In her bio, Hankins lists nearly 15 years of experience in marketing at Xerox. She can come across as a capable big-company manager anytime she needs to. But her most interesting credentials aren't on her résumé. Her grandmother was a faith healer. Several of her cousins are nurses. In her spare time, she reads message boards for breast-cancer patients and wonders what she can do to help. If AOL rated its employees on a 1-to-10 scale for empathy, Hankins would score 11.

"We're nothing at all without our members," Hankins says. "We can't be successful if we don't give them what they want. We have to bubble up what's exciting about an area and celebrate it. Spotlight it. Make it more relevant to people."

George Anders (ganders@fastcompany.com) is currently writing a book about the battle over the HP-Compaq merger.

Sidebar: How to Talk AOL

Join any big organization and you'll be confronted with jargon. That's doubly true at AOL. A complete AOL-English dictionary could fill up an issue of Fast Company. Here are a few essential entries, along with some advice about how to work the terms into conversation.

Brothers and sisters: This is the term for all of the non-AOL divisions of AOL Time Warner. Use it liberally, but pay attention to context. It can be a term of affection. ("We're getting some good ideas from our brothers and sisters.") Or, said with a raised eyebrow, it can turn into a way to express exasperation and despair. ("We've spent three months trying to get our brothers and sisters to understand.")

Cliff-hangers: Links on an AOL screen that tempt you to click on them to find out what's next. Well-paid editors spend a lot of time trying to create cliff-hangers to increase AOL page views.

Members: Other companies have customers. AOL has members. In the world of AOL, members are active, they are constantly creating the product, and they are the experts. Almost everywhere else, consumers are passive and valued mostly for their wallets.

Priorities: No one at AOL ever says no. They just say, "We'll have to see how this fits into our priorities." Hear that -- and you've very delicately been told, "Don't ever bother me again with that stupid idea."

SpIMming: Get too much junk email, and you're a victim of spamming. Instant messaging is the main form of communication at AOL. So spamming becomes spIMming. Don't do it.

The one-beat test: Clap your hands twice. The interval between claps is one beat. That's how long you have to command someone's attention on an AOL screen. It means that any message has to be pared down to its bare essentials. If it's complicated, people won't engage.