International. He had been with UOP since 1999, when he was appointed vice president and CFO. Before that he held several positions at AlliedSignal Inc. (now part of Honeywell), including vice president of business development at the Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems unit. He also was director of business analysis and director of finance, mergers and acquisitions. Gallagher came to Honeywell after nine years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he served as a management consultant on M&A deals.

Education: B.S. in accounting, University of Delaware

GTECH Corp.

Jaymin B. Patel, 34

Senior vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Patel joined the $1 billion, West Greenwich, R.I.-based operator of lottery systems in 1994 as the finance director of the company's European and U.K. operations. He was promoted in 1997 to director of financial planning and analysis and then became vice president a year later, leading the company's overall financial planning and business measurement processes. He became CFO of the world's largest lottery operator in January 2000. Before joining GTECH, Patel spent six years at PricewaterhouseCoopers in London.

Education: Bachelor's degree, City of Birmingham University in the United Kingdom

Guidant Corp.

Michael A. Sherman, 35

Vice president, finance and information systems, Europe, Canada, Middle East and Africa

Professional experience: Sherman joined the $2.7 billion, Indianapolis-based maker of pacemakers and defibrillators in 1994 as director of corporate financing. He was named director of finance for U.S. sales in 1997 and was named in 2000 vice president, corporate controller and chief accounting officer, responsible for Guidant's financial planning, reporting and accounting. Just this past May, Sherman was named to his current position. Sherman began his career at Eli Lilly & Co. in 1988 as a financial analyst and went on to hold various positions in audit, domestic and international financial planning, business development and treasury.

Education: B.A. in economics, DePauw University; M.B.A., Dartmouth College's Amos Tuck School of Business

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Interpublic Group of Cos.

Steven Berns, 38

Vice president and treasurer

Steven Berns figured it might happen, and it did on a business trip to a bank in Italy. It was not long after his 1996 appointment as treasurer of Ronald Perelman's cosmetics giant, Revlon Inc. As Berns, who was in his early 30s, waited to meet with a senior account manager from the bank, the manager arrived, looked right at him and then asked the whereabouts of Revlon's treasurer. "He was looking for the treasurer, and I am sitting right there!" Berns recalls with a laugh.

Call it the price of moving up at a young age. Berns, who is now 38 and became treasurer of advertising titan Interpublic Group of Cos. in 1999, sees such mistakes as coming with the territory. He also notes that once he begins his work, any concerns about his age quickly fall away. His secret? Hard work and being considerably more mature than his years would indicate. For evidence of that look no further than his college years. While many of his classmates at Lehigh University worked typical summer jobs, Berns earned his Series 7 license and spent several summers trading equities. Berns graduated in 1986 and then joined Deloitte & Touche LLP for three years. He later earned an M.B.A. from New York University's Leonard Stern School of Business.

In 1992 he was hired by Revlon to work in investor relations. Learning to deal with disgruntled institutional investors turned out to be great training for his next assignment as treasurer, where his communications skills were called upon daily in his dealings with the debt-addled company's sometimes less than jovial bankers. As treasurer, Berns helped Revlon through a series of complicated transactions designed to restore its financial health, including the refinancing of $900 million in debt in January 1998.

Berns acknowledges now that Revlon's management took a risk in naming him treasurer at age 33. Luckily, he says, he had an impressive group of role models to help him. "Ronald Perelman has an extremely smart team of people, who understood risk taking, working with him," he says. "I was successful because of the environment." Berns adds that Revlon's strategic thinking taught him to always think long-term and helped prepare him for the tough advertising market facing his new bosses at Interpublic.

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Kellogg Co.

John Bryant, 36

Senior vice president and CFO

John Bryant's path to his current position as CFO of $8.9 billion Kellogg Co. involved as much strategy consulting as it did pure number-crunching.

Bryant started as an accountant in his native Australia, but went on to do corporate advisory work in such areas as mergers and acquisitions and company valuations at Deloitte & Touche LLP. He notes that in Australia, CPA firms do the sort of work that investment banks do in the U.S.

After getting an M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, Bryant went back to Australia to join boutique consulting firm Marakon as a consultant and later followed one of Marakon's founders to A.T. Kearney. Marakon espouses "value-based management," which focuses on how well a firm is creating value for its shareholders, Bryant says.

Bryant has had a number of titles since joining Kellogg in 1998. After a year running market research and strategy, he spent another 12 months in charge of finance for the U.S. cereal business, Kellogg's biggest unit. In 2000, he switched to the sales side and ran trade marketing in the U.S., and in August 2000, he was named CFO of Kellogg USA and led the effort to integrate the Keebler Foods operations after Kellogg acquired it in 2001. In February 2002, Bryant was named CFO for all of Kellogg.

Bryant cites the Keebler acquisition as an example of how Kellogg has implemented its strategy to maximize shareholder value. The results can be seen in Kellogg's share price, he says. Kellogg has risen from about $25 in mid-2000 to about $35 currently, achieved during a period in which the overall market was sinking.

Bryant says his "biggest surprise" upon becoming CFO was that "nothing really prepares you to be CFO."

"You have responsibilities in investor relations and to the board," he says. "Not many people have the opportunity to go through every single role, to prepare themselves for every component of the CFO job."

But any experience that he lacks, Bryant says, he can find within his finance department. "I am only able to be successful as the CFO of this company because the finance team around me is so strong," he says.

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Kinder Morgan Inc.

Kinder Morgan Energy Partners LP

C. Park Shaper, 33

Vice president, CFO and treasurer

Professional experience: Shaper joined the Houston-based natural gas company in 2000, after having served as president of Altair Corp., a Web-based investment research company that catered to the financial services industry. Before that, Shaper was vice president and CFO of First Data Analytics, a wholly owned subsidiary of First Data Corp., and held consulting positions at The Boston Consulting Group and Andersen Consulting's strategic services division.

Education: B.S. in industrial engineering and quantitative economics, Stanford University; M.B.A., Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management

Kmart Corp.

Rick Noechel, 34

Vice president and corporate controller

Professional experience: Noechel joined the $36.1 billion retailer, based in Troy, Mich., in 2001 as a divisional vice president of financial reporting and was promoted later that year to his current title. Before that, he spent four years at DaimlerChrysler Corp., starting as an accounting research specialist in 1997 at the former Chrysler Corp. and advancing to forecast team leader in 1998. He became a senior manager of international accounting two years later. Noechel's career began in 1991 as a staff accountant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where by 1996 he had advanced to manager.

Education: B.A. in accounting, Michigan State University

KLA-Tencor Corp.

John H. Kispert, 38

Executive vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Kispert joined the San Jose, Calif.-based manufacturer of chip-making equipment in 1995 as controller of the KLA's wafer, reticle and SEMspec inspection divisions. He was promoted in 1997 to vice president of operations for KLA's wafer inspection group, the company's largest operating unit. He moved up to vice president of corporate finance two years later and was named CFO in July 2000. Before going to KLA, Kispert held several management positions at IBM Corp.

Education: B.A. in political science, Grinnell College; M.B.A., University of California at Los Angeles

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Inc.

Randy S. Casstevens, 37

CFO and treasurer

Professional experience: Casstevens joined the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based doughnut maker, with $394 million in revenues, in May 1993 as corporate controller. He moved up the ranks to become secretary in 1995 and senior vice president of corporate finance in April 1998. A key participant in Krispy Kreme's closely watched initial public offering in April 2000, Casstevens was named treasurer in August 2000. He was promoted to CFO in January 2002. Before joining Krispy Kreme, Casstevens spent six years at PricewaterhouseCoopers after graduating college in 1987, rising to audit manager in 1992.

Education: B.S. in accounting and M.B.A., Wake Forest University

Lucent Technologies Inc.

Mark G. Gibbens, 35

Assistant treasurer

Professional experience: Gibbens joined the $21.3 billion Murray Hill, N.J.-based telecom giant's treasury department in 2000 as an assistant treasurer responsible for corporate finance and capital markets. Before that he spent a year at Online Retail Partners LLC as vice president of finance, overseeing venture capital investments for the online e-commerce incubator. From 1989 to 1999, Gibbens worked in General Motors Corp.'s famed treasury as a director of business development, a manager of capital planning and a senior analyst of employee benefits plans.

Education: B.A. in economics, Carleton College; M.B.A., University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business

Maytag Corp.

Steven J. Klyn, 36

Vice president and treasurer

Professional experience: Klyn joined the Newton, Iowa-based, $4.3 billion appliance manufacturer in 1991 as a staff auditor. In 1993, he was promoted to senior auditor, and then a year later he made senior financial analyst.. Klyn became manager of financial reporting in 1996 and director of financial planning in 1998. Then, in 2000, he was promoted to vice president and treasurer. Before arriving at Maytag, Klyn worked for Ernst & Young in a variety of accounting positions.

Education: Bachelor's degree in accounting; M.B.A., University of Iowa

Microsoft Corp.

Brent Callinicos, 36

Vice president and treasurer

Professional experience: Callinicos joined Microsoft in 1992 as a financial analyst, moving into the treasury group two years later. He was promoted to assistant treasurer in 1998 and became treasurer in 2000. He added the title of corporate vice president in July 2001. Before joining Microsoft, Callinicos spent six months as a senior financial analyst at The Walt Disney Co., and prior to that, he spent three years as an international treasury analyst at The Procter & Gamble Co.

Education: B.S. in business and M.B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

National Semiconductor Corp.

Lewis Chew, 39

Senior vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Chew joined the Santa Clara, Calif.-based manufacturer of semiconductors in 1997 as vice president and corporate controller, responsible for the corporate finance functions of the $1.5 billion company. He became CFO in June 2001. Before arriving at National Semiconductor, Chew was a partner at KPMG LLP and provided accounting and auditing services for a number of high-tech clients during his 13 years at the firm.

Education: B.S. in accounting, Santa Clara University

The New York Times Co.

R. Anthony Benten, 38

Treasurer

Professional experience: Benten was named treasurer of the $6.7 billion newspaper company in November 2001, following four years as the New York-based company's assistant treasurer. He joined the company in 1989 as a financial analyst in the treasury department, becoming a senior financial analyst of the Times' forest products group in 1991, a treasury department supervisor of financial analysis and pensions in 1992, manager of finance and pension investment in 1993 and director of treasury in 1997. Before joining the New York Times, Benten was an accountant at Deloitte & Touche LLP from 1987 to 1989.

Education: B.S. in finance, Louisiana State University; M.B.A., Rice University

Northwest Airlines Inc.

Bernard L. Han, 38

Executive vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Han returned to Eagan, Minn.-based Northwest Airlines in October after having worked at America West Airlines Inc. for nearly six years, most recently as executive vice president and CFO. He first joined Northwest in 1991, holding various financial planning and analysis positions. He moved to America West in 1996 as vice president of financial planning and analysis, and in 1998 was named senior vice president of planning, overseeing revenue management, fleet planning, route and schedule planning and product distribution. Han was named CFO in September 2001, and played a lead role in restructuring America West in the months following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Before his first stint at Northwest, Han spent three years at American Airlines.

Education: B.S. in engineering, M.S. in engineering and M.B.A., Cornell University

Novellus Systems Inc.

Kevin Royal, 38

Vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Royal was named CFO of the $1.3 billion semiconductor manufacturer in January 2002, after having served most recently as vice president and controller. He joined the San Jose, Calif.-based company in 1996 after spending 10 years as an accountant in Ernst & Young LLP's high-tech practice, where he supported clients like computer disk drive manufacturer Seagate Technology LLC and chip maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Education: B.B.A. in accounting, Harding University

Owens Corning

Michael H. Thaman, 37

Chairman and CFO

Professional experience: Thaman was named chairman in April after having served since April 2000 as senior vice president and CFO of the $4.8 billion composite and fiberglass materials maker, which is now in bankruptcy protection due to asbestos lawsuits. He joined the Toledo, Ohio-based company in 1992 as director of corporate development and was named manager of its Toronto insulation plant two years later. He became general manager of its OEM solutions group in 1996 and a year later became vice president and president of Owens Corning's engineered pipe systems business. In 1999, he was named president of the company's exterior systems business. Before that, Thaman spent six years as a strategy consultant at Mercer Management Consulting.

Education: B.S. in electrical engineering and computer science, Princeton University

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Rockwell Automation Inc.

Michael A. Bless, 37

Senior vice president and CFO

The watershed event in Michael A. Bless' career as a financial executive came in 1999, when Rockwell Automation Inc.'s then-CFO W. Michael Barnes tapped him to become vice president of finance and controller of Rockwell Automation Control Systems, the parent company's largest unit with around $3 billion in revenues. "I was not a CPA. I didn't have cost accounting experience. And I was working with people with enormous experience in manufacturing," recalls Bless, who joined the company as an M&A strategist. It didn't matter, Barnes told him. If he wanted to become CFO, he'd have to dive head first into the operations side of the company and learn Rockwell's nuts and bolts.

Barnes' advice turned out to be prescient: Bless believes it was Barnes' decision to push Bless into the controller position that contributed significantly to senior management's decision to name him CFO of the $4.3 billion, Milwaukee-based company when Barnes announced his retirement in 2000.

Now, nearly two years later, Bless, who is 37, is grateful to Barnes and for a piece of advice given to him 10 years ago by a friend who worked with him on Wall Street. "This was a person who had a Master's and a Ph.D. and knew a lot about a lot," Bless recalls. "But he said you should never be afraid to ask a question. Admit you don't know something, because if you do bluff your way through it, in the long term it's a road to disaster."

That strategy appears to be working for Bless, a Princeton University alumnus with a B.A. in medieval history, who joined Rockwell in 1997 as vice president of corporate development and planning. Before that, he did a nine-year stint as an investment banker at the former Dillon, Read & Co. and one year at Merrill Lynch & Co. Despite a willingness to learn, Bless' ride hasn't always been easy. He readily admits his mettle is being tested with the current economic downturn. But even here, Bless says relying on people with more experience has been a boon. "You have to be willing in areas and subjects you don't know about to take a step back and seek advice from those who know," he says, adding that a part of that is also giving those who do know more the opportunity to shine. "That's the recipe for success: Surround yourself with the best people, provide support and resist the urge to jump out of the dugout and get into the game."

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Silgan Holdings Inc.

Malcolm E. Miller, 35

Vice president and treasurer

Professional experience: Miller became vice president and treasurer of the $1.9 billion, Stamford, Conn.-based food packaging manufacturer in October 2001, following a stint as assistant vice president and assistant treasurer of Primedia Inc. from April 2000 to October 2001, and was involved in the company's $1.5 billion refinancing, which included issuing high-yield bonds and negotiating a $1 billion bank loan. Before that, Miller was assistant treasurer at Silgan from June 1997 to April 2000, where he also helped negotiate a billion-dollar bank loan. From June 1995 to June 1997, Miller was a senior finance analyst at International Paper Co., and before that he taught high school for three years.

Education: B.A. in economics, Trinity College; M.B.A., University of North Carolina

Sony Corp. of America

Robert S. Wiesenthal, 37

Executive vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Wiesenthal was appointed in January 2002 to his current position. He joined the New York-based, $18.5 billion unit of Sony Corp. in July 2000 as executive vice president and chief strategy officer of Sony Broadband Entertainment, the entertainment unit. Wiesenthal's career began in 1986, when he joined Credit Suisse First Boston Inc.'s M&A group. He moved to the investment bank's media group in 1993. He was named a managing director in the bank's technology group in 1999.

Education: B.A., University of Rochester

TRW Automotive Inc.

Joseph S. Cantie, 39

Vice president of finance

Professional experience: Cantie joined the Livonia, Mich.-based, $10.1 billion unit of TRW Inc. in 1999 as vice president of investor relations and was promoted to his current position in December 2001. Before arriving at TRW Automotive, Cantie spent four years at London-based LucasVarity PLC, the world's No. 2 manufacturer of auto brakes, which TRW acquired in 1999, where he rose to vice president and controller. Before that, Can-tie spent 10 years at KPMG LLP in Buffalo, N.Y.

Education: B.S. in business administration and accounting, State University of New York at Buffalo

USA Interactive Inc.

Dara Khosrowshahi, 33

Executive vice president and CFO

Professional experience: In January 2002 Khosrowshahi was named CFO of the $5.3 billion, New York-based company that owns the HSN television network, Ticketmaster and Expedia.com. He joined what was then USA Networks (the company changed its name to USA Interactive after selling entertainment assets to Vivendi Universal in May 2002) in 1998 as vice president of strategic planning. He was promoted to senior vice president of strategic planning in May 1999 and five months later was promoted again, this time to president of USA Networks Interactive, then USA Network's Internet operation. In August 2000, Khosrowshahi was named executive vice president of operations and strategic planning of the overall company. Before joining USA, Khosrowshahi worked at Allen & Co. from 1991 to 1995, ascending to vice president.

Education: B.S. in engineering, Brown University

The Warnaco Group Inc.

James B. Fogarty, 34

Senior vice president and CFO

Professional experience: Fogarty joined the $1.5 billion, New York-based apparel maker in December 2001 as part of a turnaround team from Alvarez & Marsal Inc., which was hired to bring Warnaco out of bankruptcy by early 2003. He has worked with Alvarez & Marsal since 1994, with Bridge Information Systems, Color Tile Inc. and AM Cosmetics Inc., among his clients. Before joining Alvarez, Fogarty spent four years with KPMG's corporate transactions group.

Education: B.A. in economics and computer science, Williams College; M.S. in accounting and M.B.A., New York University's Leonard Stern School of Business

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc.

Kellie D. Ross, 33

Vice president of strategic planning and treasurer

Professional experience: Ross was named to her current post when she arrived at the $12.2 billion supermarket chain in June 2000, after having worked at Arthur Andersen LLP as an audit manager from 1999 to 2000, and helped to validate Jacksonville, Fla.-based Winn-Dixie's restructuring. From 1997 to 1999, Ross was the corporate controller at Armor Holdings Inc., a maker of bulletproof vests. Before that she spent two years as the assistant controller

of PSS World Medical Inc., a distributor of medical supplies. Ross began her career at Deloitte & Touche LLP, where she rose to senior auditor.

Education: B.S. in accounting and M.S. in accounting, Florida State University

Xerox Corp.

Timothy J. MacCarrick, 37

Assistant Treasurer

Professional experience: MacCarrick was named assistant treasurer of the Stamford, Conn.-based copy giant in October 2001. He joined Xerox in 1985, holding various positions in the company's finance department, including director of global customer financing and vice president of finance for Xerox's worldwide graphics arts industry business. He also had assignments in the company's manufacturing, purchasing, strategy, marketing, services and field operations. MacCarrick also serves on the board of directors of Xerox Capital Services LLC, a joint venture of Xerox and General Electric Capital Corp.

Education: B.S. in accounting and law and M.B.A., Clarkson University