The Top Ten Alpha Boomer Women

Founder, The Daily Beast; incoming editor-in-chief, Newsweek

Although you dont see Tina Brown in the gossip pages as often as, say, Anna Wintour, shes had an almost unparalleled influence on the magazine industry in the past few decades. A native of England, Brown got her start while in her early 20s at the dowdy horse-and-hounds publication Tatler. Before she left a few years later, shed deftly turned it into a glossy gossip magazine that covered both movie stars and the aristocracy. And by the time she was 25, she was in New York, transforming the excessively literary Vanity Fair into an alluring high/low mix for sophisticated readers who loved a bit of gossip as well. Even though her editorship there ended in 1992, she set a style at the magazine that continues today. Her third, and most controversial, transformation came during the 1990s at the revered but dusty New Yorker, where she bringing such innovations as actual photos and four-letter words. Despite a career lull that began after she left the New Yorker in 2000, shes emerged as the brains behind The Daily Beast, a news/politics/gossip site she founded in 2008 with former Paramount chief Barry Diller. Now theyre merging with Newsweek, and while Tina continues as editor of the Beast, shell also be heading Newsweek. We sense another magazine transformation just ahead.

Secretary of State

Whatever names Clinton has been called since her husband took office in 1992 (and shes been called a few), theres one name that actually describes her: warrior. Whether or not you agree with her politics, it takes a special kind of strength to withstand everything from the numerous anti-Hillary websites, to the whispers about her private life and the mocking attack by Rev. Charles Wright in Chicago on her campaign to win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. But Clinton, who survived the scandal of her husbands infidelity, not to mention the Whitewater scandal and Travelgate, hasnt let any of that stop her. Shes made some big mistakes like trying to engineer health-care reform in the early 1990s, when she wasnt even an elected officials but she went on to become a U.S. Senator from New York, and now the Secretary of State. In that crucial post, shes helped secure a peace treaty between Armenia and Turkey, two countries that have been traditional enemies and has launched the Global Hunger and Food Security project. The initiative is directed toward a multinational policy of making sure countries can grow enough food --not only as a humanitarian goal but also as a means of defusing political instability. Clinton has insisted that she will not run again for a presidential nomination, but chances are she wont be leaving public life anytime soon.

Founder, Huffington Post

When it comes to reinventing yourself, no one does it like Arianna Huffington, whos changed her politics a few times over the years and done everything from running for governor of California to becoming an influential Net presence. Born Arianna Stassinopoulos in Athens, she left Greece at age 16 to attend Cambridge University in England, where she was president of the Cambridge Union Society, a prestigious debating club. She moved to the United States in 1980, at age 30, after her longtime boyfriend refused to marry her. Once in the States, she became a follower of John-Roger, a New Age spiritual guru, before meeting her future husband, Michael Huffington, an oil millionaire with close ties to the Republican Party. (The couple married in 1985 and divorced in 1997.) During the beginning and middle of the 1990s, Arianna Huffington was known as a political conservative who supported Newt Gingrich, wanted Bill Clinton removed fromfice and wrote for the conservative publication National Review. But in the late 1990s, she reverted to her former liberalism, and when she ran for governor of California in 2003, she and Arnold Schwarzenegger exchanged a few personal attacks in their debates. Since 2005, shes headed www.huffingtonpost.com, a liberal news center that also features blogs, commentary and unusual political and humorous videos. Fearlessness is a muscle, Huffington once said. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it, the more natural it becomes not to let my fears run me.

Chancellor, Germany

The first female Chancellor of Germany, and the first Chancellor to be born after World War II, Merkel was elected in 2005, and again in 2009, as a candidate of the Christian Democratic Union, a center/right party. (A steadfast capitalist today, she grew up in Communist East Germany.) Shes frequently compared with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; the two have similar political beliefs as well as a rigorous scientific education (Merkel studied physics). As 2010 comes to a close, Merkel, the head of one of Europes strongest economies, is involved in a European Union debate on whether to rescue member countries, including Greece, Ireland and Portugal, from possible bankruptcy. So far shes been firm in her refusal to support a continent-wide bond issue to help out nations that most Germans see as spendthrift. Whatever the ultimate decision is will affect the U.S. financial markets almost as much as the European ones: The New York Times noted that this countrys recovery depends on increasing trade with an economically healthy Europe. Merkel will have a lot to do with whether that actually happens.

Chairman and CEO, Kraft Foods

Rosenfelds name may not be familiar to you, but there are dozens of items in your supermarket that shes helped to acquire, market and turn a profit. The multibillion-dollar worldwide empire of Kraft Foods includes Philadelphia cream cheese, Maxwell House, Ritz, Oreos, Capri Sun soft drinks, Dairylea dairy products, LightnLively yogurt and Kraft cheeses. Although it might seem impossible to have any effect on such a huge company, Rosenfeld drove up profits 13 percent in the third quarter of 2010. Rosenfeld, who has a Ph.D. in Marketing and Statistics from Cornell University, began her career as a consumer researcher at an ad agency. But she soon moved on to the food and beverage industry and has been with Kraft for more than 20 years. In an interview with the UKs Financial Times in November 2010, Rosenfeld said that the command-and-control model of leadership is outmoded. Instead of looking for unthinking, obedient subordinate, she said, she looked for managers who behaved as if they owned the company and whose hair was as on fire as mine.

Actor

The phrase used to be This is what 50 looks like. Thanks to Streep, we can now say This is what 60 looks like. And it looks pretty good. Streep, probably the greatest actress of her generation, has managed to defy the Hollywood convention of what kinds of roles women should have and at what age they should have them. Or as Goldie Hawn said in The First Wives Club, There are only three ages for women in Hollywood: Babe, District Attorney and Driving Miss Daisy. In her latest movie, Its Complicated, Streep (whos won just two Academy Awards despite 16 nominations) plays a woman her own age whos the romantic target of both Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. When shes on screen, you dont see her as aging or over the hill or in her prime; you just see a very attractive woman with the same vulnerabilities and strengths that all women have. And shes not afraid to get all girly and giggly, as she did in the bubbly hit Mamma Mia. Next up: her rendition of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as she handles a crisis while in office. Despite the accolades routinely heaped on her, Streep seems to have stayed humble and humorous: When presented in 2003 with an Emmy for her role in the play Angels in America, she cracked, There are some days when I think Im overrated, but not today.

Special Assistant to the President, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Treasury

Shes not that well known outside political circles, but in the coming year Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor, could be the person who most affects the lives of ordinary Americans. A financial-reform bill passed in the summer of 2010 created a Consumer Financial Protection Board, an idea Warren has supported over the last few years. The board will investigate the Troubled Assets Recovery Program (TARP) - i.e. the multibillion-dollar government bailout of banks following the collapse of the home-mortgage market. In an interview posted on the Treasury Departments website, www.treasury.gov, Warren also said the board will be focusing on the credit-card business and lobbying for simpler explanations to consumers of credit-card and banking terms. Because shes not seen as a friend of the banking industry, Warren wont head the board but will launch it. Whether shes head of it or not, though, her stamp will be on it: Time magazine named her as one of the People Who Mattered in 2010.

Editor-in-chief, Vogue

As the documentary The September Issue made clear, Wintour is a fantastically smart and terrifying creature who makes her subordinates cower in fear with a brusque question or a sarcastic eye roll. Maybe shes entitled; it must be hard working with people who dont know one-tenth as much about the fashion industry as you do. After moving from London to New York City in 1975, she learned the business from the ground up, beginning as a junior editor with Harpers Bazaar and going on to the now-defunct magazines Viva and Savvy as well as New York and British Vogue. Not that Wintour didnt blunder along the way; when she took over the American magazine House & Garden in 1987, she put so much fashion into it that it became known in the business as House & Garment. But she had such a creative, innovative eye that she was made editor of Vogue within the year. At the worlds most powerful fashion magazine, she saw ad pages grow until the magazines September issue, the biggest of the year, reached almost 1,000 pages. Wintour, who has a rumored $2 million a year salary, also become an unofficial tastemaker for the entire fashion industry, promoting young designers like Proenza Schouler to help keep the business from becoming antiquated. Although the end-of-her-reign rumors are constant, Wintour isnt having any of it: I think it would be irresponsible of me, she told 60 Minutes, not tolead us into a different time.

Talk show host, entrepreneur

She really could drop her last name now, because the word Oprah is more than powerful enough. Shes a classic American success story of the kind many people dont believe in anymore: Born in a small Mississippi town, she eventually got herself a television job in Baltimore and built her legend from there, capitalizing on her extraordinary empathy for ordinary people and their sufferings. (As we later learned, she went through some ordeals herself, including sexual abuse.) Shes helped sell millions of books through her book club, she opened a girls school in South Africa, she launched a successful, upscale magazine and shes finishing her 25th season with, it seems another dynamite, attention-getting interview every day (the Sound of Music cast, Liza Minnelli, Lisa Marie Presley). But its her influence on millions of American women that is the hardest to quantify, and possibly the most profound. From her they learned the lesson that making yourself over, making your dreams come true, isnt a fantasy. You can make it happen maybe not all of it, but a lot of it.( And like Oprah, you dont have to be married to do it.) Her next big project: the Oprah Winfrey Network, which launches on the ultimate new-beginning date: 1/1/11. Tomorrow: Our list of the top ten alpha boomer men.