Power 100 - Washington Life Magazine - March 2014

9TH ANNUAL

Hillary Clinton

Susan Molinari

David Axelrod

Karl Rove

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Jim DeMint

Cheryl Mills

T F I L E P H OTOS

here’s an old adage often quoted to doe-eyed college grads seeking employment: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Well, in Washington it’s both. Those with superior knowledge and the access to properly utilize that knowledge hold the reins of power in this town — the most sought after prize in our nation’s capital.

The faces of the participating players may change from year to year, but in this, our ninth annual Power 100 List, the rules of the game remain the same: (1) knowledge is power; (2) influence is power; (3) access is power; and (4) the perception of power is often the most powerful force of all. A few individuals on our list were born into power, mainly through inherited wealth, but most earned it the hard way. And while we’re not disputing the power of the purse, net worth alone does not automatically translate into power. How those dollars get used does.

Washington is and will always be a politics-dominated city, but

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Grover Norquist

Christine Lagarde

for our purposes, we continue the tradition of eliminating anyone drawing a government paycheck, as this list is not intended to serve as a government directory — use Google for that. We continue to focus on the key players, in the public eye or behind the scenes, who are helping to shape government policy, the economy, business, media, real estate and culture for years to come.

In an effort to shine light on as many new faces as possible, we added nearly 50 people this year, and in so doing we noticed an uptick in the number of women on the list. From the buzz surrounding Hillary Rodham Clinton’s potential 2016 presidential bid to female CEOs in traditionally male-dominated industries, such as Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Kim Horn of Kaiser Foundation of the MidAtlantic and Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, we predict a powerful next few years for Washington ladies. Read on for the full list. >>

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100 ROBERT ALLBRITTON KIM KINGSLEY

Robert Allbritton

Dana Bash

Jeremy Ben-Ami

Wayne Berman

Wes Bush

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Chairman and CEO, Allbritton Communications; COO, Politico While his father, the late Joe Allbritton, was a television guy, at one point holding on to the capital’s ABC affiliate WJLA while selling off the now defunct Washington Star newspaper, son Robert is betting on the written word. Allbritton made waves last year when he decided to sell WJLA, its cable counterpart NewsChannel 8 and several other Albritton-owned stations to Sinclair Broadcast Group for $973 million, pending FCC approval. He’s using the funds to grow Politico bigger and wider. Bigger in that Politico Magazine launched in October, is trying to steal some ground from other publications in the long-form journalism space.

Wider in that there’s now a Politico for New York after Allbritton acquired Capital New York in September.

Through all of this, Kingsley has put herself on the map. One of Politico’s first hires in 2006, the former reporter vaulted to the top of the company in 2010 before she turned 30. More recently, she’s spearheaded Politico’s Women Rule campaign, which brought women leaders like Nancy Pelosi, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Jane Harman together for a series of empowering conferences.

TOM ANDERSON DANA LANDRY WILLIAM F X MOODY MARC SCHAPPELL Founders,Washington Fine Properties Under the leadership of Anderson, Landry, Moody and Schappell, Washington Fine Properties is a dominating force in the local real estate market. In 2013, the firm’s sales volume hit $2 billion with a total of 1,553 transactions. On top of that, WFP represented seven of the top 10 most expensive homes in the area, including the $9.3 million McLean estate of the late Joe Robert, creator of D.C. Fight Night; the $8.6 million Georgetown mansion formerly belonging to Janet Lee Auchincloss, the mother of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; and the $7.6 million Georgetown home once owned by Robert Todd Lincoln, son of President Abraham Lincoln. For the fourth year in a row, Washington Fine Properties was presented with the Highest Average Agent Production Award by Leading Real Estate Companies of the World. Though the firm sold 33 percent more properties over $1 million in Washington in 2013 than its closest competition, it also

increased sales under $1 million by 35 percent. Several WFP agents were ranked nationally as top agents by the Wall Street Journal, with Nancy Taylor Bubes, Matthew McCormick, Mark McFadden and Ellen Morrell receiving recognition. The idea for WFP was hatched by the four men 15 years ago, with Schappell coming on board in 2007. The firm has since grown “organically,” as the founders like to say. In recent years they’ve spread to Maryland’s Eastern shore and, in December, opened up an office in Bethesda.

JOSÉ ANDRÉS Chef and ThinkFoodGroup founder Bringing small plates to the United States is small potatoes for José Andrés these days. The James Beard Awardwinning chef and restaurateur took the Spanish tapas concept and turned it into a restaurant empire from his classic Jaleo and innovative Minibar to Mexican favorite Oyamel. He’s credited for turning around Washington’s Chinatown neighborhood and his restaurants have acted as launchpads for other chefs taking over the capital’s foodie scene. In an effort to give back, Andrés has partnered with the state department, the National Archives and the White House for various foodthemed projects. He’s now a professor teaching a “World on a Plate” class at George Washington University, where he’ll also give the school’s commencement speech in May. Last November he hit another milestone as the Spanish-born chef officially became an American citizen.

CATHAL AND MESHELLE ARMSTRONG Owners, Restaurant Eve With a handful of innovative dining concepts across the Potomac, Cathal and Meshelle Armstrong have done to old town Alexandria what José Andrés did to Washington’s Chinatown district.

The couple, who met while working together at the original Cities in Adams Morgan, now have six concepts down pat, including The Majestic,T.N.T., Society Fair, Eamonn’s and PX, and their original darling, Restaurant Eve, which turns 10 this year. Along the way, Cathal, an Irish-born chef who opened his first restaurant at 16, has partnered with the White House to bring healthy cooking to Alexandria’s public schools and once received President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama at Restaurant Eve. He’s been nominated seven times for James Beard awards and his debut cookbook “My Irish Table” came out in March.

DAVID AXELROD Director, Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago Since leaving Obama’s side in 2011, the former Chicago Tribune reporter has hardly gone quietly into the sunset, appearing often on television as an analyst for NBC News and in print to weigh in on the political news of the day. As the head of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, he most recently went toe to toe with Tea Party favorite Rand Paul at an education forum, tackling all manner of subjects from abortion to climate change and the Department of Education. Last month, he was asked to reprise his role as political mastermind across the pond as a senior strategic advisor to British Labour Party leader Ed Milliband, whose bottom-of-the-barrel status is sure to test Axelrod’s mettle. Most intriguingly for political watchers, the race pits him against former Obama campaign colleague Jim Messina, who is helping equally unpopular incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron keep No. 10 Downing Street.

BRET BAIER “Special Report” Host, Fox News Channel “Special Report with Bret Baier” dominates the ratings, establishing Baier as the most important media presence for Fox News in Washington.

On average, according to Nielsen, Baier pulls in 2.1 million viewers each night and has been in the number one spot for 63 straight months.

That’s because he delivers a crisp, smart newscast that gets praise from both the political right and the left — and the latter aren’t often fans of anything Fox. Unlike other Fox hosts he covers substantive issues rather than just providing entertainment. The hard-hitting journalist also has a big heart, helping to raise $10.7 million at Children’s National Medical Center’s Children’s Ball in April. Baier’s son Paul has had five major heart problems and undergone three open heart surgeries. Turning his family’s struggle into something positive, Baier has written a book about it, “Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage & Love.” Due out in June, all the proceeds are set to go to pediatric heart research.

ASHOK BAJAJ Founder, Knightsbridge Management LLC When American author and poet Maya Angelou turned 86 this April in

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Washington, she chose the Bombay Club, Ashok Bajaj’s first Washington, D.C. eatery — and Angelou’s favorite — to celebrate her birthday. It’s hard to believe that when he started out landlords wouldn’t rent to him because, “Indian restaurants smell,” Bajaj once recalled to the New York Times. Since the Bombay Club’s opening in 1988, back when the local dining scene mainly smelled of steak, Bajaj has been credited with making Indian food more elegant and remaking Washington’s foodie scene. Sticking close to his roots, he owns Rasika and Rasika West End, high-end Indian restaurants popular with politicos. He also owns the Oval Room, 701, Bibiana, Ardeo + Bardeo and his newest, Nopa Kitchen+Bar.

JEFF BALLOU News Editor, Al Jazeera English Since 2006, Ballou’s been a fixture in Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau while the company is trying to figure out its exact place in the cable news landscape. A veteran of Washington’s WTTG Fox 5, he has covered the White House, Congress and the state department in a career that spans more than two decades. In 2013, he was elected to serve as vice chairman of the Board of Governors at the National Press Club and was re-elected to serve a second term through this year. Ballou and his team at Al Jazeera English provided especially important coverage to an American audience during the 2011 Arab Spring.

ANDY BARKETT Chief Technology Officer, Republican National Committee The status quo election of 2012 was a loser for Republicans who had both the U.S. Senate and White House in sight.

To remedy the problem, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus vowed to do better in the digital space, hiring Barkett, a Facebook engineer, away from the Silicon Valley giant in June. His team has grown to include Chuck DeFeo from Edelman, Azarias Reda from LinkedIn and up-and-comer Justin LoFranco (poached from Rep. Darrell Issa’s House Oversight Committee) as well. Under Barkett, who is running the RNC’s big data operations and has been touted as the “genius golden boy” of the party, the RNC has opened a West Coast office to attract more talent. Additionally, the Republicans’ Washington office is getting updated to give digital types more space just in time for the 2014 midterm elections.

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Gov. Jon Huntsman, Chairman of The Atlantic Council and Capricia Marshall, Ambassador-in-Residence at the Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin American Center Bono and former President Clinton (Photo

by TonyBill Powell) (Photo by Tony Powell)

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100 DANA BASH

Paul Clement

Bill Clinton

David Cohen

Anita Dunn

Chief Congressional Correspondent, CNN Last October’s government shutdown was Dana Bash’s time to shine. “I’ve slept a little bit, eaten a little bit, not enough,” she told CNN colleague Brooke Baldwin as cameras followed her through the Ohio Clock Corridor as she tracked down more members of Congress to find out why the government was still shut down. She even stirred up Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, causing the soft-spoken Democrat to call her “irresponsible and reckless” when she asked him about the shutdown’s effect on kids’ cancer trials. As a 20-year veteran of the network, working her way up from freelancer to on-air talent, Bash knows how to handle it. “I’m prepared for the unpredictable nature of these guys,” she coolly told Elle Magazine.

JEREMY BEN-AMI Founder and President, J Street In just six years under the leadership of Ben-Ami, J Street has become the alternative to AIPAC, the country’s biggest pro-Israel lobbying group.

Ben-Ami’s J Street is advocating a “pro-Israel, pro-peace message” and closely aligning itself with President Obama, who is trying to hash out an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan while negotiating with Iran to find a peaceful solution to the nuclear dispute. AIPAC isn’t necessarily on board with these moves, but many American Jews are, making J Street all the more popular.

“To promote the end of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, secure Israel’s future and to achieve the goal of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon — these are the acts of a friend, this is what pro-Israel should be defined to be,” Ben-Ami said in a recent interview with Politico. The group has also become increasingly popular among college-age Jews, with more than 50 J Street U chapters in existence around the nation.

WAYNE BERMAN

Chad Griffin

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Senior Advisor for Global Government Affairs,The Blackstone Group Berman is a veteran of Republican politics, having worked for the campaigns, transition teams and administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. He has been trying to get more Republicans elected since.

Berman was a bundler for both John McCain and Mitt Romney, while also working at Ogilvy Government

Relations. More recently, he moved to the Blackstone Group and bet on the right horse in the run-up to 2014 when he helped finance Republican David Jolly’s successful run against Democrat Alex Sink in a race for an open Florida congressional seat. The Hill Newspaper named Berman one of its top lobbyists in 2013, calling him “one of the most sought-after fundraisers on K Street.”

DAVID BRADLEY Chairman, Atlantic Media Company Sure, David Bradley started his two companies — The Advisory Board Company and The Corporate Executive Board Company — from Capitol Hill, but his bigger insidethe-Beltway byline came from his acquisition of the National Journal Group in 1997 and The Atlantic in 1999. Today Bradley’s media brand has expanded far beyond print magazines, though he still does that, too. His journalists are covering the business world with Quartz, they’re bringing smarts to the Web with The Wire and the company is exploring new ground as it grows Atlantic Media Strategies, an in-house creative agency experimenting with branded content.

Atlantic Media produces big events, too, like the annual Washington Ideas Forum. Bradley and his wife Katherine have used their success to give back to the community including founding CityBridge Foundation, where Katherine serves as president, in 1994 and spearheading Teach for America’s growth in the capital region.

JOHN B BREAUX TRENT LOTT Senior Counsel, Patton Boggs BreauxLott Leadership Group Patton Boggs proper may be going through a tumultuous time, but the brand-name team of John Breaux and Trent Lott has been insulated from the recent dispute with Chevron.

(Chevron is suing the D.C.-based law firm for alleged fraud stemming from a long-running legal battle with Ecuador over Texaco polluting land owned by Indians there.) Instead, the all-star former senators-turnedlobbyists continue to add SpaceX and other high-profile clients to an already impressive roster (Diageo, American Airlines, Tyson Foods and Fedex, to name a few). The lobbying side of Patton Boggs overall has signed on more than 40 new clients since the beginning of 2013, according to the Hill newspaper. On the downside, the

firm is losing partners and revenues and may merge with Squire Sanders.

MATTHEW BROOKS Executive Director, Republican Jewish Coalition Political finance experts estimate that about a third to one half of the Republican party’s most important “bundlers” are active in the Republican Jewish Coalition, which Brooks has directed since 1990. Previously he worked on the Jack Kemp and George H.W. Bush presidential campaigns before moving up the Republican Jewish Coalition’s ranks. The group’s clout is palpable; its spring meeting attracted four GOP 2016 hopefuls — Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Scott Walker and John Kasich.

Looking forward, Brooks believes he’s making demographic gains, pointing out that McCain received 22 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008, while Mitt Romney got 32 percent in 2012 — a 10-point gain. Adding to Brooks’ clout, he’s considered a protégé of billionaire Republican donor Sheldon Adelson.

MARIANN EDGAR BUDDE Bishop, Episcopal Diocese of Washington “Bishop Mariann,” as she’s called, is the face behind the Washington National Cathedral, and the first female one at that. The Episcopal Diocese of Washington elected the Rev. Dr. Mariann Edgar Budde to serve as its ninth bishop in 2011. Since then she has not been shy about playing a part in Washington’s political debates. She’s led a prayer service where she asked House Speaker John Boehner to bring immigration reform to a vote and has come out for universal background checks for purchasers of firearms while asking for prayers to prevent gun violence. She has also backed marriage equality in Maryland, penning an OnFaith column asking Christians to reconsider their beliefs on same-sex marriage. “I’d like to suggest to them, with deep respect for the depth of their convictions,” Budde wrote, “that the Bible we share may not say what they think it says in regards to samesex marriage.”

CHET BURRELL CEO, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield A 40-year veteran of the healthcare industry, Burrell has become an intelligent and influential voice throughout the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). He was selected to head Maryland’s largest health insurer in 2007 thanks, in part,

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to his tech savvy as the former head of an electronic claims processing firm.

His decade of work for the New York State government has been immensely helpful, too, as he’s had to lead his company through the politically tinged ACA changes. (CareFirst sells ACA plans in Maryland,Virginia and the District of Columbia.) Annapolis takes his calls, as evidenced by Burrell’s recent request to Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley not to abandon Maryland’s beleaguered health exchanges for the federal ones, a move that’s not expected to happen.

WES BUSH President, CEO and Chairman, Northrop Grumman On Bush’s first day of work as CEO, he decided to move the defense contractor from Los Angeles to Falls Church,Va., one week before the D.C.-area earthquake struck in 2011.

“The earthquake in our first week of operation made us feel right at home,” Bush joked to Reuters. The quake may not have seemed like good fortune, but Bush’s ascension to the top of the company has been described as “nothing short of meteoric,” the Los Angeles Times reported. Bush, an MIT grad, joined TRW Inc. as a systems engineer in 1987 and once Northrop bought TRW in 2002, he became the company’s youngest senior executive.

He succeeded to the presidency in 2006 and added the title of chairman in 2011. Now he’s working to make Northrop Grumman the Number One defense contractor in the country in the face of severe government cuts.

STEVE AND JEAN CASE Founders, Case Foundation It should be no surprise that former AOL CEO Steve Case and his wife, Jean, a former executive at AOL, are good at the Internet. The Case Foundation, which they started in 1997, has become a great hub of knowledge for nonprofits and charities interested in harnessing the World Wide Web for the power of good. The foundation enables nonprofit groups to acquire social media techniques and strategies, using technology, for greater giving. It has has also gotten behind a number of “big ideas” projects over the years. The couple has done good work for their government as well.

Steve Case was selected by President Obama to serve on the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and was named chairman of the Startup America Partnership. Jean Case worked on a number of projects

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Marillyn Hewson, chairman, CEO & president, Lockheed Martin (Photo by Tony Brown)

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100 during President George W. Bush’s administration.

GUY CECIL

Jason Grumet

Mary Kay Henry

Executive Director, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee The U.S. Senate is the major political battleground of 2014 and Guy Cecil is on the front lines. He and a handful of Republican candidates can take credit for keeping the Senate in Democratic control in 2012. He and DSCC Chair Sen. Michael Bennett, for whom he formerly worked as chief of staff, are hoping for a repeat performance in 2014. Cecil recently came out kicking when polling guru Nate Silver said the Democrats were on track to lose their majority. “We don’t minimize the challenges ahead,” Cecil told the Washington Post. “Rather, we view the latest projection as a reminder that we have a challenging map and important work to do in order to preserve our majority.” During his time in politics, Cecil has encountered victories and defeats. He became DSCC’s political director in 2006 and helped push Democrats into the majority before working for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.

A JAMES CLARK

Ilyse Hogue

Stuart Holliday

CEO, Clark Construction Group LLC It’s hard to walk anywhere in downtown Washington without seeing the signs of the city’s construction boom — and a lot of it comes from Clark. The Bethesda-based construction company is responsible for the new CityCenter DC, with its high-end shops and luxury condos set to open any day. Along with Smoot Construction and H.J. Russell & Company, Clark is bringing the National Museum of African American History and Culture to the National Mall in 2015. In October, Clark won another big contract to build phase two of Metro’s Silver Line, which will eventually extend rail transit to the Dulles International Airport. A graduate of the University of Maryland in 1950, Clark has given back to his alma mater generously; its school of engineering bears his name.

PAUL CLEMENT

Harold Ickes

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Partner, Bancroft PLLC Paul Clement has become the right’s legal antidote to the Obama years — even if he hasn’t always won the fight. The Harvard-educated “superlawyer” served as George W. Bush’s solicitor general before taking on a handful of high-profile and controversial cases. When the Obama

Administration stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act in 2011, Clement picked up the case for House Republicans, leaving his law firm to do so. But last June, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional, a big blow for gay rights foes and Clement’s fans. Clement was the lawyer arguing against the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which the Supreme Court called a tax not a violation of liberty when it upheld most of President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. Clement’s luck defending Arizona’s controversial immigration law was no better but he has another chance to dent the Affordable Care Act in tackling whether for-profit companies have to provide contraception, as Obamacare prescribes, if it violates their owners’ religious beliefs. Clement took this so-called “Hobby Lobby Case” before the Supreme Court in March, with the ruling expected to be handed down in June.

BILL CLINTON Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation While he spends a majority of his time in New York City, former President Bill Clinton is still one of Washington’s biggest newsmakers. He watches basketball with George W. Bush, pranks Twitter on April Fool’s Day and does the late night talk show rounds, often throwing the national media into a fit. He might also be in the running for the country’s first “first gentleman.” He remains active in politics and philanthropy and stumps for Democratic candidates while running the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative and the Clinton Foundation Climate Change Initiative.

HILLARY CLINTON Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation The “will-she-or-won’t-she” chatter is already at fever pitch and there’s another major election to take into account before 2016. But it’s not as if Hillary Clinton — who may well be the next to live (again) at Washington’s most powerful address — isn’t slightly fanning those flames. Her carefully crafted public appearances in Washington, including the Vital Voices Global Awards and the Center for American Progress’ 10th Birthday celebration, serve to keep her focused on things she cares about and in the public eye as well. Her memoir detailing her time as secretary of state

is set to drop in June. And while she can’t coordinate with them, a network of Washington-based pro-Clinton groups are coalescing around her potential 2016 presidential run. In January, D.C.-based Priorities USA Action — the Democratic Super PAC that helped President Obama win the White House again — announced its intentions to align with Clintonland.

Meanwhile, across the river in Rosslyn, the group Ready for Hillary is focusing on boosting grassroots support.

DAVID COHEN Executive Vice President, Comcast Expect to see David Cohen in the news, a lot. This year, Comcast’s chief lobbyist has the herculean task of getting the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department’s antitrust division on board with the cable company’s proposed merger with Time Warner.

Most Republicans are in favor but Democrats need to be convinced and that’s where Cohen’s political ties may be found. He was the chief of staff to Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell in the 1990s and went on to become a major Democratic donor and fundraiser for President Obama, though he’s also contributed to Republicans. While the Time Warner deal may be just too big to win, Cohen has a proven track record having pushed the NBC/ Comcast deal through the FCC in 2011.

ROB COLLINS Executive Director, National Republican Senatorial Committee The Republicans are trying to rebound from two disappointing cycles in which flawed U.S. Senate candidates may have stopped them from taking back the upper chamber.

For this year’s set of midterms, NRSC Chairman Sen. Jerry Moran sought an experienced hand — found in Rob Collins. A Capitol Hill aide who worked his way up to chief of staff for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Collins started the American Action Network, a GOP super PAC in 2010.

He then went to work at Purple Strategies before being tapped for the NRSC’s top job. Collins has vetted this year’s candidates to ensure he has a slate of solid candidates who will be hard to accuse of being “witches and warlocks.” On the offensive, he is helping his Republican candidates exploit perceived Democratic Obamacare vulnerabilities, as political prognosticators think it’s more and

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more likely that the GOP will take the Senate in 2014. Such a victory — which Collins might be able to take credit for — would be a big one, as it would make President Obama’s last two years in office especially daunting.

BILL CONWAY Co-founder, Carlyle Group In 2013, the three founders of the Carlyle Group collectively earned $750 million. While Conway’s partner David Rubenstein may be Washington’s better-known philanthropist-in-chief, Conway has done his part to serve the community. In 2012, after researching a number of proposals on how he might exactly give away $1 billion of his fortune, he decided to issue grants to help low-income people get education and job training. If successful, Conway vows to give even more money away.

In January, another investment paid off.

He had purchased the Golden Door spa in Escondido, Calif., as a present to his wife. Now it’s open for business, with Joanne Conway happily at the helm.

DAVID CORN Washington Bureau Chief, Mother Jones In the lead-up to the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans should fear David Corn. The Mother Jones writer and MSNBC contributor, who wields the power of the pen as well as any investigative journalist, was the one who revealed how GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney really felt about the “47 percent” (earning him the 2012 George Polk Award). More recently he got a big congressional scoop as well when he leaked a tape that caught Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell trash-talking potential Democratic candidate Ashley Judd in the U.S. Senate race in Kentucky. If there’s an “October surprise” in politics this election cycle, don’t be surprised if it comes from this best-selling author, who’s already taking the crop of 2016 GOP hopefuls to task.

COLIN CROWELL Head of Global Public Policy,Twitter Twitter’s Washington shop is growing, but it was Crowell who became the tech company’s first local hire. A Capitol Hill veteran, Crowell was a longtime staffer to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) before he went to work for the FCC under Chairman Julius Genachowski. Twitter recruited him in 2011 and since then he has used the company’s popularity among the

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David Corn, Washington bureau chief, Mother Jones (Photo by Tony Powell)

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100 chattering class to heighten its profile in Washington. Crowell was named among Washington’s top lobbyists in 2013. “[He] blazed a trail as the first public policy hire for Twitter,” the Hill Newspaper wrote. In January, Twitter relocated to a more permanent Washington office, just north of K Street, with Crowell now leading a team of more than a dozen staffers.

Walter Isaacson

Ezra Klein

JOHN “JACK” DEGIOIA President, Georgetown University Since 2001, John “Jack” DeGioia has been the top dog at Georgetown (well, besides the mascot, with the same name) and he’s done so by not ruffling feathers — except in 2012. That’s the year that he publicly defended Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke from an attack by right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh over the issue of contraception. While DeGioia defended his student, many Catholics wondered just how Catholic the university was. DeGioia, after all, is the first non-priest to run the school in more than 200 years. In the end, due to his steadfast leadership, the controversy turned out to be nothing more than a small bump in the road for a down-to-earth university president who still teaches classes in the Department of Philosophy.

JIM DEMINT

Howard Kohr

Ted Leonsis

Andrea Mitchell

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President, Heritage Foundation At Heritage since December 2012, former Sen. Jim DeMint brought Tea Party street cred to the now firmly right wing think tank. During his tenure, he’s made Heritage more political, but any fruits of that labor won’t be seen until the November midterm elections. He still wields tremendous “negative” power and influence as he targets Republicans for defeat whom he considers not to be far enough on the right. DeMint has also enhanced Heritage’s reputation among the right’s young supporters by hosting popular “Bloggers Briefings” gatherings. Word on the street is that Heritage plans to expand its Foundry blog to the point where it begins to compete with other right-ofcenter news organizations. In the past, DeMint has helped the likes of Sens.

Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz get elected through his Senate Conservatives Fund political action committee. Since all of them seem to be flirting with presidential bids, it’s a given that DeMint’s moves in the run-up to 2016 will be all the more interesting. He has huge clout today, but if he loses a lot of races this fall

cycle the money he funnels into races will likely dry up.

convince lawmakers to oppose the merger.

THOMAS DONOHUE SCOTT REED

MO ELLEITHEE

President and CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce; Senior Political Strategist If immigration reform finally becomes a reality, Donohue and Reed are two of the people to thank.

That’s because their big-business group favors a package and they are pressuring Republicans, who they normally support, to get on board.

(The Chamber was none too pleased about the Tea Party-led government shutdown last year.) The GOP has a lot to gain as well since the Chamber has huge coffers — it has already spent $2.7 million in this election cycle and has the capability to distribute much more as it is expected to raise more than $100 million for political operations leading up to 2016. In 2012 it spent more than $32 million on independent expenditures, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Donohue has been at the helm of the Chamber since 1997 and has turned the struggling business group into a “free-enterprise research outfit, Supreme Court advocacy group and lobbying powerhouse,” according to the New York Times. He’s not going anywhere, either. “If you see me in a box with flowers around it, I’m only thinking about retiring,” he told the paper.

ANITA DUNN Managing Director, SKDKnickerbocker While some on the left were none-too-pleased that Dunn’s SKDKnickerbocker was shilling for the Keystone XL pipeline, the former White House communications director is still a sought-after surrogate for the Obama Administration. Most recently she was tapped to promote the White House’s plans for equal pay for women.

(Dunn, if you recall, was quoted saying Obama’s White House was a “hostile workplace for women,”to author Ron Suskind, but later recanted.) And she’s still an insider with top Obama aides Valerie Jarrett and Dan Pfeiffer, although she may have less influence with Denis McDonough. Under Dunn’s leadership, SKDKnickerbocker is growing after the launch of a division focused on startups and technology last year. Additionally, it’s playing a role in the current ComcastTime Warner deal, as the group Public Knowledge, financed by Google and other Comcast competitors, has brought SKDKnickerbocker on to

Communications Director, Democratic National Committee A veteran of four presidential campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s, Elleithee took leave from his public affairs and political consulting firm Hilltop Public Solutions in August to work for DNC Chairman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Since then, he has vehemently defended Obamacare as Republicans continue to run against it and fight to take the U.S. Senate in 2014. Elleithee’s various media appearances have quickly turned him into a Democratic dynamo and he’s never afraid of a fight. He even recently tsk-tsked MSNBC for allowing “Morning Joe” co-host Joe Scarborough to appear at a Republican fundraiser, while prohibiting liberals at the channel from doing the same thing across the aisle.

STEVE ELMENDORF Principal, Elmendorf-Ryan Communications On the D’s side, Elmendorf, who spent 12 years as a senior advisor to House Democratic Leader Dick Gephardt, is one of Washington’s top lobbyists and strategists. His firm Elmendorf-Ryan Communications, launched in 2006, handles high-risk issues that are close to his heart — including the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Human Rights Campaign — although he also has corporate clients like Verizon, General Electric and Goldman Sachs. Through the years, Elmendorf has hosted many Democratic fundraisers and has had a hand in picking the next generation of political players, including the chairman of the board of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, which finances LGBT candidates. He could very well be the Bob Strauss of his generation.

RICHARD FAIRBANK Co- Founder and Chairman, Capital One He’s always been known as one of the good guys, but this year Fairbank can boast that he’s the best boss in the region as well. The employee review site Glassdoor.com ranked him higher than any other businessperson in Washington, coming in at No. 28 nationally among large companies, with an 89 percent approval rating from his employees. That’s in part because Fairbank has given himself a zero salary for years (though he

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received about $18.3 million in bonuses, stock, stock options and perks in 2013, along with $23 million in vested shares and stock options, according to recent figures from USA Today.) Capital One also ranked No. 2 on this year’s prestigious InformationWeek Elite 100, a listing of the top tech innovators in business in the United States.

SAM FEIST Washington Bureau Chief, CNN CNN’s Washington Bureau Chief since 2011, Sam Feist has overseen an upgraded CNN newsroom, complete with new technology and a cadre of new faces. Feist started as an intern and a freelance producer in CNN’s London bureau and worked his way up. With Jeff Zucker now at the cable channel’s helm, CNN saw steady ratings through 2013 and is back to being No. 2 — albeit due to MSNBC’s woes. While the newest incarnation of “Crossfire” hasn’t been a hit, the show has been a launchpad for young political talent like Republican commentator S.E. Cupp and the liberal Sally Kohn. Other enterprising talents working under Feist include Chris Frates, formerly of the National Journal; Brianna Keilar, winner of the Aldo Beckman Memorial Award; and Jake Tapper, who may be tapped to fill in for Piers Morgan after the British host’s exit. CNN’s Washington bureau may soon be getting more airtime in primetime.

P WESLEY FOSTER JR MARC FLEISHER HANS WYDLER STEVE WYDLER Chairman and CEO (Foster),Top Agents, Long & Foster Companies Last fall P. Wesley Foster Jr. marked two major milestones. In October his real estate company, which started in a 600-square-foot office in Fairfax, Va. and has grown to include 11,500 agents, turned 45. The next month, the businessman turned 80. He’s manned the company as the real estate market has come soaring back. In 2012, his companies — which include mortgage, insurance and title services as well — were valued in excess of $48 billion, about half of which came from the real estate business. The company’s top agents include Fleisher, whose Fleisher Group was ranked 20th out of 250 real estate teams nationwide by the Wall Street Journal and Real Trends in 2013. On the same list Hans and Steve Wydler were recognized, coming in at No. 59. The brothers marked their 10th year in real estate

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Jack DeGioia, President, Georgetown University (Photo by Tony Powell)

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DAVID FRUM

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Senior Editor,The Atlantic Republican writer David Frum added another elite news organization to his already very established resume when the Atlantic named him senior editor last month. Frum, the George W. Bush speechwriter credited for the inflammatory phrase “Axis of Evil,” has written for the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the National Review and Newsweek/Daily Beast, just to name a few. He’s annoyed some Republicans and delighted others as he eviscerates the party with his pen every couple of years. Two days after Mitt Romney’s stinging 2012 defeat, Frum’s ebook, “Why Romney Lost,” was out, blaming the former Massachusetts governor’s failings on an out-of-touch economic message and the wider GOP for spending too much time on conspiracies and social issues.

STEVE FULLER

David Boies

Director, Center for Regional Analysis, George Mason University The region’s “go-to economist,” as he was recently called by the Washington Business Journal, has been threatening to retire for some time and he’s finally going to do just that midway through 2015. In the interim, Fuller, 73, is making the most of his well-known brand, speaking frequently about the local and the national economy to business groups and to the press. He’s been at it for 40-plus years and at the helm of his George Mason department since 2002. Being the sole economic voice for a region, however, does have its drawbacks. He’s been criticized for being too cozy with business and not publishing his articles the academic way through scholarly journals.

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CEO, American Petroleum Institute Jack Gerard still has an eye on his Keystone XL pipeline prize. In January, when he laid out the oil lobby’s plans for 2014, he talked mostly about that project, which is currently in purgatory. But he also lobbied to get the Renewable Fuel Standard changed and advocated for a review of the crude oil exports ban. In the last two years, Gerard has become more influential than any other trade association executive because of the growing influence of oil and gas on the economy and in geopolitics.

Gerard will use API’s political arm, America’s Energy, America’s Choice and its seemingly unlimited budget to move votes this November and, according to the Huffington Post, plans to “use the upcoming midterm elections as a means to frame and positively influence the long-term energy policy discussion.”

CHAD GRIFFIN President, Human Rights Campaign Chad Griffin has a lot to be happy about these days. He’s the brainchild behind the brilliant legal partnership of Theodore Olson and David Boies — the bipartisan duo who argued Hollingsworth v. Perry before the Supreme Court — which resulted in the killing of Proposition 8, allowing gay couples to again marry in California. While Olson and Boies continue the same-sex marriage fight, Griffin is working on marriage and more at the helm of the HRC, the country’s largest gay rights group.

From trying to end LGBT workplace discrimination to providing gay couples with more handy knowledge, such as how to file their taxes in the aftermath of the Defense of Marriage Act’s destruction, Griffin’s group is paving the way. The numbers prove it, too. The American public’s support for equal rights for gay people is at an alltime high.

RYAN GRIM Washington Bureau Chief,The Huffington Post Ryan Grim’s path to his current gig as the Huffington Post’s Washington bureau chief was a wayward one.

At one point he worked on Wall Street, at another, the Marijuana Policy Project. Eventually he landed at the Washington City Paper, then Politico and finally the Huffington Post, winning a handful of journalism awards along the way and publishing his book “This is Your Country on Drugs.” His down-to-earth demeanor and bigger-picture mentality have helped him recruit and grow one of the most impressive political reporting teams in town along with Sam Stein, Amanda Terkel and Jennifer Bendery.

He can also take credit for discovering Eliot Nelson, the lead writer of the popular HuffPost Hill afternoon newsletter.

JASON GRUMET President, Bipartisan Policy Center Jason Grumet’s center occupies the space where everyone in Washington says they want to be. In rhetoric,

politicians talk constantly about wanting to find bipartisan solutions. In retirement, Grumet’s BPC is the place where retiring political figures want to roost. Most recently, former Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Republican, and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, joined the nonprofit. Grumet says he’s not short on political talent trying to come through the door but in reality the group’s name’s a little off. The think tank works best when his group of prominent pols keeps their partisan hats on — think James Carville and Mary Matalin — and hash out plans that make “everyone equally uncomfortable,” Grumet told U.S. News & World Report. “Politics is a contact sport, this isn’t about everyone agreeing … we want constructive collision.”

MARY KAY HENRY President, SEIU In close alliance with the Obama White House, Henry is waging a state-by-state campaign to raise the minimum wage, something that Democrats hope will draw out voters on Election Day 2014. Again named one of Out magazine’s most powerful people in the LGBT community, Henry has seen great success in her Lavender Project, which promotes healthy dialogue between the LGBT and labor communities. She’s also used her three decades of experience representing healthcare workers to champion the State Children’s Health Insurance Program and got 2.4 million Americans signed up under the Affordable Care Act since enrollment began. Henry was the first woman to head the SEIU, being unanimously elected as International President in 2010.

MARILLYN HEWSON Chairman, President and CEO, Lockheed Martin The country’s austerity agenda could spell bad news for Lockheed Martin, with its 115,000 employees and 61 percent of business coming from the Department of Defense. But Marillyn Hewson, just over a year into her job as CEO, has plans for the company.

She’s thinking big and diversifying looking at cybersecurity, alternative energy —whatever it takes, Lockheed’s first woman CEO said in a recent interview with Politico. “We’re engaging in advanced manufacturing, advanced materials like 3-D printing or digital-manufacturing-type thing,. ... a range of things that I think will

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help transform our business as we move forward as those areas grow.”

Hewson took over last January when her predecessor abruptly resigned.

Under her leadership, the company’s stock jumped 61 percent and the company paid her back handsomely, as she took home $25.2 million in pay in 2013, according to the Washington Post.

ILYSE HOGUE President, NARAL Pro-Choice America Forty-one years after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wad decision legalizing abortion in the United States, the debate is just as hot as ever and Hogue is on the frontlines. A veteran of such progressive groups as Media Matters for America and MoveOn.org, she took over the reins of NARAL ProChoice America in January of last year and remains optimistic that prochoice politics are the politics of the future. “We really do live in a prochoice country,” she told Elle magazine recently. “Even though states adopted 53 anti-choice measures last year, I’m witnessing a resurgence of … it’s not even outrage — it’s just reaffirming basic values.” Hogue has pledged that in 2014, pro-choice women will indeed fight back at the ballot box.

STUART HOLLIDAY President and CEO, Meridian International Center A real foreign policy whiz, Holliday went from Navy guy and campaign volunteer for President George H.W. Bush to working for President George W. Bush in the White House —Holliday staffed the first Office of Homeland Security after 9/11 -and United States ambassador — for special political affairs at the United Nations. Between the White House and the U.N., Holliday worked at the state department. Nowadays his resume is topped with his work at the Meridian International Center, a key ally to State, which acts as glue between various NGOs, international governments and the private sector.

On top of that, Holliday’s organization hosts one of Washington’s favorite brand name fetes of the fall — the Meridian Ball.

KIM HORN President and CEO, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Mid-Atlantic States Horn was snapped up by Kaiser in 2012, having previously served as the CEO of Priority Health Managed Benefits Inc. in Michigan. She

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relocated to the Washington area just as the Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser Permanente made grand plans to expand its presence here. Already under Horn’s leadership, Kaiser opened a 131,000-square-foot facility in Halethorpe, Md. and a “state-of-theart multi-specialty facility” in Largo, Md. Overall, Horn’s in charge of serving 500,000 members in the area and more than 30 medical centers.

“We have an outstanding team of people, and there is tremendous positive momentum with the opening of our new medical facilities,” she told the Baltimore Business Journal. “The outcomes we have been achieving are impressive.”

JON HUNTSMAN CAPRICIA MARSHALL Chairman, the Atlantic Council; Ambassador-in-Residence, Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center at the Atlantic Council Jon Huntsman, the former GOP presidential candidate, U.S. ambassador to China and Singapore and Utah governor, is done with being a “former” for awhile. In January, it was announced that he would be taking over the reins of the Atlantic Council, replacing Chuck Hagel, who became President Obama’s secretary of defense. In March, as Huntsman made his public Atlantic Council debut, he vowed to stay away from the campaign trail through 2016 — despite some pleas from the audience — meaning the organization could count on an experienced name at its helm through the next presidential election cycle. Another big Atlantic Council “get” came in October when the international think tank tapped Capricia Marshall, the former chief of protocol of the United States, to head its new Arsht Latin American Center. Marshall, as the “ambassador in residence,” has close ties to Hillary Clinton and the Hispanic American community as the focus is on U.S. policy in Central and South America.

Robin Sproul, Washington bureau chief, ABC News (Photo by Tony Brown)

HAROLD ICKES Founding Partner, Ickes & Enright Group There’s no question that Harold Ickes is ready for Hillary. President Bill Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff is advising Ready for Hillary, the Rosslyn-based political action committee that’s taking a cue from team Obama by gathering email addresses and small donations to ensure Hillary Clinton, if she runs in 2016, will have grassroots support. So far, the

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David Frum, Senior Editor, The Atlantic (Photo by Tony Powell)

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super PAC has raised nearly $6 million, with many people simply donating the clever asking price of $20.16 to the group. Ickes, a veteran Democratic lawyer, lobbyist and consultant, is a second-generation political animal whose father, Harold L. Ickes, served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of the interior. Another fun fact, Ickes is the basis for the character Howard Fergerson in Joe Klein’s fictional retelling of the Clinton campaign, “Primary Colors.”

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President and CEO, America’s Health Insurance Plans Called the “face of the insurance industry in Washington” by the Boston Globe in 2009, Ignagni is one of the most knowledgeable voices on Obamacare, frequently talking with the White House and media outlets. While Ignagni’s organization didn’t always wholeheartedly support the ACA, now that it’s here, the former HHS staffer is trying to make it better. (Her industry stands to gain, of course, because the law requires Americans to sign up for health insurance.) “Now the debate needs to focus on how to keep coverage affordable,” she opined in March in the New York Times. “Any provision in the law that is at odds with that goal should be changed.”

She’s also trying to kill one of the taxes associated with Obamacare and ensure that lawmakers don’t limit payment options. Ignagni, a “lifelong Democrat,” according to the Globe, was against President Clinton’s health care reforms in the ’90s, before eventually backing the ACA. She’s donated to a number of Democratic candidates throughout the years, while her organization tends to support Republicans.

the stage every year, no doubt due to Isaacson’s top-notch brand.

in which Supreme Court justices always participate.

MARK ISAKOWITZ

FRANK KEATING

President, Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock For over a decade, Isakowitz has been a Republican lobbying leader. The 40-something up-and-comer was called a “punk consultant” in a 2003 Forbes profile by Henry Birnbaum, who pointed out that “power belongs not to the guy at the top but to the ‘acupuncturist’ who knows exactly where the crucial pressure points are, how to massage them, and, when necessary, where to stick the needles.”

Isakowitz was the Republican who got hired when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to pressure lawmakers on immigration. He’s tight with House Speaker John Boehner and has hosted fundraisers for a number of prominent Republicans. He’s also on the board of directors for the powerful Republican Jewish Coalition.

President and CEO, American Bankers Association In charge of the organization that represents the $13 trillion banking industry, Keating is also steeped in Republican politics. He served as a two-term governor of Oklahoma and was on George W. Bush’s shortlist for vice president. Before that, he worked in both the Bush 41 and Reagan administrations. After that, he took over the reins of the American Bankers Association in 2011, while also doing work for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Keating made news earlier this year when he very briefly flirted with running for Sen. Tom Coburn’s soonto-be vacant Oklahoma Senate seat.

After several days of deliberations, he said he was staying put. “I have concluded that the most important way I can contribute to policy debates in Washington is by continuing my service to ABA and fighting for banks of all sizes,” he told Politico.

SHEILA JOHNSON CEO, Salamander Hotels and Resorts With the 2013 opening of the $100 million, ultra-luxe Salamander Resort & Spa in Middleburg, Johnson a 10year quest for completion. When it comes to relaxation and fun, Johnson has dabbled in a little bit of everything. In sports, she’s a managing partner of the WNBA team, the Washington Mystics, and has a stake in the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals. In hospitality, she launched her Salamander Hotels and Resorts in 2005, which continues to expand. As a Black Entertainment Television co-founder, she continues to exert influence in the entertainment industry as well, most recently financing Lee Daniels’ “The Butler.”

WALTER ISAACSON

MICHAEL KAHN

President and CEO, Aspen Institute The biographer of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs is turning his attention to an entire group of thinkers for his next book “The Innovators: How a Group of Inventors, Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution,” which was recently announced with a fall release date.

Among think tanks, Isaacson’s Aspen Institute is an innovator that creates strong partnerships with brands, like the Atlantic, to bring smart programming to the country’s thought leaders and the masses. The institute’s Aspen Ideas Festival and the smaller Washington Ideas Forum attract world leaders, politicians and journalists to

Artistic Director, Shakespeare Theatre Company If there’s a celebrity sighting in Chinatown, there’s a good chance that he or she is working at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which Michael Kahn has led as artistic director for 28 years. He’s brought in Patrick Stewart, Christopher Plummer, Audra McDonald, James Earl Jones, Helen Mirren, “The West Wing’s” Richard Schiff and “Homeland’s” F. Murray Abraham for onstage roles or just to talk shop. The company taps into the Washington political scene with its annual Will on the Hill fundraiser, coaxing members of Congress to recite lines and don funny hats, and a Mock Trial evening

JIM YONG KIM President,World Bank Twenty years ago, Jim Yong Kim was among the throngs of people protesting the World Bank as part of the “50 Years is Enough” movement.

These days, he’s in charge of the institution. It’s “a very different bank,” he recently told CNN. Benefiting from Kim’s leadership, the bank has broadened its focus to include health and education as well as the economy.

Kim is known to be a humble leader.

“One of the most important things about leadership is that you have to have the kind of humility that will allow you to be coached,” he recently told the Washington Post. Before becoming President Obama’s surprise pick to lead the institution, Kim was the first Asian-American to head a major university — Dartmouth — and brought antiretroviral drugs to the masses as the head of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department.

EZRA KLEIN JIM BANKOFF Editor in Chief,Vox.com; Chairman and CEO,Vox Media In May Ezra Klein turns 30 but that’s not the biggest milestone he’ll be celebrating this year. The Wonk Blog “wunderkind” — a nickname used for Klein on the Internet 17,500 times, according to Google — walked away from the Washington Post when the Jeff Bezos-owned newspaper

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reportedly wouldn’t give him seven figures for an internal journalism startup. Klein penned his last Wonk Blog post in late January and headed to “Project X” at AOL alum Bankoff ’s D.C.-based Vox Media. Bankoff is experienced in launching successful websites with TMZ, Engadget and Vox brands such as Curbed, Racked and Eater, under his belt. Klein’s brand fully converged with Bankoff ’s when it was announced in March that Vox.com would be the name of “Project X.” Vox.com officially launched in April with wide-ranging explainers of the news displayed online in a stimulating fashion.

STEVEN KNAPP President, George Washington University After weathering a handful of miniscandals, including having George Washington University lose its U.S. News & World Report ranking for one year, president Steven Knapp seems to have really hit a stride — and that’s coming from the school’s own very skeptical student newspaper. “In the past month, [Knapp] has accepted $80 million worth of gifts for GW’s public health school, planned the acquisition of Washington’s largest private arts institution [the Corcoran Gallery of Art] and celebrated the men’s basketball team’s best season since 2007,” the GW Hatchet reported in March. Knapp became president of the university in 2007, coming to Foggy Bottom from John Hopkins University, and has had many highs and lows since. Next up for Knapp, a potential big high, as GW plans to launch a fundraising campaign that will likely bring in $1 billion.

HOWARD KOHR Executive Director, American Israel Public Affairs Committee Howard Kohr has been at it for a long time, but that doesn’t make his job any easier. Kohr, who heads one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, has seen that star slightly fade in recent years, as President Obama has forged his own plan on what to do with Israel. Obama has put Secretary of State John Kerry in charge of trying to hash out an Israeli-Palestinian twostate solution. Additionally, much of AIPAC’s political capital has been spent this year, as the organization tried unsuccessfully to lobby for more sanctions on Iran, a move that would have derailed the current U.S.-Iranian talks, but became so polarizing that it threatened to turn AIPAC into a

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partisan Republican lobby. AIPAC also lost on its opposition to Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense and its advocacy for military strikes on Syria. On the lobbying front, while AIPAC is still the largest, J Street, a group that promotes a “pro-Israel, proPeace message” that resonates with the overwhelming majority of American Jews, is gaining political ground.

CHRISTINE LAGARDE Managing Director, International Monetary Fund Throughout her career, Christine Lagarde has been the first woman to accomplish a number of important milestones: first chairman of her law firm, first French finance minister and first IMF managing director. In recent months she’s been putting her impressive resume into action, speaking publicly about the lack of gender diversity at the IMF and saying — perhaps controversially — that the 2008 financial crisis wouldn’t have happened if women had been in charge of all those New York firms.

After her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s shenanigans briefly sullied the job, Lagarde came to Washington as a breath of fresh air in July 2011. Since then, she’s gone after the too-big-to-fail banks while shepherding the slow economic recovery and becoming one of the world’s most respected bankers.

Sam Feist, Washington Bureau Chief, CNN (Photo by Tony Brown)

GARA LAMARCHE President, Democracy Alliance Considered the left’s answer to the Koch Brothers, the progressive Democracy Alliance chose longtime progressive activist Gara LaMarche as its new leader last October. The move signaled a shift away from simply supporting Democratic candidates and instead focusing on the progressive movement as a whole, according to the Huffington Post. LaMarche comes to the group — which counts billionaire financier George Soros and the New Republic’s Chris Hughes among its members — from Atlantic Philanthropies. Since 2005, Democracy Alliance has directed around $500 million to left-leaning organizations, according to Mother Jones.

WAYNE LAPIERRE Executive Vice President, National Rifle Association The chatter on Capitol Hill about gun control has quieted down, which means Wayne LaPierre has been successful — yet again — at doing his job. LaPierre was considered ineffective

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Chet Burrell, CEO, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield (Photo by Joseph Allen)

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and tone-deaf in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, arguing that more guns, not less, would prevent these kinds of gruesome school shootings. In addition to the gun control momentum inspired by that tragedy, the NRA had to go up against husband-andwife advocacy team Mark Kelly and Gabrielle Giffords after the latter continued to recover from gunshot wounds she received during the 2011 Tucson shooting. Even so, gun control got killed in Congress in 2013.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, LaPierre gave a speech that the Huffington Post declared “a victory lap.” In it, he had his metaphorical guns blazing — not aimed at the shooters of the world who give gun owners a bad name — but at the media, who a year before had called his influence dead. “One of America’s greatest threats,” LaPierre said, “is a national news media that fails to provide a level playing field for the truth.”

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Owner,Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards,Washington Mystics Whether it’s sports or tech, Leonsis is never shy about giving “Ted’s take,” the name of his popular blog. The former AOL executive now owns the majority of three of Washington’s sports franchises — the Washington Capitals, the Washington Wizards (who at press time were competing in their first playoffs appearance in six years) and the Washington Mystics — along with the Verizon Center, where the teams play. Leonsis has kept one foot in the tech industry, giving a boost to GroupOn whenever the company’s creator was on his way out. Leonsis is also a founding member of Revolution Growth Fund II, which gives capital to smart tech start-ups. Additionally, Leonsis founded SnagFilms, a site that allows users to watch documentaries online.

J W “BILL” MARRIOTT ARNE SORENSON Executive Chairman and Chairman of the Board, Marriott International; Director, President and CEO If you need a sign to see how well Marriott is doing, just check out the new one just put up on the Marriott Marquis, Washington’s newest Convention Center hotel boasting 1,175 rooms and 100,000 square feet of meeting space — the company’s 4,000th hotel due to open in May. Bill Marriott, whose father J. Willard

Marriott founded the company, stepped out of the CEO role in 2012, handing it to his chief operating officer, Arne Sorenson, an almost 20year veteran of the company. Since then, the Bethesda-based company has continued to grow. In 2013, Marriott’s net income totaled $626 million, compared to $571 million for the year before. While baby boomers love the brand, Sorenson is trying to make the name appealing to millennials by offering features like mobile check-in.

Marriott is pretty tech-savvy himself, as the 82-year-old hotel pioneer is an ardent blogger.

CHRIS MATTHEWS “Hardball” host, MSNBC When Chris Matthews’ newest book “Tip and the Gipper: When Politics Worked” came out the same day as October’s government shutdown (when politics certainly didn’t work) it was a lucky break for one of Washington’s hardest-working talking heads. Last year, Matthews signed a long-term contract with MSNBC ensuring that his insightful and influential political commentary would be a Washington mainstay fivenights-a-week for many years to come.

Meanwhile, he forfeited his Sunday talk fest “The Chris Matthews Show,” not to have more free time, but to free up his time for even more writing and producing long-form TV docs.

JIM MESSINA President/CEO,The Messina Group After pulling off the political feat of re-electing President Obama during an economic slump, Messina has been busy as ever. In addition to heading Organizing for Action, the Obama campaign-turned-grassroots-activism arm, he is actively getting Democratic big-money donors behind superpac Priorities USA in anticipation of Hillary Clinton’s potential 2016 presidential campaign. He’s also got a laundry list of clients under his own consultancy, The Messina Group, as well as making the rounds on the speakers circuit. Messina also has his hands full overseas as U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s advisor, pitting him against another former Obama alum, David Axelrod, who recently signed on to Labour opponent Ed Milliband’s campaign in the run-up to that country’ 2015 election.

CHERYL MILLS International entrepreneur A longtime Clinton ally, Mills defended President Clinton during

his 1999 impeachment trial as deputy White House counsel. She’s stayed close to the Clintons, working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and then serving as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff. She left Foggy Bottom alongside Clinton in 2013 and is now planning to launch an economic development enterprise in sub-Saharan Africa.

Expect her to play a major role if Hillary makes a run in 2016.

ANDREA MITCHELL Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, NBC News/Host of “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” MSNBC NBC News’ golden girl has spent 36 years at the network, serving as both its White House and chief congressional reporter before turning her attention to the world as the network’s chief foreign affairs correspondent. Early on in her 45-plus year career, her coverage of the Three Mile Island disaster put her on the map. Since then, she’s reported on numerous presidential elections without regard to a bout with breast cancer, which she ended up turning into a cause by playing an active role in the DC News Babes and other cancer charities. In 2013, she won the National Press Club’s prestigious Fourth Estate Award, given only to the top tier in the profession, such as Walter Cronkite and Tom Brokaw. Mitchell’s also half of one of the capital’s most prominent power couples, with her husband, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, often at her side.

SUSAN MOLINARI MICHELE WESLANDER QUAID Vice President of Public Policy and Government Relations, Google; Public Sector CTO With just one hire, Google proved to Washington that it was paving a new path. Molinari, a former Republican House member for New York, was tapped in 2012 just as the tech giant was seeking new strategic relationships on both sides of the political aisle. She has been instrumental in growing Google’s influence in Washington. On the money side, Google came in Number 2, after General Electric, in corporate lobbying expenditure in 2012, and Number 5 in 2013, according to the Washington Post.

The D.C. office has staffed up, too, with more than 100 lobbyists now working for the company. A new Google outpost is slated to open this summer on Capitol Hill, one

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that will reportedly rival the White House in size. Westlander, hired in 2011, is a different kind of Google go-between. She acts as a conduit, meeting with agency heads to offer useful Google-based tech solutions.

“A big part of my job is to translate Silicon Valley speak and government dialect,” she said in an interview with Entrepreneur. “I act as a bridge between two cultures.”

JANET MURGUÍA President, National Council of La Raza As the head of the country’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, Murguía puts her constituents first.

Once considered to be a friend of the Obama Administration (White House Domestic Policy Council director Cecilia Muñoz was formerly NCLR’s director of research and advocacy) Murguía has gotten tougher on the president in recent months. She made news by calling Obama the “deporter in chief ” in March, but hasn’t cozied up to the GOP either, saying the House Republican stance is “an unmitigated disaster on immigration.” A veteran of the Clinton Administration, expect to see Murguía continue to hold both sides’ feet to the fire on immigration, even though neither is likely to focus on the issue again until after the 2014 midterms.

CHRISTOPHER J NASSETTA President and CEO, Hilton Worldwide Nassetta, a Washington native who brought the hospitality company’s headquarters to the area from Beverly Hills in 2009, had a very big 2013.

In December, under his leadership, Hilton went public. The initial public offering, at $20 a share, was considered a big success. With Hilton’s new riches the company hopes to launch a lifestyle brand aimed at millennials that competes with W Hotels. In addition to going public, Hilton opened 207 hotels in 2013 with plans for further growth. One project that’s getting people excited is a $200 million Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills.

Hilton is also planning to open its first hotel in Haiti, with the Hilton Garden Inn Port-au-Prince Louverture Airport scheduled to open in 2016.

GROVER NORQUIST Founder and President, Americans for Tax Reform Not many in Washington can say that they have 258 Members of Congress wrapped around their finger, but Norquist has just that inasmuch as

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219 representatives and 39 senators in the 113th Congress have signed “the pledge.” The Taxpayer Protection Pledge, as Norquist dubbed it, is an agreement not to raise taxes.

It’s basically a must for Republican candidates and when they don’t sign it — like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — it makes news. Meanwhile, Norquist plays nice socially all over town with folks from both sides of the aisle. He was the winner of the 2013 D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity Contest, a charity event featuring both Democrats and Republicans.

His image as a pillar of the right has permeated into pop culture with references on “Gilmore Girls,” “Saturday Night Live,” and most recently, a cameo on the Amazon.com series “Alpha House.”

PHEBE NOVAKOVIC CEO, General Dynamics It is said that 2013 marked the year of the woman in defense contracting.

On January 1, Novakovic, a veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and the defense department, took over as CEO of General Dynamics, the nation’s oldest military contractor.

(On the same day, coincidentally, Marillyn Hewson became head of Lockheed Martin.) The Washington Business Journal said that Novakovic’s first year was a “pretty terrible fiscal 2013,” especially for the company’s combat systems group. There was a $1.4 billion shortfall in sales compared to what was forecast. But Novakovic also made some bold changes that paid off, especially for her. The CEO’s salary tripled in 2013 to more than $19 million and in March she received a $4 million bonus.

Jeff Ballou, News Editor, Al Jazeera English (Photo by Joseph Allen)

JOHN O’NEILL Partner, Capitol Counsel LLC Before sliding through the revolving door, O’Neill worked as policy director and counsel for former Sen.Trent Lott and for Sen. Chuck Grassley on the Committee on Finance, specializing mainly on tax issues. Those connections and know-how landed him at Capitol Counsel in 2012, after a stint at Ogilvy, where he has quickly established himself as the number one tax lobbyist on the Republican side, a major fundraiser and a policy guru. The Washington Post announced in November 2013 that Capitol Counsel had shot to the upper echelons of the K Street crowd.

Due to his expertise, the youngest and fastest-growing of all the K Street firms also landed on the top 10 list of most profitable lobbying groups in 2013.

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Kim Horn, president and CEO, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Mid-Atlantic States (Photo by Tony Brown)

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100 THEODORE OLSON AND DAVID BOIES Attorneys, Bostic v. Schaefer After successfully challenging California’s Proposition 8,Washington’s most unlikely legal dream team is not giving up the gay marriage fight. At odds in 2000 when they found themselves on different sides of the Bush v. Gore court battle, the conservative Olson crossed traditional Republican party lines in 2009 to work with Boies, a celebrated liberal trial lawyer, on Hollingsworth v.

Perry. Considered only a win for gay couples in California, the legal duo is now working on cases that have national consequences. Boies and Olson have already signed on to Bostic v. Schaefer, which challenges Virginia’s same-sex marriage ban.They’ve also expressed interest in taking cases in Utah and Oklahoma, the two cases legal experts think are most likely to head back to the Supreme Court.

BILL PAXON Senior Adviser, Akin Gump Washington still talks about the 1994 Republican Revolution when the National Republican Campaign Committee head was none other than Bill Paxon. Twenty years later, he’s still carrying the influence card. As a lobbyist for Akin Gump, Philip Morris most recently hired him for a little trade agreement help. He continues to work as an unpaid campaign strategist on House races, endorsing investment banker Matt Doheny in February for New York’s 21st District. Paxon represented a nearby district when he served in Congress from 1989 to 1999. On the Senate side of things, Paxon has sponsored fundraisers over the years for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jerry Moran (RKan.), and Rob Portman (R-Ohio). To top it off, Paxon is one-half of a power couple, having married fellow former lawmaker Susan Molinari in 1994. She now heads lobbying efforts for Google.

MILT PETERSON JON PETERSON Principal and Chairman,The Peterson Company Milt Peterson had his eye on the land where Maryland’s National Harbor now sits 50 years ago. He could see it from his $67-a-month apartment, he recently noted, and he wanted it. Peterson got his hands on the land and its success will be his legacy. Since starting a real estate development business in 1970 and bringing son Jon on board in 1986,

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Peterson has spent 16 years dreaming up the $3 billion National Harbor, which opened six years ago. He’s been behind the expansion of the Maryland waterfront town as well with the opening of the $100 million National Harbor’s Tanger Outlet in December.

Next up? The Peterson-led MGM Casino, expected to break ground any day now and slated to open in July 2016.

ERICH PICA President, Friends of the Earth As one of Washington’s strongest voices on the environment, Pica has an assortment of legislation and projects to monitor. He and his allies celebrated in June, when the San Onofre nuclear power plant closed, with Friends of the Earth leading the charge. He is now focusing on turning that victory into a harbinger of what lies ahead.

“This industry is on its final trajectory downard,” he told the Associated Press.

“We should rename the Nuclear Regulatory Commission the Nuclear Retirement Commission.” Switching issues, Pica has come out strongly against environmentally destructive fast track trade deals.Then there’s the continued specter of our climate crisis and the Keystone XL pipeline project which he has been leading the charge against.

DAVID PLOUFFE Political Consultant He’s no longer at the White House, but when the former campaign manager and senior advisor to President Barack Obama talks, people (and the White House) still listen. As the man credited with ushering in a new age of electoral campaigning, it’s no wonder that he commands six figures as a sought-after speaker and has been described as “one of the great strategic political and business minds in this country,” according to Bloomberg Television President Andrew Morse in a New York Times article. Recently, the former executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has taken advantage of his perch as a commentator for ABC News as well as on- and off-air advisor for Bloomberg TV to make his opinions known, most recently slapping down Affordable Care Act haters when enrollment exceeded expectations at 8 million.

TONY PODESTA Founder, Podesta Group Tony Podesta might not get to keep his entire art collection thanks to the messy divorce from his estranged wife Heather, but when it comes to

Washington influence, he’ll likely win. In 2013, the Podesta Group brought in more than $27 million, according to lobbying disclosure filings. Tony Podesta’s client list reads like a who’s who of big business in the United States: Lockheed Martin, Wells Fargo, Wal-Mart, et al. He’s still a go-to guy and a major fundraising force on the Democratic side, with personal relationships on the Hill that go back decades. Adding to his influence is the inescapable fact that his brother, John Podesta, the former president of the Center for American Progress, recently headed back to the White House to be one of President Obama’s top aides. Podesta’s star is rising once again.

advocate for the little things, too, like safe crosswalks for seniors. After a long career at both Xerox and Avis, Rand is the first African-American to head AARP.

MICHAEL RANKIN AND JONATHAN TAYLOR MARK LOWHAM DAVID DESANTIS DERRICK SWAAK

Chairman, Republican National Committee; National Finance Chairman, Republican National Committee Reince Priebus has tried to shake up the GOP from the moment he started in his current job. In March, he celebrated the one-year anniversary of the RNC’s Growth and Opportunity Project, a Priebus-led initiative to expand the party beyond older white men demographic. Priebus sees women and young people as especially critical future GOP voters, adding that he expects a “tsunami” of Republican victories come fall. It helps that in early 2013 he tapped Washburne, a Dallas restaurateur, investor and top George W. Bush bundler. So far, the RNC raised $25.2 million during the first three months of 2014 and about $106 million since the 2012 elections.

Incidentally, Washburne brought his restaurant business with him to Washington, opening a Mi Cocina in Chevy Chase.

Founders,TTR Sotheby’s International Realty; Managing Partner, Partner and Managing Broker, COO and Partner It pays to have insider market intelligence these days. 2013 was another incredible year for TTR Sotheby’s, with 2013 sales rising by 34 percent over 2012 to $1.7 billion. It was TTR Sotheby’s that represented the buyer and seller of the area’s most expensive single family house, a $12 million McLean home with 36 rooms modeled to look like a Renaissance palace. Additionally, it was TTR Sotheby’s that sold a $7.4 million Cotswolds-inspired estate located in Great Falls, the most expensive sale on record in Great Falls, and the eighth most expensive home sold in 2013.

And then, TTR Sotheby’s sold the most expensive home in Maryland, a $6.75 million waterfront Annapolis estate.

The firm also represented the seller of the most expensive condominium ever sold in the region, as well as the most expensive co-op and condominium ever sold in the District of Columbia.

TTR Sotheby’s has been part of the Sotheby’s international family since 2006 and has grown to include over 250 agents in five area offices: Georgetown, downtown, Chevy Chase, McLean and Alexandria. The firm celebrated the very successful year with a private reception in December at the Phillips Collection where the firm was one of the two lead sponsors of the recent Van Gogh Repetitions exhibit.

A BARRY RAND

JOHN F W ROGERS

CEO, AARP What was one of the first things first lady Michelle Obama did upon turning 50 this January? She posed for a picture with her AARP card, of course. That alone shows the power of the organization that Rand has been heading since 2009. AARP’s membership is more than 37 million, its magazine has the largest circulation of any in the United States and the group will continue to grow as the baby boomers hit the magic retirement age of 65 at a rate of 8,000 a day. In this position, Rand talks about big issues like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but is an

Chief of Staff, Goldman Sachs Even Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs, finds John F.W. Rogers to be a curiosity.

“Why does he have that extra initial that everybody else doesn’t have?”

Blankfein mused in a 2011 Bloomberg BusinessWeek profile. Rogers came to Goldman in 1994 knowing nothing about Wall Street and everything about Washington and for 20 years he’s been the behind-the-scenes power player who breaches the two at his firm.

He’s been called one of the “scariest, most important people at Goldman Sachs” and his power “reveals itself in subtle ways,” Dealbreaker once

REINCE PRIEBUS AND RAY WASHBURNE

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wrote. During his Washington days, Rogers worked for the Reagan and Ford administrations before taking a job at the treasury department. He continues to give back to this town as a trustee of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, does work for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and serves as vice chairman of the White House Historical Association.

KARL ROVE Founder, Conservative Victory Project Love or hate him, Karl Rove’s name is synonymous with political power.

An oft-quoted talking head, he is the “great whisperer” of Republican politics, giving a tremendous boost to whoever he picks in a primary.

Endorsements and money are sure to follow the Rove stamp of approval.

He’s the player behind a trio of political groups. There’s the super PAC American Crossroads and its related nonprofit Crossroads GPS, which together raised $325 million during the 2012 election cycle; he is expected to spend upwards of $250 to $300 million in the two-year political cycle. In 2013 Rove added a third, the super PAC Conservative Victory Project, which aims to keep unelectable Tea Party-type candidates off the general election ballot. Rove is hoping for better results than the last time around. In 2012, the former George W. Bush aide backed a pack of losers, including GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and was incredulous — on live television — when President Obama was re-elected. Now, he’s using both his money and his mouth to help Republicans win the U.S. Senate and eventually decide who carries the party’s standard in 2016.

DAVID RUBENSTEIN Managing Director,The Carlyle Group When Ross Perot tried to sell the Magna Carta and the Washington Monument was shaken into disrepair, it was David Rubenstein — the cofounder and co-CEO of global private equity firm, the Carlyle Group — who saved the day. He gave the government $7.5 million, about half the funds needed to repair the Washington Monument, and dropped a cool $19 million to keep the Magna Carta stateside. He’s served on the boards and made donations to a number of prominent Washington institutions, including the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center and the National Zoo, specifically for its panda

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reproduction program. His donations have paid off. In December, the David M. Rubenstein Gallery opened at the National Archives, giving his Magna Carta a permanent home. The National Zoo is now boasting a baby girl panda named Bao Bao and the Washington Monument reopens this month.

BOB SCHIEFFER Host, CBS’ “Face the Nation” Is it really a surprise that Bob Schieffer would have a sideline gig as a Country & Western singer? The folksy Sunday Show host has shown that longtime news experience and a little charm can win audiences over week after week. In his decadeslong ratings war with rival “Meet the Press,” Schieffer is besting David Gregory by wide margins. In fact, in March, Schieffer had a million more viewers than his NBC peer.

His long career history came in especially handy as Washington and the country remembered the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination last November. As a cub reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Schieffer revealed that he gave the late Marguerite Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald’s mother, a ride to Dallas — the first story to put Schieffer on the map.

Ashok Bajaj, Restaurant Owner (Photo by Tony Powell)

STEPHANIE SCHRIOCK President, EMILY’s List The New York Times recently called Schriock one of the top contenders to manage Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016, if the former secretary of state indeed decides to run. Before that happens, she has to focus on getting more pro-choice Democratic women elected to office in 2014. In the last cycle, EMILY’s List, an acronym for “Early Money is Like Yeast,” raised a record-breaking $52 million to support women candidates — a number they’d like to repeat. For 2014, the group is focusing on political leadership training as well. In February the organization marked a milestone its 1,000th female candidate running for office this November. Under Schriock, the EMILY’s List community has grown to three million members strong. Schriock previously worked for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign and the U.S. Senate campaigns of Sens. Jon Tester (DMont.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) before lending her expertise to the ladies.

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Cathal and Meshelle Armstrong, Owners, Restaurant Eve (Photo by Tony Powell)

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100 Widely considered a stepping-stone to the United States Supreme Court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is considered the second most-powerful in the land. And for good reason as its geographical location o#en gives it jurisdiction to decide cases of national importance. Current U.S. Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Chief Justice John Roberts were all elevated from the appeals bench.

Recently, President Obama succeeded in naming four new judges to ďŹ ll the remaining open seats on the 11-member court. All were conďŹ rmed despite Republican protests that the new members tip the balance in the Democrats’ favor. Here, a snapshot of the court’s newest judges: SRI SRINIVASAN - appointed May 2013 Srinivasan earned bachelor’s, law and business degrees from Stanford before going on to clerk for former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. After joining the law firm O’Melveny & Meyers in 1998, he served as an assistant to the U.S. solicitor general from 2002 to 2007 and returned to the law firm as a partner in 2007 to head its appellate and Supreme Court practice. Most recently, he was principal deputy solicitor general for the United States and taught at Harvard Law. PATRICIA MILLETT - appointed December 2013 Millett graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1985 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1988.

Since then she has become a sought-after legal voice as the head of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld’s Supreme Court practice in Washington, D.C. where she argued 32 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, the secondhighest by a woman lawyer. She is married to Robert King, a Navy veteran who served for 22 years.

CORNELIA PILLARD - appointed December 2013 Pillard graduated magna cum laude from Yale and Harvard Law School before embarking on an illustrious legal career that includes holding the Marvin M. Karpatkin fellowship at the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, the United States Solicitor General’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice where she served as deputy assistant attorney general. Before her appointment, she taught civil procedure and constitutional law at Georgetown University Law School.

ROBERT L WILKINS - appointed January 2014 Wilkins earned his bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 1986 and his juris doctor from Harvard in 1989. Judge Wilkins’ legal career includes many highlights, most notably as the lead plaintiff under the public defender’s office in the landmark Wilkins, et. al. v. State of Maryland that led to nationwide reform in stop-and-search practices and as a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was instrumental in establishing the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, slated to open in 2015.

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President and CEO, Consumer Electronics Association As one of the original tech-talking groups in Washington, Shapiro’s Consumer Electronics Association has a respected brand allowing him to continue to push for immigration reform, even as the possibility narrows that anything will be done on that issue before the 2014 midterms. He is also using his clout to talk patent trolls — a big concern within the tech community — as overzealous lawsuits stymie innovation. Shapiro has strong allies on both sides of the aisle as evidenced by the partnership of Rep. Darrell Issa (RCalif.) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the two lawmakers who helped him and others kill SOPA and PIPA legislation in 2012. And of course, all eyeballs are focused on the CEA every January when the organization dazzles the world with all the coolest new gadgets at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

MARC SHORT STEVE LOMBARDO

to Mitt Romney when the former Massachusetts governor ran for president in 2012.

KNOX SINGLETON CEO, Inova Health System As the story goes, when Singleton found out that Inova Fairfax Hospital was ranked Number One in the Washington, D.C., area by U.S. News & World Report, he picked up the phone and ordered 14,100 floral bouquets for his staff. He came to lead the organization in 1984, when it was called the Fairfax Hospital Association, and has grown it mightily since. Inova’s model is not-for-profit and thus the health system provides top care to those in Northern Virginia and beyond, regardless of a patient’s ability to pay. Singleton has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the Governor’s Award in 2004, presented by then-Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, and was inducted into the Washington Business Hall of Fame in 2009.

ROBIN SPROUL

President, Freedom Partners; Chief Communications and Marketing Officer, Koch Companies Public Sector LLC As the Koch Brothers top operative in D.C., Short is possibly the most important person in Koch world driving tactical decisions on what races the billionaire brothers’ money will flow into. Short’s in charge of Freedom Partners, a group that wasn’t well known publicly until September 2013. He pulled his organization, which raised and spent $250 million in 2012, out of the shadows. The group has about 200 donors, who pay at least $100,000 in annual dues, which will have huge impacts on elections going forward. Additionally, should Mike Pence run for president, the Indiana governor would probably hire Short, who served as his chief of staff for the House Republican conference. Short worked with former Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, too, and was formerly the executive director of the Reagan Ranch. Lombardo was the Koch’s first-ever PR hire and came on board in February of this year to manage incoming fire for Koch political activities. A former tobacco industry talker with experience in Republican politics, the young up-and-comer worked on the 1992 presidential campaign of former President George H.W. Bush and served as a senior research and communications advisor

Washington Bureau Chief, ABC News When former ABC World News anchor Charles Gibson was asked about Robin Sproul’s leadership style, he classified her as a negotiator. “She doesn’t yell, she doesn’t scream, she doesn’t demand, she uses the velvet hammer,� Gibson said in a recent tribute video made for Sproul when she took home this year’s First Amendment Service Award from the Radio Television Digital News Association. Sproul has been at the helm of ABC’s Washington bureau for 21 years, holding the job longer than any network rival. In that time, she’s covered five presidential cycles and won an Emmy for ABC’s coverage of President Obama’s inauguration in 2009. In 2013, she was promoted to the executive in charge of ABC’s “This Week.� When she started in journalism, Sproul took an unpaid job at her local ABC News radio affiliate. Now, she’s among the handful of professionals meeting regularly with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the Justice Department’s policies for seeking records related to newsgathering.

NEERA TANDEN President, Center for American Progress How tight are Neera Tanden and Hillary Clinton? When Tanden’s Center for American Progress turned 10 in October, Clinton gladly showed up at the gala, joking that she “was

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S I D E BA R P H OTOS : S R I S R I N I VA SA N CO U RT E SY P H OTO ; PATRI CI A M IL LE T COU RTE SY A KIN GU MP STRAU SS HAU E R & F EL D L L P; COR NE LI A P IL LA RD BY R HODA BA E R ; ROBE RT W I L K I N S BY D O U G K A P U ST I N / R O S E - H U L M A N I N ST I T U T E O F T E C H N O LO GY.

LEGAL EAGLES

GARY SHAPIRO

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going to jump out of the cake,” Jokes aside, Tanden is majorly connected to the current White House — she worked on the Obama campaign and for the administration (and CAP’s former president John Podesta is at the White House now). Having worked for both Hillary and Bill, Tanden is clearly connected to Clintonworld.

Since taking over the top job at CAP in 2011, she has hosted President Obama,Vice President Joe Biden and Capitol Hill’s top lawmakers for policy-related events. She’s joined forces with Maria Shriver in the creation of the “Shriver Report,” which examined the economic inequality of women and has been instrumental in putting together the White House Summit on Working Families, which kicks off this June.

RICHARD L TRUMKA President, AFL-CIO A booming voice of the labor movement since 1982, Richard Trumka doesn’t mind being a thorn in President Obama’s side occasionally, as he was in March when he said the president was backsliding on his promises to labor on the issue of international trade. That’s because the AFL-CIO has done plenty to get Democrats elected in the past and plans to keep it up in 2014. As the midterms approach, America’s biggest union is aiming to raise more than the $53 million it did in 2010, with plans to go after Republican governors, including Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, Ohio’s John Kasich and Michigan’s Rick Snyder. The colorful Trumka is also championing a minimum wage hike, which Democrats support on Capitol Hill, and has recently challenged the Heritage Foundation’s Jim DeMint to a debate on the issue.

HELGI WALKER Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher As Verizon’s attorney in the first big “net neutrality” case, Walker won in the U.S. Court of Appeals in January on behalf of her client, making it possible for the carrier to start charging Netflix and other streaming sites higher fees for using extra bandwidth. In the midst of the case, she was scooped up by the top-drawer law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in September 2013. Walker served as associate counsel to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003 and also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom she holds in the highest esteem. “He is generous and kind in his treatment

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of all people, regardless of their particular background or identity, and so supportive,” she told Law360 during an interview in March. “He once joked that, if he was going into battle and had limited ammunition, he would give it to his male clerks — because his female clerks don’t need it.”

ALEX WALLACE Senior Vice President, NBC News She’s NBC News’ brand new Number Two. In January, Alex Wallace was named the executive in charge of NBC’s Washington bureau, a job that leapfrogged her to being the righthand woman to netwook president Deborah Turness. Wallace is in charge of reinvigorating “Meet the Press,” which has seen its ratings take a tumble while Bob Schieffer’s “Face the Nation” on CBS is on the rise. Since Wallace’s move, “Meet the Press” did have a good February (before having a not-so-good March). Despite that, she’s said publicly that she stands firmly behind host David Gregory, who took over the Sunday show after long-time host Tim Russert died in 2008. Since her start, Wallace has made moves to expand “Meet the Press” into the digital space with the goal, according to Turness, of turning “Meet” into a “seven days-a-week source for politics and Beltway buzz.”

CARDINAL DONALD W WUERL Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Wuerl is trying to harness some of the renewed energy of the Catholic Church right now thanks to Pope Francis. The new pontiff is “a focal point of faith renewal in the lives of many people,” Wuerl said during a mass celebrating Francis’ one-year anniversary at the Vatican.

Wuerl, who came to Washington from Pittsburgh in 2006, is cut from more conservative cloth than than the pope and has had to strike a balance in this most political of cities. In 2009, when the District was on the verge of legalizing gay marriage, Wuerl insisted on protections that would exempt churches from complying with rules and laws permitting abortion, samesex marriage and other matters that go against their religious consciences.

When the law’s language wasn’t strong enough, he kept his word, and the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington closed its 80-yearold foster care and public adoption program in 2010 so they wouldn’t have to serve gay couples. Catching ire from

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Michele Weslander Quaid, Public Sector CTO, Google (Photo by Tony Powell) the other side, Wuerl also announced early on that he refused to deny communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

DAVID ZASLAV AND JOHN HENDRICKS President/CEO, Discovery Communications; Founder and Chairman, Discovery Communications In January, Zaslav cemented himself at the helm of the Silver Spring, Md.based Discovery Networks, as his contract was extended for six years.

Since his hiring in 2007, the company — which owns Discovery, TLC, the

Animal Planet and nearly 200 other networks, up from 100 when Zaslav joined — is enjoying a period of sustained growth. Even OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, has seen increased ratings after its bumpy start.

All of this makes it a good time for Hendricks to change direction. After starting Discovery 32 years earlier, the company’s founder said he would be stepping down as chairman in May. But the move won’t mark the end of Hendricks’ storied career. Instead, he’s launched the Curiosity Project and curated week-long retreats at his luxury Gateway Canyons Resort in Colorado.

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SPECIAL FEATURE | RUSTY POWELL

THE ART OF BEING RUSTY POWELL

Creating big shows draws in the crowds at the National Gallery of Art

BY ROLAND FLAMINI

S

ome time ago, in the course of a conversation with staff and students at a Midwestern art museum, Earl A. (“Rusty”) Powell III, the director of the National Gallery of Art, was asked from the audience, “Are you in charge of all the museums in Washington?” Powell threw up his hands in mock horror and replied: “Thank goodness, no!” and went on to explain that the Smithsonian Institution ran all the museums in Washington – except the National Gallery.

His National Gallery. After 22 distinguished years in the job, Powell is as much a national treasure as the masterworks he is charged with nurturing. He is an expert in 19th- and 20th- century European and American art and a seasoned administrator, yet his well defined background has been overshadowed by his showman’s instinct for drawing in the crowds with big blockbuster exhibitions.

Van Goghs from the Amsterdam Van Gogh museum;“Goya: Images of Women;” Rusty Powell (Photo by Tony Powell) the Rothko Retrospective; Jasper Johns; Canaletto; and more recently, “Diaghilev and Powell says his acquisition policy has the Ballets Russes”: such shows are what many focused on “filling up a lot of gaps,” notably of the gallery’s five million annual visitors come by adding Baroque and Spanish paintings. But to see — and hopefully they stay (or return) there is still a wish list. “We’d like a Caravaggio to view the splendor of the National Gallery’s and one does surface [on the market] from permanent collection. At least that’s the theory. time to time,” he says somewhat wistfully.

“The big shows,” Powell argues, “create an The NGA does not have a work by this interest in the permanent collection. revolutionary Italian Renaissance painter, so Under Powell that collection has grown the quest continues. from 95,000 works to 134,000, to become The gaps were the result of how the gallery what Maxwell Anderson, director of the came into being in the first place, as the gift of its Indianapolis Museum of Art calls “the [art] founder and patron saint, Andrew Mellon. The flagship for the whole country.” financier, philanthropist and art collector – as if

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you didn’t know — funded construction of the original neoclassical building, donated his large art collection as the core permanent collection, left an endowment which made the addition of I.M. Pei’s angular East Wing possible in 1978, and stipulated that his bequest should be known as the National Gallery of Art, and not by his name or anyone else’s.

As a collector, Mellon favored Italian masterpieces and French Impressionists, hence the gaps. Other major donors have followed, but Mellon’s gift was one that kept on giving. When Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, widow of Andrew’s son Paul, died in March, the NGA began receiving 75 already-bequeathed works to the gallery from Paul’s collection, including one of Van Gogh’s golden wheat fields that was immediately put on display.

Such mini-exhibitions are not new at the NGA, but Powell hinted that they may become more frequent in the future.

Does that mean we’ve seen the end of the blockbuster era? “Curatorial ways of thinking change,” Powell says, “and besides the ‘forbidden fruits’ – works from places like Russia that hadn’t been seen for years — have been shown.”

At the Midwestern museum he went further: “The big shows are no longer the magisterial exhibitions that take on the entire world culture,” he told the audience. “Those happened, and I don’t think that’s much what the landscape looks like now.”

But Powell’s eye gleams with the old enthusiasm when he mentions, without going into specifics, the gallery’s plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the opening of the West Building in 2016, and later that year the re-

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opening of the East Wing, where the galleries (but not the atrium) are now closed for a major conversion into a larger usable space.

If Powell cut a wide swath in the art world before, it will be a wider soon when the NGA “will take custody of the collection” of the financially crippled Corcoran Gallery of Art. Under an arrangement that still requires court approval, George Washington University will use the building as its art school; and Powell says some “chestnuts from the Corcoran’s history” will also remain there on permanent exhibition; “but we will accession all the works,” including the Corcoran’s important collection of 6,500 photographs, a process which he predicts will begin in the fall.

“There are some fine European things,” he says, and when the Corcoran’s American works are combined with what the NGA already has, “it will form the greatest presentation of American painting in the country.”

The room in the Pei building where Powell receives visitors has the U.S. Capitol in full view in the middle distance as a constant reminder of the Congress’ oversight of the National Gallery of Art, at least with respect of the $120 million the gallery receives from the federal purse. The money is earmarked for maintenance and to pay the NGA’s 875 staffers, leaving Powell to raise a further $38 million a year for the gallery’s various programs in a tight money environment – “but so far we can still do it,” he adds.

As for the Congress, which two years ago gave him the additional funds to “re-glue” 17,600 tiles to the East Wing façade because some were coming loose, Powell could give lessons to other officials on how to handle budget hearings.“They love him on the Hill,” a congressional staffer says admiringly, but Powell says digitalizing the NGA’s entire collection has helped deflect occasional questions from congressmen about what the gallery does for their distant constituencies.“The great thing has been the advent of the Internet,” he says, “because now the collection can be accessed nation-wide.”

Powell, who was born two years after the NGA was founded (he turned 70 last year), is the gallery’s fourth director, and if he has his way it will be some time before there is a fifth. “I’m not going anywhere, I love my

WA S H I N G T O N L I F E

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Vincent Van Gogh” “Green Wheat Fields, Auvers” is one of the last of Paul Mellon bequests to the National Gallery of Art.

George Washington University President Stephen Knapp, Corcoran Gallery of Art Intermim Director Peggy Loar and Rusty Powell (Courtesy National Gallery of Art)

job,” he says. The urbane Carter Brown, his predecessor, recruited him for the job, but over the years Powell has shaped his own culture.

For example, Brown and the Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Tom Hoving once stood toe-to-toe, competing to outgun each other. The Powell NGA is mellower. “Right now, we’re not so much in competition with

the Met as colleagues,” Powell has said. “we do much more together than we used to before.”

Besides, he observed, when it comes to buying works on the open market, neither institution can compete with the super-rich pension funds — to which he might have added the National Museum of Qatar and any number of art-loving Russian billionaires.

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