World Beaters

MICHAEL O'LEARY
Airline Executive
In his jeans-wearing corporate iconoclasm, O'Leary resembles fellow airline entrepreneur Richard Branson. While most carriers were paralyzed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, O'Leary, 40, chief executive of Dublin-based Ryanair, jumped into action, slashing fares for all seats on his no-frills airline to $15, selling a record number of tickets in one week. He took over the money-losing Ryanair in 1990 and made it profitable within a year. Even as others in the industry were cutting back earlier this year, Ryanair was growing, making short jaunts between 55 European locations and doing away with in-flight services from meals to magazines.

MEG WHITMAN
President and CEO, eBay
Though most dotcom bosses can't get an investment bank to return their phone calls these days, Whitman and her company are held in such esteem that she has been named to the board of Goldman Sachs. Whitman, 44, joined eBay in 1998 and applied the lessons she learned at such old-economy firms as Hasbro and Disney. She did adopt some New Economy habits. Rather than preside from an office, she sits in a cubicle among her employees. Whitman was once criticized in Silicon Valley for stressing profitability over growth, but many of her detractors have since had to move back in with Mom and Dad.

GILBERT WHITAKER
Business Educator
When Whitaker was named dean of the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University in 1997, the student body had one minority pupil in a class of 225. Whitaker, now 70, made it a top priority to increase black and Hispanic enrollment, a task he had previously undertaken as dean of the B school at the University of Michigan. One reason for his quest was purely pragmatic. Having more minority students attracts more corporate recruiters, Whitaker says, and this draws more, better-qualified applicants to the school. Today blacks and Hispanics account for 15% of the student body.

NAOKI INOSE
Economic Adviser
He's a bit of a beatnik compared with others in Tokyo's halls of power, but Inose advocates an end to free love for Japan's public companies. A writer on history and politics, Inose, 55, has been tapped to serve on a panel of outside advisers assigned by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to plot ways to privatize corporations in government-controlled industries such as construction and banking. Inose says many of these companies are "parasites" that saddle the government with debt and make it difficult for efficient competitors to thrive.

CHERIE BOOTH
Lawyer
She is better known for her ceremonial post as the wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair than for her day job as a lawyer, but that didn't stop GE from hiring Booth to help with its appeal before the European Commission in the company's attempt to buy Honeywell. The move was blocked in July over antitrust concerns. Booth, 47, a mother of four, has worked primarily in employment law, and last month joined a new firm specializing in human rights.