The Adweek 50

30. Ava Jordhamo
Company: Zenith Media
Title: President, New York
Age: 47
Media Spend: $7.8 billion
Location: New York
One of the most skillful negotiators in the business, this Queens, N.Y., native inherited Zenith’s national broadcast accounts from Peggy Green. In her nearly 20 years at Zenith, Jordhamo has made a name for herself as a true innovator, developing lapel-grabbing sponsorship opportunities like the Today show’s Toyota Concert Series and the Toyota Halftime Report on NBC’s top-rated Sunday Night Football. Along with the automotive account, Jordhamo’s roster of clients includes Verizon, JPMorgan Chase, Sonic, Nestlé and Boston Beer. —A.C.

29. David Cohen
Company: Universal McCann
Title: Chief Media Officer
Age: 42
Media Spend: $16 billion
Location: New York
This digital pioneer has worked in Internet advertising for 16 years. He started at UM by launching its digital practice in 2001 and climbed the ranks to become global digital officer in 2011. Even in his current role leading North American planning and buying, he remains the digital go-to guy at the media agency. He raised UM’s profile on the outside as chair of the 4As digital marketing committee and by serving on advisory boards of Google, Yahoo and AOL. His humor and sarcasm infuse the drier stuff of media management, making such granular detail more accessible at agency meetings. —N.O.

28. John Landgraf
Company: FX Networks
Title: President and General Manager
Age: 50
Revenue: $1.3 billion
Location: Los Angeles
Landgraf steers all entertainment and business ops for the nets. Last year was FX’s most lucrative, as advertisers rushed to align themselves with a slate of daring original dramas (Justified, Sons of Anarchy, American Horror Story) and outré comedies like The League, Louie and Archer. The secret sauce? A multimillion-dollar roster of popcorn flicks that offers reach and keeps FX one of cable’s leading networks in the all-important 18-to-49 demo. Showrunners say Landgraf is the first guy to pitch if you’re looking to make shows for the smart set. —A.C.

27. Teddy Goff & Zac Moffatt
Company: Obama and Romney  presidential campaigns
Title: Digital Directors
Age: Goff, 27; Moffatt, 33
Facebook Likes: Obama, 28.5 million; Romney, 6.8 million.
Twitter Followers: Obama, 19.7 million; Romney, 1.1 million
Location: Chicago, Boston
While not household names, Moffatt and Goff are key players in securing the White House for their bosses. Goff, who cut his teeth doing new media for Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, now runs his digital re-election efforts, helping build Dashboard, a complex networking and data organization tool to organize from the executive to grassroots level. Moffatt led the creation of a completely new digital infrastructure aimed at engaging voters on social media and the Web for Mitt Romney. With this billed as the first truly digital election, these guys are the unsung heroes of the run for the White House. —C.W.

26. Quentin George
Company: IPG Mediabrands
Title: Chief  Innovation Officer
Age: 43
Media Spend: $35 billion
Location: New York
Last November, George, the expat of Organic Inc. and Razorfish who had served as Mediabrands’ chief digital officer for nearly three years, was named to the new post of chief innovation officer at IPG’s media-management arm. He’s had a fuller-than-full plate, responsible for the development of intelligence resources including the IPG Media Lab, which pairs clients with tech and media partners; the Virtual Lab, an internal, Web-based client resource; and Magna Global, which handles forecasts, insight and negotiation strategy across all media channels at Mediabrands. —T.C. 

25. Michael Clinton
Company: Hearst Magazines
Title: President, Marketing and Publishing Director
Age: 57
Oversees: $1 billion
Location: New York
Overseeing more than $1 billion in annual revenue at the publisher of titles like Good Housekeeping, Cosmo and Esquire, Clinton supervises a business that has doubled over the past couple of years through organic growth, new products and the $900 million acquisition of Hachette Filipacchi Media. Responsible for all sales and marketing, Clinton has been a key player in the Hachette integration as well as the launch of the wildly successful Food Network and HGTV magazines. He’s also given the green light to brand extensions from Elle Accessories to MarieClaire@Work. And his influence extends far beyond Hearst Tower: Clinton serves as chairman of the magazine trade group MPA, where he led the CEO search resulting in the selection of Reader’s Digest Association and Condé Nast alum Mary Berner. —Lucia Moses

24. Jennifer Zimmerman
Company: mcgarrybowen
Title: Chief Strategic Officer, North America
Age: 46
Revenue: $175 million
Location: New York
Zimmerman is a dynamo with incredible energy and a mother’s touch, often asking colleagues how they’re doing before getting down to business. Her gift, however, is her innate ability to cull startlingly fresh insights out of complex, murky business situations and translate that into a lucid marketing message. That alone makes this big thinker a most valuable player to key accounts like Verizon, Kraft Foods and Disney at a shop that surpassed the $175 million revenue mark last year, winning Adweek’s U.S. Agency of the Year. —A.M.<

23. Patrick Stokes
Company: Salesforce Marketing Cloud
Title: VP, Product Management
Age: 32
Revenue: $2.27 billion
Location: New York
As product chief at social marketing software company Buddy Media, the former IBM developer’s charge is to put easy-to-use tools in marketers’ hands. A tech company doesn’t sell to CRM giant Salesforce for $689 million without a solid product, and Stokes’ fingerprints are all over Buddy’s offerings. Stokes is integrating Buddy products with those of Salesforce’s social analytics arm Radian6 for the newly created Salesforce Marketing Cloud. —T.P.

22. Ryan Murphy
Projects: Glee, The New Normal
Title: Showrunner, Exec Producer
Age: 46
Net Worth: $20 million
Location: Los Angeles
As the creative force behind Fox’s musical dramedy Glee and the cray cray FX anthology series American Horror Story, Murphy is one of television’s most versatile storytellers. (Oh what we wouldn’t do to see a crossover episode!) This fall, Murphy steers his narrative talents in yet another direction, delivering the half-hour, single-camera comedy The New Normal to NBC. The show, which spins a yarn about a gay couple and the surrogate tapped to bear their child, is Murphy’s attempt at exploring polarizing social issues in a comedic context; in a sense, Normal is Norman Lear for the Obama era. —A.C.

21. Ross Honey
Company: Microsoft
Title: General Manager, Xbox LIVE Entertainment, Microsoft Advertising
Age: 43
Revenue: $73.7 billion
Location: Redmond, Wash.
Honey and team are at the center of the digital living room, with 67 million Xbox units and over 40 million subscribers of Xbox LIVE, a Web/TV platform for games, chatting with friends, buying movies—and watching ads. Xbox aims to reinvent the :30 with NUads, incorporating Xbox Kinect’s nifty gesture-based controls. MS also boasts partnerships with over 40 content providers such as Major League Baseball, SyFy and HBO. And instead of trying to reinvent the cable business, Xbox is turning into a cable box for partners like Comcast and Verizon.—Mike Shields