Riding the Storm

Sue Decker
President, Yahoo!

It's a tenuous perch, to be sure—what with the growth slump that left Yahoo vulnerable to Microsoft's (MSFT) advances and haranguing by billionaire agitator Carl Icahn. But till now Sue Decker has dodged much of the blame heaped on CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock for what some investors say was a botched takeover, and to her credit she's been more visible to the media than Yang during the half-year on-again off-again discussions. Many see her as a likely successor to Yang, though she'll need to affect turnaround more quickly than her predecessors.