Padmasree Warrior

With a last name like Warrior, you expect ferociousness. In fact, Padmasree Warrior is just the opposite -- a humble leader who says she likes to play practical jokes on her staff. She worked her way up to CTO at Motorola before joining Cisco in 2007. Her ingenious approach today can best be described as holistic. For instance, one of her major projects is what Cisco calls "unified computing" -- linking all data-center resources together to make them more efficient and cost effective. "The data center today can best be described as 'islands of virtualization': technical islands, procedural islands, organizational islands, operational islands," she told colleagues earlier this year. "[There's] no innovation in the market enabling these islands to be traversed seamlessly, securely, or simply." Her job: to build the bridges. -- by Zachary Wilson