Directors to Watch

Directorship Editors — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

It’s no secret that directors skew toward an older demographic. After all, most boards are looking for individuals who possess a career’s worth of experience and wisdom—executives who have battle scars and gray hair to prove it. In fact, the average age of today’s corporate director at a large company is about 60, according to research from executive compensation firm Pearl Meyer & Partners and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). A recent trend, however, suggests that companies are looking for a few good men and women who aren’t part of the Greatest Generation or born during the Baby Boom.

Two concepts are driving this shift: technology and diversity. The more that companies come to rely on technology—and just about every company is an Internet firm these days in one way or another—the more it will seek deep tech knowledge in the boardroom. That means young, Silicon Valley types who are in their late 30s or early 40s and possibly have already founded two or three companies. These individuals have been staples for some time on boards in technology-heavy industries like computing, media, and financial services, but now every company is looking for a technology edge.

The second catalyst, diversity, is being broadened beyond gender and race. Boards are looking for individuals with different perspectives and backgrounds. They want to tap into new ideas and avoid groupthink. “You want someone who is going to question the status quo, so a balance of newer directors who probe and those who have been around for awhile and really know the business, is a good thing,” says Rick Lacher, a managing director at investment banking firm Houlihan Lokey. “A lot of it is just smarts,” he says. “They are really bright and they get it, even without as much experience as others might have.”

Theodore L. Dysart, a managing director at executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, says there is an increasing tendency to select younger directors. He says many boards are looking for board members with unique skills and knowledge in certain areas. “If you have niche expertise, you’re more likely to get on a board at a younger age.” For generalists, he says, there is a deeper pool, so companies have the luxury of picking from individuals with more experience.

While there are no hard and fast rules about how young is too young to be on a board, recruiters generally say that most companies have no problem considering candidates in their late 40s. Candidates in their early 40s raise eyebrows, and recruiters get a lot of pushback on candidates in their 30s. “Anyone who is under 45 is going to generate a lot of questions from clients,” says Dysart.

For a greater perspective into this trend, Directorship decided to take a close look at 50 directors under the age of 50 on the boards of Fortune 500 companies. We assembled an advisory committee of research partners and industry experts that included The Corporate Library, Heidrick & Struggles, Houlihan Lokey, Nasdaq, and Pearl Meyer & Partners, to help us select individuals who will be putting their mark on Corporate America for generations to come.

We’ve grouped these “Directors to Watch” into categories to define some of the most common proving grounds for youngish directors. Some are Stanford grads, like Jerry Yang and Larry Page, who changed the face of business with internet companies they started in garages and grew to behemoths. Many of them are former or current private-equity managers or financial whiz-kids, such as Gary Cohn at Goldman Sachs or Mellody Hobson, who resides on the board of Starbucks. “These are fields that have a true culture of meritocracy,” says Dysart. “You move ahead quickly based on your skills.” In other industries, typically older ones such as manufacturing, the ability to rise to the top is influenced more by tenure. Others are heirs of company founders and some are just quick studies. Retail companies including Wal-Mart, Target, and The Gap seem to have a disproportionate number of under-50 directors. The theory, according to the experts, is that these industries thrive on catering to new customers, fashion trends, and fads; having a few younger people as directors can help keep the board from becoming “clueless.” “You can’t have an aging customer base in retail,” explains Heidrick vice chairman Melanie Kusin.

If the old boys club is dead, the next generation of leaders is very much alive and kicking.

The Quants

Andrew B. Balson, 40, Burger King, Domino’s Pizza
Balson is managing director of Bain Capital Partners, where he has worked since 1996. He has been responsible for a number of the firm’s investments in technology and consumer products companies, including Domino’s Pizza, Odwalla, Stream International, USinternetworking, Double Click, and Epsilon Data Management. His board positions help protect Bain’s investments: It owns 30 percent of Domino’s and until its recent sale, a sizeable portion of Burger King.

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Charles A. Brizius, 38, Spectrum Brands, Warner Music, Houghton Mifflin

Brizius is a managing director at private-equity firm Thomas H. Lee and Partners, a position that has landed him on THL investments such as Spectrum Brands and Houghton Mifflin. Prior to joining THL in 1993, Brizius worked in corporate finance at Morgan Stanley.

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David N. Capobianco, 38, Plains All American Pipeline

An avid soccer player, Capobianco knows how to find the net: He led the privatization of Plains Resources, the acquisition of natural-gas storage assets from Sempra Energy, and the formation of PAA/Vulcan Gas Storage (formerly Energy Center Investments. As co-head of the private-equity investment arm of Vulcan Capital, the Seattle-based investment and philanthropic firm founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen, he oversees a multibillion-dollar portfolio of public and private investments in the energy, energy-infrastructure, and financial-services sectors. He sits on the board of Plains All American Pipeline, where he serves as chairman of its compensation committee. He is also the chairman of the board of Vulcan Energy (formerly Plains Resources).

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Gary D. Cohn, 47, Goldman Sachs

Cohn is a Wall Street whiz kid. He was named managing director of Goldman’s commodities business in 1996 at the age of 34. He ascended to co-chief operating officer and co-president in 2006. As a member of the board and the management committee, Cohn belongs to a distinguished group that will be remembered for steering Goldman Sachs away from the subprime vortex that pulled in so many other Wall Street firms. He’s done equally well for himself: In March, it was announced that he would earn compensation worth $67.5 million.

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Jonathan Coslet, 43, Neiman Marcus, J. Crew

Coslet joined the board of retailer J.Crew in 2003 at the age of 38. He has been a partner of private-equity firm TPG Capital since 1993 and is currently a senior partner and member of the firm’s executive, management, and investment committees. Coslet honed his skills at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, where he specialized in leveraged acquisitions and high-yield finance from 1991 to 1993. He also serves on the boards of TPG investments Quintiles Transnational and IASIS Healthcare.

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William C. Crowley, 50, Sears, AutoNation

The right-hand financial adviser to Sears’ Chairman Eddie Lampert, Crowley serves as executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Sears and sits on its board. He has spent time as the vice president of finance at K-Mart and CFO of Sears, and is also chairman of Sears Canada. And that’s just for starters. Crowley is also the president and COO of ESL Investments, Lampert’s private-equity shop. He has his work cut out for him: shares of Sears and AutoNation have been sliding dramatically, and ESL lost 20 percent of its value last year. If that’s not character-building enough, the firm has seven percent of its portfolio invested in Citigroup.

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Lawrence Kellner, 49, Marriott International, Continental

The chairman and CEO of Continental recently abandoned merger talks with United Airlines, which for now plans to remain an independent carrier. Kellner previously served as president and COO of Continental and has been a member of its board since 2002. He joined the airline in 1995 as CFO.

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Sallie L. Krawcheck, 42, Dell

Some observers question whether Krawcheck is still Citigroup’s golden girl. After establishing herself as a hotshot analyst as the chairman and CEO of Sanford C. Bernstein, Krawcheck joined Citigroup in 2002, became its CFO in 2004, and earned lofty accolades as one of the most powerful women in business. She had never served as a director until she joined Dell’s board in 2006. Now chairman and CEO of Citi Global Wealth Management, the southern-born Krawcheck, has criticized some of new Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit’s executive moves as creating “paralysis,” according to a recent Wall Street Journal story. We like the sound of that. After all, if she’s no longer the golden girl, at least she’s not afraid to say what’s on her mind. No doubt she brings the same tenacity to the Dell boardroom.

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Edward S. Lampert, 45, Sears

The billionaire chairman of Sears Holding is also a hedgefund manager who at one time was hailed as an investment guru on par with the Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett. Lampert’s failure to deliver a turnaround plan for the 121-year-old retailer, however, has tarnished his once-sterling reputation. Even so, amid the rough and tumble retail sector, his softer side has no doubt been hardened to whatever comes at him in the boardroom.

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Gregory B. Maffei, 47, Liberty Media

How’s this for an endorsement? When John Malone tapped Gregory B. Maffei to be chief executive of Liberty Media, he said one of Maffei’s strengths was his “understanding of Barry Diller’s very delicate psyche,” a skill that has surely been put to the test even if the results were a disappointment. Maffei reportedly played a vital behind-the-scenes role in Liberty’s attempt to take over Diller-controlled ICA. Its bid was ultimately put down in a Delaware court. A smooth operator in a pivotal role, he knows his way around financial statements, with former stints as CFO at Microsoft and Oracle.

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Daniel K.K. Tseung, 36, Owens Corning

Tseung is a managing director at Sun Hung Kai Properties Direct Investments Ltd., the private-equity division of one of Asia’s largest conglomerates. Tseung previously worked at GE Equity and currently serves as a director of RCN, Chinacast Education, and Owens Corning.

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Mellody Hobson, 39, Starbucks, Estee Lauder, Dreamworks SKG

In stark contrast to some of the individuals on our list who were born into powerful families, Hobson grew up one of six kids with a single mother in a poor neighborhood in Chicago. As president of Ariel Investments, she manages a portfolio of $14 billion in assets. But Hobson has perfected the art of multi-tasking-tasking: in addition to her position on the board of Starbucks, she is on the boards of Estee Lauder and Dreamworks SKG. In her spare time, she doles out financial advice as a regular on Good Morning America. “Our business everyday is to make money for people. And I take it as seriously as doctors who are trying to cure cancer,” she once told National Public Radio. “By giving people financial freedom, we allow them to do great things in their lives.” Her collection of listings on top executive and power-ranking lists are too numerous to mention.

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John W. Rogers, Jr. 49, McDonald’s, Exelon, Aon

The CEO of Ariel Investments founded the Chicago-based mutual-fund company in 1983 when he was just 24. Under his direction, Ariel now manages a portfolio in excess of $14 billion. Rogers, who captained the varsity basketball team at Princeton, was awarded the Woodrow Wilson Award from his alma mater, given each year to a graduate whose career embodies a commitment to national service. He serves on the boards of McDonald’s, Exelon, and Aon; Rogers was appointed to the Aon board in 1993 when he was just 35. “It was an extraordinary opportunity to learn from the best,” he recalled in a profile published by Black Essence magazine. He’s committed to sharing that knowledge: Besides advising the investment and audit committees, Rogers co-hosts an annual event designed to prepare African-American directors for board service. “If a board doesn’t have black directors to get issues on the table,” he says, “it’s not doing its job.”

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The Geeks

William H. Berkman, 43, IAC/Interactive

Berkman is managing partner of Associated Group, the general partner of Liberty Associated Partners, an investment fund that makes private and public market investments in telecommunications, media, internet, and technology companies. A graduate of Harvard, he holds patents for a variety of communications systems and components. Berkman’s family established the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

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Roy Dunbar, 46, Humana, EDS Corp.

There are plenty of techies on our list—whether they describe themselves that way or not—and it’s no surprise that Silicon Valley-types and web moguls remain in demand for boards. Dunbar, however, is not your ordinary computer geek—he trained to be a pharmacist—and has never started up a dotcom. He is president of global technology and operations at MasterCard though, rising through the ranks on his strong management and business skills. Before joining MasterCard, he was chief information officer of Eli Lilly, where he started his corporate career as a research analyst. When Information-Week named him CIO of the Year, the Jamaican-born Dunbar said, “I’m really not a technologist in any way, shape, or form.”

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Reed Hastings, 47, Microsoft, Netflix

We owe the ability to rent DVDs through the mail (and now for download online) to Hastings. He founded Netflix, an online-based video-rental company, in 1999 and survived the bursting of the net bubble, as well as serious challenges from Wal-Mart and later Blockbuster. It now has 8 million subscribers. A software engineer by trade, Hastings joined the Marine Corps, then the Peace Corps, and taught math in Swaziland before returning to the United States and earning his graduate degree in computer science. He later founded Pure Software and grew it to more than 600 employees before it was acquired by Rational Software in 2007. Hastings’ software background and business experience as chief executive of Netflix made him an alluring candidate for Microsoft, which added him to its board last March.

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Robert A. Kotick, 44, Yahoo

This famed game boy was at the controls as chairman and CEO of Activision when it bought Vivendi in a bid to create a rival to number-one Electronic Arts. Kotick is now in the somewhat tight spot of having to defend the Yahoo board’s decision to forego Microsoft’s bid. As one of its newer board recruits—he has served as an independent director since 2003—Kotick is perhaps feeling slightly less heat. As the publisher of the popular teen video game Guitar Hero, Kotick’s insights into net-centric youngsters are considered invaluable.

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Jerry Yang, 39, Yahoo, Cisco

Yang is not a favorite among some Yahoo shareholders right now, but give it a day or two and the story is likely to change. If he fails to find a suitor before Yahoo’s July 3 annual meeting, he could be out as chief executive. Of course he’d still have his billions and board seat at Cisco, where he sits on the investment and finance committee. Yang, a Taiwanese native and Stanford grad, founded the internet firm along with co-chief Yahoo David Filo. They installed Terry Semel as chief executive in 2001, but Semel failed to forge a solid identity as the company went up against Google and smaller, splashier rivals such as Facebook and MySpace. Yang is now back in the driver’s seat, but lately it’s been more of a hot seat. This is certainly one director to watch. Will he manage to appease shareholders and activist investors alike? Will Microsoft get what it wants? Stay tuned.

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Douglas R. Lebda, 37, Eastman Kodak

IAC/Interactive Corp. named Lebda president and COO in 2005, just two years after snapping up LendingTree, which Lebda founded in 1996 after earning his stripes as an auditor for PricewaterhouseCoopers. In nine years, Lebda led LendingTree through an IPO and five acquisitions to became the country’s leading online lending exchange. At IAC, Lebda oversaw the operations of more than 60 brands, including HSN, Ticketmaster, Match.com, and Ask.com, some 20,000 employees, and dozens of IAC start-ups and acquisitions. Earlier this year, he was named chairman and CEO of IAC’s financial services and real estate business.

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Larry Page, 35, Google

Punch up Page’s name on Google and you’ll get 13.5-million results in a fraction of a second. The Stanford doctoral candidate (he never finished) co-founded the world-altering “do-no-evil” internet search company responsible for adding several new verbs and terms into the global lexicon. In a recent Fortune cover story, Page advises readers to be more like Edison than Nikola Tesla. In other words, it’s better to know how to commercialize breakthrough ideas than to merely have a breakthrough idea. How does Google plan to stay at the top of the pack, even as the number of employees balloons into the tens of thousands and the corporate culture begins to stagnate? By continuing to do some of what it has always done: the people-centric organization lets 10 percent of its employees do what they like. Says Page, “Let’s say there are 10,000 people working on these things. If we make that 100,000, we’ll probably get 10 times the progress.” That’s a formula worthy of a few shares of Google stock.

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Charles Phillips Jr., 48, Viacom, Morgan Stanley, Oracle

Phillips could just as easily be found amid the financial whizzes, but since the director of Viacom and Morgan Stanley got his initial training as an information technology officer in the Marine Corps, we put him here, even though he doesn’t quite fit the mold of a propeller head in a t-shirt and jeans. Perhaps the military experience prepared the president of Oracle for a life of service to business that so far has taken him from Morgan Stanley, where he was an investment banker, to the Redmond, Calif., software maker, where since 2004 he has served as president and a director.

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The Heirs

Paul S. Amos II, 32, Aflac

At just 32, Amos is the second youngest director on our list. And yes, his father is the CEO and chairman of Aflac—his great-uncle co-founded Aflac along with two brothers in 1955—but Amos has earned his keep in the family business. His rise through the ranks at Aflac was quick, but he wasn’t just given a pass into the executive suite. Amos joined the company in 2002 as a state sales coordinator for the Georgia-North district, which he doubled in size and grew into Aflac’s top-producing region. Those results won him promotions—in 2005 to vice president of U.S. Operations, and in 2006 to COO. Before joining Aflac, he worked in the corporate law division of Skadden Arps.

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Carlos Fernandez-Gonzalez, 42, Anheuser Busch, Emerson Electric Co.

Another beer magnate, Fernandez-Gonzalez is vice chairman and CEO of Grupo Modelo, the largest Mexican brewer whose exports include Corona, the number-one imported beer in America.

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August A. Busch IV, 44, Anheuser-Busch, FedEx

Busch represents the fifth generation of his family to take the helm of the world’s largest brewer. His position wasn’t simply handed to him because of his name: After graduating from Saint Louis University in the mid-1980s, he was required to follow the same career path as his father, starting at the bottom. “The Fourth,” as he is known, worked as a brewer’s apprentice and union member of Brewers & Maltsters Local 6 in St. Louis, Mo., as an intern in the Culture Yeast Center, and later as a foreman in packaging and shipping operations. Now due to grain and aluminum shortages, Anheuser’s stock is down. Time will tell if this young Busch can turn things around.

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Natalie Bancroft, 27, News Corp.

The youngest and only 20-something to make our list, Bancroft fulfills Rupert Murdoch’s promise to put a Bancroft family member on the board of News Corp. after the purchase of Dow Jones, in which the family held controlling shares. Some considered the appointment to be a cheap ploy by Murdoch. (He allegedly ignored the Bancrofts’ own suggestions for a suitable representative from the family.) She is the youngest member of a very young board. Many have pointed out that Bancroft could be valuable to a media empire that, with MySpace and the Fox network, is trying to cultivate a young audience. Bancroft, who has spent her life jetting between France, Switzerland, and Southern California, is an aspiring opera singer with little to no business experience. “I know that me as a choice was kind of scandalous—this 27-year-old opera singer that no one knows anything about,” she recently told Portfolio. Recruiters we talked to sighed at the mention of her name, but only time will tell if she can prove herself in the boardroom. Maybe she can trade notes with Ivanka Trump, who, at 26, also is among the youngest directors in Corporate America.

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Eleuthère I. Dupont, 41, Dupont

It is easy to assume that young directors with the same last name as the company are just along for the ride and that they spend board meetings fretting over lost time from their other expensive hobbies, usually horses or race cars. Not the case with Eleuthère I. Dupont, named for the man who founded the company in 1802. He is a talented executive in his own right, and his position as senior vice president of operations and chief financial officer of Drugstore.com has nothing to do with his name. Before joining the online pharmacy company, the Dupont heir, known as Thère, was president and CFO of Wawa Inc., a convenience store chain that during his 13-year tenure grew from $800 million to more than $5 billion in revenue.

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Scott T. Ford, 46, Alltel, Tyson Foods

Ford is another on our list who owes his quick ascension on the boards of two Fortune 500 companies to breeding. His grandfather, Hugh Randolph Wilbourne Jr., founded Allied Telephone Co., which later became Alltel Corp., run by Ford’s father, Joe T. Ford. According to one biography, Scott Ford struck a deal with his father at the age of 12 that he would never work at Alltel. But after stints at Merrill Lynch and investment bank Stephens Group, he reneged on the deal and joined the family business in 1996 and rose to CEO in 2002. At Alltel, the former investment banker laid out an acquisition strategy and quickly grew the company into a wireless powerhouse. Last year, Alltel was taken private in a $26-billion deal by TPG Capital and Goldman Sachs.

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Aerin Lauder, 37, Estee Lauder

Board directors of a certain generation are more often the staid by-products of years in corporate America, so Lauder brings a surprisingly fresh cachet of superlatives to her role as senior executive in charge of global creative directions of The Estee Lauder Co. This heiress of style has served as a director of the $5-billion global cosmetics company since 1995, her first exposure to the business, she has told interviewers, was at the vanity table of her famed grandmother, who started the company in 1946 in New York City.

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James Murdoch, 35; Lachlan Murdoch, 36, News Corp.

Murdoch’s male heirs present a mixed bag. Educated at the finest schools in the United States—Lachlan at Phillips Academy and Princeton, James at Horace Mann and Harvard–they sit at the center of a favorite Wall-Street guessing game on who will take over the reins of massive News Corp. Lachlan caused a stir in 2005 when he announced he was resigning his executive roles at News Corp., though he remains on the board. Critics called him a spoiled brat and said he had more interest in rugby than in running his father’s media empire. (New York magazine called him “the boy who wouldn’t be king,” in an article that detailed tension between Lachlan and his father). Now, waiting in the wings is the younger James, whose big test came last December, when he was appointed head of News Corp.’s operations in the U.K., Europe, and Asia. If James does ascend to the top post at News Corp., it could be an awkward fit with the company’s right-leaning political culture. It is rumored that James does not share his father’s political perspective.

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The Merchandisers

James W. Breyer, 46, Wal-Mart

Breyer is a noteworthy venture capitalist with many accomplishments. Elected to Wal-Mart’s board of directors at age 39, Breyer’s reputation for innovative acquisitions, most notably in the consumer internet and electronic realm, have preceded him. He is now the presiding independent director and chairman of the Strategic Planning and Finance Committee at Wal-Mart. His thinking led to Wal-Mart’s acquisition of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to identify inventory of products. This innovation alone reduced the company’s out-of stock inventories by 30 percent, cut labor costs, and simplified business procedures. In addition to Wal-Mart, Breyer has been a director at RealNetworks since 1995. A managing partner of Accel Partners, he has served as an investor or board member of several internet companies including Brightcove, Facebook, and Prosper.

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Penelope “Penny” Hughes, 48, The Gap

Hughes defines the global director. A former executive of Coca-Cola where she ran U.K. and Ireland operations, she also sits on the board of Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, a large Swedish bank; Reuters Group; and Home Retail Group., a British home-furnishings company. In the past, she has also served on the boards of Vodafone and Body Shop. At Gap, she is on the audit and governance and nominating committees. Clearly, she is multi-talented: She began her career as a chemist, and later became an international marketing guru.

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Andrea Jung, 49, General Electric, Apple

Sleek, stylish, smart. Jung is a dream candidate for some board recruiters and a ubiquitous presence on power lists (She was featured in Directorship’s annual All-Star issue in April). The chairman and CEO of Avon Products has two equally demanding board jobs at General Electric and Apple, where she’s surrounded by other A-listers. What makes Jung so board- and list-ready is indicated by how she describes her day job selling small luxuries to women around the world. Jung once told interviewer Charlie Rose she views her mission at Avon as empowering women, not by changing their look with lip gloss and eyeliner, but by becoming economically independent by selling cosmetics.

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W. Rodney McMullen, 46, Kroger Co.

There is much to be said for McMullen’s story: It could have been written right from the inkwell of the prolific rags-to-riches author Horatio Alger. McMullen started as a part-time stock clerk at a Kroger’s supermarket in the heartland of America, eventually becoming chief financial officer. He has been an officer of the company since 1989 and a director since 2003, when he was elected vice chairman.

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Frits van Paasschen, 47, Starwood Hotels, Jones Apparel Group, Oakley Inc.

Van Paasschen’s penchant for coining lifestyle brands and his ability to transform the ordinary into extraordinary is what led Starwood Hotels to elect him as president and CEO in September. Van Paasschen’s extensive experience and successes far surpass his age. His two and a half years as president and CEO of Molson Coors Brewing resulted in reversing nine quarters of decline while increasing market share. In an independent survey of distributor satisfaction, the brand’s ranking notably improved, as volumes, sales and profits significantly increased under his guidance. Prior to working at Molson, van Paasschen spent seven years at Nike, doubling revenue profits over a four-year period.

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The Type-As

Roxanne S. Austin, 47, Target Corp., Abbott Labs

An accountant by trade, Austin worked her way through Hughes Electronics, predecessor to satellite company DirecTV, to the CFO role, and eventually to president and COO at DirecTV. She left after the company was sold to Rupert Murdoch in December 2003. Austin is on the audit and governance and nominating committees at Target and serves on the boards of Abbott Labs and Teledyne. She runs an advisory firm that provides investment-focused consulting to technology and media companies.

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Ursula M. Burns, 49, Xerox, American Express, Boston Scientific

Talk about working your way up. Burns started at Xerox in 1980 as a mechanical engineering summer intern. She then took a position as executive assistant to former Xerox Chairman and CEO Paul Allaire, and now is president of Xerox and sits on three Fortune 500 boards. She is a perennial feature on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business, and has been rumored to be the heir apparent to Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy.

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Sylvia Mathews Burwell, 42, MetLife

Burwell is the president of the Global Development Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Her program focuses on combating world poverty through agricultural development, financial services for the poor, and global libraries. She was chief operating officer and executive director of the Foundation prior to its reorganization in 2006. She came to the Foundation in 2001, after serving as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget in Washington, D.C. She was deputy chief of staff to fellow Rhodes Scholar, President Bill Clinton, from 1997 to 1998, and worked on both the Clinton and Gore presidential campaigns.

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Susan L. Decker, 43, Berkshire Hathaway, Costco, Intel

Not only does Decker have perhaps the most impressive slate of board appointments for her age, her day job has been pretty interesting as of late. As president of Yahoo, she has had her hands full untangling Microsoft’s takeover attempt and deflecting criticism from Yahoo shareholders angry that the deal fell apart. (One can only guess her proximity to Microsoft chairman Bill Gates during Berkshire board meetings.) Her role in the failed deal—and unpopularity with shareholders—could hurt her prospects of being promoted to CEO. Until recently, it has been widely speculated that she was being groomed for the top spot.

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Viet D. Dinh, 40, News Corp.

Dinh and his family left war-torn Vietnam when he was 10 years old. He worked his way to Harvard and then Harvard Law, where he edited the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He served as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. As an assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003 during the Bush Administration he is credited as one of the main authors of the Patriot Act. In 2006, he joined Kenneth Starr in taking on the constitutionality of the Sarbanes-Oxley act, and has been mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee. In addition to his board duties at News Corp., he teaches at Georgetown University Law School and co-directs its Asian Law and Policy Studies and is a principal at the public policy consulting firm Bancroft Associates which he founded.

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Charles M. Elson, 48, AutoZone, HealthSouth

As director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, Elson wields tremendous influence in corporate governance circles. With a reputation for integrity, he was elected to the HealthSouth board in 2004 in the aftermath of several executives being charged with fraud. He landed on the AutoZone board at the age of 39 in 2000; he now chairs the governance and nominating committee. Elson eats, drinks, and sleeps corporate governance and doesn’t mind playing the contrarian—he says every board needs one. Last year, he was selected to the Directorship 100 list of influentials, and in December testified in Congress as an expert witness to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the role of compensation consultants in setting executive pay. He advocated for independent compensation consultants.

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Kim C. Goodman, 42, AutoNation

Goodman is at the heart of a growing trend by boards to look beyond the CEO’s office for directors by delving deeper into the management tier for candidates. Goodman’s day job was managing the software and peripherals business at Dell at the time when she was selected to fill a board seat at AutoNation in February 2007. She has since moved to American Express, where she is executive vice president of merchant services for North America. Goodman began her career at the consulting firm Bain & Co., working with telecommunications and media clients.

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John H. Hammergren, 48, McKesson, Hewlett-Packard

Hammergren serves as chairman and chief executive of McKesson, a healthcare services and information-technology company that he has put back on track, following a scandal and precipitous losses. During his tenure, McKesson has doubled its revenues to $92 billion, tripled its earnings, expanded into new markets, and advanced to number 18 on the Fortune 500. Hammergren, who hails from a small town in Minnesota, has been described in the press as “squeaky clean with a knack for complexity.” As a board member of Hewlett-Packard since 2005, Hammergren survived the pre-texting scandal that shook the board. More recently, he weighed in the decision for Hewlett-Packard to acquire EDS for $13.2 billion. Hammergren also is a director of Nadro, S.A. de C.V., a large pharmaceutical distributor in Mexico, and Verispan LLC, a healthcare information company; McKesson holds an interest in both.

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Melinda Gates, 43, Washington Post

Melinda French Gates was born and raised in Dallas and earned her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Duke University, making her better educated than her husband, Bill, the notorious Harvard drop out, whom she married in 1994. A Fortune magazine cover profile (her first) in May duly noted that for the sake of love and marriage “she sacrificed her privacy, security, simplicity, and normalcy.” She served on the board of Drugstore.com before retiring in 2006 to spend more time on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now the world’s largest private charity. She was elected to the board of The Washington Post in 2004 and the following year she and her husband were named Time magazine’s “Persons of the Year.” She was also ranked number 24 in Forbes magazine’s list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in 2007.

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Jeffrey A. Joerres, 48, Johnson Controls

The chairman and CEO of Manpower, Joerres manages the global employment company that has become something of a bellwether for investor expectations and the U.S. economy. Based in Milwaukee, Manpower last year saw $11 billion in annual sales driven in large part by aggressive expansion into overseas markets, where in addition to the United States, it has become a big supplier of temporary workers, the demand for which rises and falls with the business cycle. Joerres has been on the board of Johnson Controls since 2001.

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Klaus Kleinfeld, 50, Alcoa, Bayer AG

Okay, technically he’s not under 50, but with the slate of boards he’s served on, he’s close enough to be on our list. The German-educated Kleinfeld showed either good intuition or lucky timing jumping off the Citigroup board before the credit crisis began taking its toll. Part of the reason he left both Citigroup and Siemens boards was because of his advancement at Alcoa where he recently added the title of CEO. He had been president and COO since 2007. He joined Alcoa’s board in 2003. Prior to Alcoa, Kleinfeld was president and CEO of Siemens AG. His extraordinary energy could be the result of his running habit. No sprinter, Kleinfeld runs marathons.

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Myrtle S. Potter, 49, Amazon

The next time you reach for a daily dose of Prilosec, think of Potter. Among her career highlights was to drive the joint venture between Astra and Merck & Co. that led to the development of the acid-reflux alleviator. Now an adviser who specializes in corporate strategy and governance, she left Genentech to start a Habitat for Humanity style nonprofit company that builds affordable housing in areas where the cost of living is high (think: L.A.) called The Chapman Group. In addition to Amazon, she serves on the boards of eV3 and Medco Health Solutions.

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Matthew K. Rose, 48, Burlington Northern, Centrex

Since 2002, Rose has served as chairman and CEO of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. In an industry that uses an exorbitant amount of fuel, his intention is to expand the company with special care given to how such growth affects the environment. Rose believes that BNSF needs to “grow green” and become the cleanest truck and rail facility in North America. His efforts earned him compensation of $10.5 million in 2007. He also serves on the boards of AMR and American Airlines.

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Randall L. Stephenson, 45, AT&T, Emerson Electric

Making Ma Bell cool is the new order for Randall L. Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T since April 2004 who last year was made chairman. A recent Forbes profile noted Stephenson is an accountant by training and a tech nerd by choice. Key decisions—to rebrand Cingular as AT&T, sell Apple’s iPhone, and enter emerging markets such as India—show gumption.

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Wendell P. Weeks, 47, Merck & Co., Corning

Named executive chairman last year, Weeks’ efforts to restructure Corning during one the most difficult economic downturns in the teleco industry shows mettle. He once told USA Today that “a crisis is in a way too good an opportunity to waste. We took the opportunity to decide what type of company we were going to be for the next decade.” Not a different Corning, but an improved version of Corning.

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Annual Directors to Watch Forum – Tomorrow’s Boardroom Leaders

We will honor this new class of boardroom power players who will discuss the major forward looking corporate governance and strategic issues on September 30, 2008, at the Lotos Club of New York. For more information, click here.

Directorship | Boardroom Intelligence » directorship institute

Directors to Watch

Three SEC Chairmen and Activist Investor CalPERS to be Honored by Directorship