Charles Phillips, CEO, Infor
Charles Phillips made a big comeback last year. In fact, he’s quietly becoming the “Steve Jobs” of business software. In 2013, Infor hit almost $2.8 billion in revenues, up from $2.2 billion when Phillips first joined the company. Prior to joining Infor, Phillips served as a captain in the Marines, a computer programmer, a managing director at Morgan Stanley, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s No. 2 guy. Infor has more than 10,000 employees.
Ty Ahmad-Taylor, Vice President of Smart TV Services, Samsung
As head of Samsung’s smart TV division, Ty Ahmad-Taylor is tasked with developing content and applications for Samsung’s TV platform. Prior to joining Samsung, Ahmad-Taylor founded real-time sports aggregator service FanFeedr in 2008. In 2012, Samsung acquired FanFeedr and Ahmad-Taylor came on board with Samsung. Before starting FanFeedr, Ahmad-Taylor was the senior vice president for strategy and product development at MTV Networks’ Music & Logo Group. Prior to MTV, Ahmad-Taylor held executive roles at Comcast. Samsung is valued at $181 billion and has more than 10,000 employees.