Age: 57
Occupation: Mayor of Chicago

During the onset of the coronavirus crisis, Lightfoot may not have made the big decisions — Governor J.B. Pritzker closed the schools and gave the stay-at-home order — but she took the lead in easing Chicagoans’ financial suffering, establishing a $100 million Small Business Resiliency Loan fund and announcing limits on ticketing, towing, and impounding cars.

By then the new mayor had already built some considerable cred at City Hall. At her very first council meeting, in May 2019, she memorably put Chicago’s longest-serving alderman in his place. As Ed Burke tried to launch into one of his famously long-winded speeches, she scolded him as if he were a misbehaving pupil: “I will call you when I’m ready to hear from you.” Seven months later, Lightfoot brought the hammer down on Eddie Johnson when the police superintendent was found sleeping in his car after a night of drinks at Ceres Café. She promptly fired him and appointed former Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck, whom she admires, as interim chief.

The message is clear: It’s Lightfoot’s City Hall. And while the mayor, who ran on an anticorruption platform, has had only limited success in fulfilling her promise to end aldermanic prerogative, she’s already effected real change in other areas, moving the city away from what she’s called a “regressive system” of generating revenue through fines and fees that are disproportionately extracted from low-income Chicagoans. She’s also lowered water and sewer rates for poor residents, ended water shutoffs, and given motorists more time to pay their boot fees. All of which seems to send another clear message: If Rahm Emanuel was Mayor 1 Percent, Lightfoot wants to be Mayor 100 Percent.

Age: 60
Occupation: Philanthropist and entrepreneur

In March, this former U.S. commerce secretary — and, in case you forgot, sister of the governor and friend of Barack Obama — announced she’d be chairing the Illinois COVID-19 Response Fund, which launched with $23 million in initial donations. Heir to the Hyatt Hotels empire, Pritzker has plenty of experience managing lots of money. She deployed a healthy portion of her fortune ($2.6 billion at last count) to fund the influential investment firm PSP Partners, which has directed hundreds of millions of dollars into both established businesses and promising startups. And through P33, her two-year-old tech-biz catalyst, Pritzker is on a mission to transform the city from tech hub to tech mecca.

Age: 51
Occupation: President and co-CEO of Ariel Investments

Hobson took a hit in 2016, when she and her filmmaker husband, George Lucas, were rebuffed after lobbying hard to make the downtown lakefront home to the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. She could have given Chicago the brushoff and invested all her time and money on the West Coast, where she serves on the board of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Instead, she has continued to pour her efforts into After School Matters, the education nonprofit for which she serves as board chair and to which she and Lucas donated $25 million in 2013. Hobson also has seats on the boards of JPMorgan Chase and Starbucks, and Lori Lightfoot recently made her vice chair for World Business Chicago, the group charged with bringing job-generating companies to the city.

Age: 58
Occupation: CEO of Ulta Beauty

When Dillon took over the Bolingbrook-based Ulta in 2013, its outlets were concentrated largely in drab strip malls and growth was flat. Two years later, Ulta had overtaken Sephora as the country’s largest beauty retailer, adding hundreds of new stores, including a flashy flagship in Manhattan. Last year, with Ulta’s saturation of the domestic market mostly complete — the company has more than 1,200 stores, nine of them in Chicago — Dillon announced that she’s taking the chain international. That expansion is on hold until 2021 as the company waits out the coronavirus crisis. In April, Ulta also initiated “significant” furloughs, but the recent wooing of Kim Kardashian West, who began selling her line KKW Beauty at Ulta stores last summer, should help the retailer bounce back once outlets reopen.

Age: 41
Occupation: Chief of staff for Governor J.B. Pritzker

Before her 30th birthday, Caprara had served as chief of staff to two different members of Congress. She has since overseen Hillary Clinton’s $190 million PAC — the largest in presidential campaign history — and, without the benefit of membership in the Illinois old boys’ network, run the campaign that beat Republican governor Bruce Rauner by almost 16 points. Now Governor Pritzker’s chief of staff, she’s been his point person for the state’s massive coronavirus response. And she’s funny on Twitter, too.

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Age: 73
Occupation: President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners

Preckwinkle may have lost the mayoral election in a landslide, but don’t forget that she’s still president of the Cook County Board, chair of the Cook County Democratic Party, and political mentor to Kim Foxx (see No. 10). She flexed her power as party head when she removed Ed Burke as chief of judicial slating after he was indicted for corruption. As board president, she recently took more control of the county’s health system, appointing one of her own staffers to the oversight board. Preckwinkle also pushed through a reform of the courts’ bond system, so most offenders go home with an electronic bracelet, rather than having to pay cash.

Age: 56
Occupation: Founder and principal of Studio Gang Architects

No living Chicago architect has anything close to the name recognition of Gang. In case you can’t put the buildings to the name, she’s the one behind the honeycomb structure at Lincoln Park Zoo’s Nature Boardwalk and the topographically spectacular Aqua Tower north of Millennium Park. When people want to know where architecture is headed, they look to what Gang is working on. And they’ll be paying close attention to two enormous projects in progress: the nearly complete wavy blue-glass Vista Tower on the Near East Side and the new $2 billion–plus international terminal at O’Hare. She’s got major projects underway in Arkansas, Memphis, and Amsterdam, to name just a few places, and she just won a Progressive Architecture Award for a science education center in New York.

Age: 41
Occupation: CEO of Chicago Public Schools

During the mayoral race, Lori Lightfoot hinted she’d fire Jackson, who’d presided over the 355,000-student district during a massive sexual abuse scandal the year before. Just before the election, the two women met one on one, sans aides, at Jackson’s request. Lightfoot emerged proclaiming confidence in the schools chief. “I explained my decision-making to her,” said Jackson afterward. “She listened to me and I listened to her.” Chalk it up to Jackson’s considerable knack, earned through dustups with aggrieved teachers and parents in the struggling district, for winning people over. During her two-year tenure, Jackson has championed the opening of an $85 million school in Englewood, created CPS’s Office of Equity, and launched a mentoring program encouraging black men and Hispanic men and women to pursue enhanced leadership roles at CPS. And now Jackson can point to powerful numbers, too: The dropout rate for black male students has declined 12 percent, and graduation rates across the district are up 15 percent.

Age: 52
Occupation: Co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and member of the National Leadership Council of Lambda Legal

Any woman would stand out in pro baseball, but Ricketts, the first openly gay MLB owner, is positively a beacon. Outside of baseball, she arguably casts an even brighter light. The exception in an otherwise politically conservative family, she’s a cofounder and former chair of LPAC, the first lesbian-focused super PAC, and was a top bundler for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. As a board member of Lambda Legal, she played an active role in the legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa in 2009. She continues to be a reliable donor to LGBTQ political candidates and others, like Jan Schakowsky and Marie Newman, who are trying to upend machine politics in Illinois. Wealth, for her, confers responsibility. “If we don’t play here,” she’s said of bringing LGBTQ issues to the forefront of politics, “we forfeit.”

Age: 47
Occupation: State’s attorney of Cook County

Foxx’s high-profile efforts to remake the top prosecutor’s office — including bail reform initiatives, moves to stop prosecuting low-level crimes, and opening felony-level case data to public scrutiny — angered a lot of cops, so it was no surprise that the Fraternal Order of Police called for her resignation when the Jussie Smollett prosecution was initially dropped. But with Foxx’s sizable victory over a well-funded opponent in the March primary and her presumptive win in November, the FOP will have to deal with her for four more years. Meanwhile, others are taking a page from her book: In January, Governor Pritzker signed a law that eliminated the suspension of driver’s licenses in cases of non-moving violations, something Foxx had done at the county level two and a half years before.

Age: 64
Occupation: President and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust

The 105-year-old foundation that Gayle has headed since 2017 boasts $3.2 billion in assets and $360 million in annual grants and commitments. Translation: This woman directs the distribution of a lot of charitable dollars. Under Gayle’s leadership, those dollars — acquired through a vast donor network — are being redeployed under a new strategic plan. By directing its discretionary funds to Chicago-area programs that advance stable housing, improved mental health services, and violence reduction, and by supporting the local rollout of broader initiatives like the 2020 census, the foundation is seeking to eliminate what Gayle sees as the city’s most urgent problem: the racial wealth gap. And in March, it partnered with the city to establish the Chicago Community COVID-19 Response Fund to speed resources to local nonprofits helping the area’s most vulnerable residents.

Age: 46
Occupation: Senior adviser to the governor on cannabis control

There’s a reason people call her the “pot czar”: Anyone who wants in on the burgeoning business of legal cannabis — sales totaled nearly $40 million in the first month alone — must gain the approval of Hutchinson, making her the gatekeeper to the, ahem, buzziest new industry in Illinois since the end of Prohibition.

Age: 43
Occupation: Vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union

When the CTU had the city nailed to the wall during last year’s 11-day-long strike, the union’s No. 2 was swinging the hammer, appearing before the cameras with the unwavering narrative that the well-being of students was the union’s single overriding concern. Widely known as the firebrand counterpart to wonky union head Jesse Sharkey — and viewed by some as at least as powerful among the rank and file — this former CPS teacher gained a reputation for backing down to no one, not even Mayor Lightfoot, who reportedly resorted to barring her from final negotiations.

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Age: 33
Occupation: Assistant professor at the University of Chicago and author

Poet, sociologist, professor, in-demand lecturer, and, since 2018, Marvel Comics author — she is the first black woman to write the Ironheart character Riri Williams — Ewing has become nothing less than a national cultural icon and the voice of a generation. To her readers, students, and 215,000 Twitter followers, she is the Influencer With Meaning, the person who tells us how we got here and where we go next.

Age: 52
Occupation: Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Aviation

Rhee, who spent nine years as the city’s chief procurement officer, controls the gravy train of jobs and lucrative contracts that come with the $8.5 billion O’Hare renovation, the centerpiece of which is a new international terminal designed by Chicago starchitect Jeanne Gang (see No. 7). It’s the most ambitious and costliest expansion project in the airport’s 65-year history.

Age: 48
Occupation: Director of the museum of the Obama Presidential Center

More Top Picks Best Heated Insoles For Diabetics

How do you make sure the museum of the first presidential center in Chicago is world class? You ask Bernard — who helped develop the exhibition plans for D.C.’s acclaimed National Museum of African American History and Culture — to be the founding director. When the Obama Presidential Center finally rises from Jackson Park, it will be Bernard’s vision, experience, and clarity that shape its public face.

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Age: 54
Occupation: Lieutenant governor of Illinois

An avowed advocate of restorative justice and a driving force behind Governor Pritzker’s pardon of some 11,000 low-level drug offenders, Illinois’s first black lieutenant governor knows the power of making an appearance. To highlight the social equity emphasis of the state’s new cannabis law, she showed up, news cameras in tow, at the Sunnyside dispensary in Lake View promptly on January 1. (Her purchase? Mindy’s Edibles Glazed Clementine Orange Gummies.)

Age: 64
Occupation: President and CEO of Time’s Up

Michelle Obama’s former chief of staff — who was in the media glare last year for allegedly using her connections with the Cook County state’s attorney to sway the Jussie Smollett case — runs one of the most tangible outcomes of the #MeToo movement: a nonprofit that confronts gender inequity in the workplace. Under Tchen’s leadership, the group has moved beyond gestures like persuading starlets to wear black to the 2018 Golden Globes and has since provided PR and legal aid to more than 4,000 women who don’t have a slew of IMDb credits.

Age: 33
Occupation: U.S. representative for the 14th District

In 2018, the freshman Democrat and former adviser to Barack Obama unseated incumbent Randy Hultgren in her historically conservative district by campaigning on health care reform. She’s not part of AOC’s Squad, but she is part of a pragmatic clique nicknamed the Big Six: newbie reps who serve as liaisons to congressional leadership and who many observers believe have formidable political futures.

Age: 52
Occupation: Vice president of sales and site lead at Google

Under Sauder, Google’s top executive in Chicago since 2018, the company’s West Loop campus has doubled its workforce, and in November Google announced it was adding 800,000 square feet of office space. How big will Google’s Chicago presence get? Sauder won’t talk specifics, but with more than 1,200 handsomely paid salespeople, cloud engineers, software experts, lawyers, and accountants already under her purview, she’ll have developers, city planners, and business owners watching her every move.

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Age: 46
Occupation: Deputy governor of Illinois

Flores oversees the $35 billion (and 15,000-employee) network of state health and human services agencies and was recently named cochair of the Illinois Commission to End Hunger. She’s got leverage, and she’s going to need it: The commission has been tasked with eliminating hunger in a state where 16 percent of children live in poverty.

Age: 65
Occupation: Chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois

Pallmeyer is best known for presiding over former governor George Ryan’s corruption trial and sentencing him to six and a half years in prison. In July, she made history as the first woman to become top dog at the country’s third-largest district court.

Age: 52
Occupation: U.S. senator

The first disabled congresswoman and first U.S. senator to give birth while in office has become the Democrats’ preeminent anti-Trump attack dog, referring to him as “Cadet Bone Spurs” and “a five-deferment draft dodger.” That cheek has helped elevate the junior senator’s national profile, with her name circulating at one point as a potential vice presidential nominee.

Age: 43
Occupation: Executive chef at Girl & the Goat and chef-owner at Cabra Cevicheria

With a portfolio that includes four trendy restaurants and a successful product line, this James Beard Award winner and Top Chef victor rules an empire built on a singular premise: knowing what people want. Before the coronavirus shutdowns — and if any Chicago restaurateur can emerge strong from that crisis, it’s Izard — her flagship Girl & the Goat was still packing in locals and tourists hungry for her brash, unapologetic food (the most famous dish is pig jowl, after all) and a glimpse of the face of Chicago’s dining scene.

Age: 54
Occupation: Artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre

At the helm since 2015, Shapiro brings serious stage cachet, having directed plays by Tracy Letts (August: Osage County) and Larry David (Fish in the Dark), as well as Broadway musicals (The Devil Wears Prada, which was slated for summer but will get pushed to next year). At Steppenwolf she’s recently commissioned controversial plays about pedophilia (Downstate), police shootings (Pass Over), and the U.S.-Mexico border (La Ruta), and her boldness is paying off: The theater is nearly two-thirds of the way toward funding a $73 million expansion.

Age: 66
Occupation: City Hall reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times

Spielman has been covering Chicago politics since Richard M. Daley was in short pants. Maybe that’s why she’s so good at hounding politicos till they crack (like when she got Mayor Lightfoot to confirm that Eddie Johnson had been drinking before the police superintendent was found asleep in his vehicle) and notching legendary scoops (most recently, the news that Alderman Danny Solis was wearing an FBI wire).

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Age: 41
Occupation: Chief financial officer of Chicago

A year ago, when Mayor Lightfoot gave the city’s top fiscal job to Bennett, who’d helped steer Chicago Public Schools out of a pension crisis as the district’s CFO, the municipal government was saddled with $1 billion in debt. Bennett and her budget director reduced it by $162 million in three months. Then, in a televised address in March, Lightfoot announced she was handing Bennett the “financial challenge of a lifetime”: rolling out unprecedented relief programs to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus crisis.

Age: 52
Occupation: Vice president of news for WGN America

In January, Lyons, who’d been news director at WGN-9 since 2014, got a big promotion. As vice president of news for WGN’s national cable network, she now oversees News Nation, a three-hour nightly newscast featuring a beefed-up staff of journalists that will make its premiere this summer.

Age: 53
Occupation: President and CEO of Navy Pier

When Gardner began her tenure at Navy Pier in 1994, she was charged with promoting its grand reopening the following year. Now she finds herself selling Chicago on yet another reincarnation: the $278 million transformation — the centerpiece of which is a 222-room hotel due to open this year — of a fading tourist trap into a cultural destination that is, she dares to say, “cool.”

Age: 51
Occupation: State senator for the 4th District

Last year, the majority leader (who this year made an unsuccessful but profile-boosting bid to become Senate president) embraced colleagues on the floor in celebration. Her bill to raise the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 — the culmination of a fight she’s been leading for a decade — had passed. Now she’s got her sights set on funding early childhood education.

Age: 53
Occupation: Executive chair of the board of Deloitte

Foutty is the highest-ranking female leader in the U.S. for the $21 billion, 100,000-employee accounting and consulting firm. She uses her visibility — and her 280 Twitter characters — to promote the advancement of women in tech and business. Deloitte even created an alter ego of Foutty for Ella the Engineer, the company’s comic book series about girls in STEM.

Age: 57
Occupation: Publisher of the Chicago Reader

As a cofounder of Windy City Times, the veteran journalist has long been revered as a leading voice and tireless organizer in the city’s LGBTQ community. But when she took over as publisher of the Reader in late 2018, Baim added another designation to her public profile: the face of independent media in the city.

Age: 56
Occupation: Cofounder and president of Chicago Cares

Chicago Cares, which Bluhm cofounded in 1991, is the largest volunteer mobilizing nonprofit in the Midwest. In March, its visibility shot up when Governor Pritzker, stressing an urgent need for volunteers, ceded the lectern to the charity’s CEO in his daily coronavirus briefing. With a billionaire dad and a Rolodex that includes law school pal Lori Lightfoot and childhood friends J.B. Pritzker and investment manager Michael Sacks, Bluhm has the kind of access to funding and policy-makers that opens doors.

Age: 47
Occupation: Comptroller of Illinois

Sworn in at the height of the state’s financial crisis, Mendoza deftly wielded the Springfield clout she’d accrued as a state rep to turn her position from bookkeeper into progressive fiscal watchdog, pushing for financial transparency laws and prioritizing payment to programs that serve the most vulnerable.

Age: 39
Occupation: CEO of the Noble Network of Charter Schools

The head of Chicago’s largest charter network runs an 18-campus confederation with 12,000 students and an annual budget of $180 million. In the perennial argument over the role of charters in the public education system, Jones has an impressive stat working in her favor: Ten of the 12 top-ranked high schools in CPS’s 2019 School Quality Rating Policy rankings were in the Noble network.

Age: 49
Occupation: CEO of 1871

The first female CEO of the Midwest’s largest tech incubator, Ziegler is using her experience as a McKinsey consultant and the chief innovation officer at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management to accelerate 1871’s impressive expansion — the group comprises more than 450 companies and counting. If the Silicon Prairie continues to sprout startups, it’s primarily because Ziegler is tilling the soil.

Age: 63
Occupation: President and CEO of World Business Chicago

Rahm Emanuel’s former deputy mayor, this native South Sider got a vote of confidence when the new mayor kept her on as head of the city’s public-private global business networking juggernaut. With Lori Lightfoot (No. 1) as chair and Mellody Hobson (No. 3) as vice chair, Zopp completes a potent triumvirate of African American women.

Age: 57
Occupation: Public defender of Cook County

Leading an office of 650, this vocal advocate for the poor has used her bully pulpit to push for bail reform, the expansion of mental health courts, the humane treatment of accused juveniles, and a program that assigns publicly funded attorneys to Chicago police stations. The public could not ask for a more potent defender.

Age: 44
Occupation: Senior curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Beckwith’s promotion in 2018 marked a much-buzzed-about sea change at the museum, with overlooked artists,
many of them people of color, assuming pride of place. More recently, Beckwith has made waves by challenging the traditional museum exhibit format: In Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago, Beckwith handed the curatorial keys to the Nigerian-born British designer, who drew from artworks in the MCA’s own collection for the show.

Age: 53
Occupation: Chief of the appellate division at Winston & Strawn

When Winston & Strawn chairman Tom Fitzgerald wanted someone to lead the vaunted law firm’s pro bono effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment in Illinois, he knew Coberly — considered one of the top appellate lawyers in America — would be ready for the high-profile battle. The first female managing partner of the firm’s Chicago office, Coberly had represented multiple clients before the U.S. Supreme Court. Thanks in part to her legal maneuvering, legislators ratified the ERA in 2018.

Age: 47
Occupation: Principal at Studio K

The peacocks perched over the bar at Bellemore, the metallic silver booths at BLVD, the fish bone mural on the back wall at GT Fish & Oyster: They’re as intrinsic to the experience of dining at these posh restaurants as the food. Through her six-year-old interior design company, Herold has defined high-end dining in this city as much as any chef. With half a dozen new projects in the offing, including Nobu’s first Chicago outpost, Herold’s imprint will only grow more visible.

Age: 56
Occupation: Editor in chief of ProPublica Illinois

Anyone despairing over the diminished power of investigative journalism might want to pay attention to what Kiernan and her 12 staffers are doing at this three-year-old branch of the national nonprofit news bureau. To give one example: ProPublica’s collaboration with the Tribune last year led to the abolition of locked seclusion rooms in all Chicago public schools. Other journalists are looking to see where Kiernan decides to shine a light next.

Age: 41
Occupation: Novelist

The Great Believers, Makkai’s Pulitzer Prize–nominated 2018 novel about the AIDS crisis in Chicago, didn’t just fill in a largely overlooked chapter in our city’s history. It won international acclaim and bestowed upon the novelist — who has championed the local literary community by running the nonprofit writing workshop StoryStudio Chicago and helping organize the Chicago Lit Salon — the unofficial mantle of Chicago’s literary godmother. Now in the works: a limited TV series adaptation of The Great Believers helmed by Amy Poehler.

Age: 70
Occupation: Treasurer of Cook County

Reelected in 2018 with 82 percent of the vote, Pappas cleaned up an office inherited from a corrupt predecessor. But she’s done more than right a listing ship. She’s responsible for Cook County’s debt disclosure ordinance, which requires all taxing bodies to state their finances on tax bills, and is currently backing a bill in Springfield that would give struggling property owners an extra four months to pay.

Age: 30
Occupation: Political consultant

When Hampton told leaders of the state’s Democratic Party in 2017 that Michael Madigan aide Kevin Quinn had sexually harassed her, they ignored and then shunned her. She sued on the grounds of workplace retaliation, teamed up with the crisis-management strategist and #MeToo champion Joanna Klonsky, and won a $275,000 settlement. Her case inspired two pieces of antiharassment legislation — and spurred others to speak out, too.

Age: 46
Occupation: CEO and executive director of the Illinois Medical District

Think of McKinney as the mayor of a city within the city. Encompassing an area the size of 425 football fields on the Near West Side, the IMD — which includes four major hospitals — is the country’s second-largest urban medical district. McKinney is focusing on fostering increased collaboration among the hospitals and researchers in the district to secure the IMD’s role as a national hub of medical innovation.

Age: 51
Occupation: Cook County commissioner for the 10th District

Gainer’s name was bruited about as a mayoral contender the last time around, and while a run never materialized, she kept on pushing the throttle at the job she’s had since 2009, advancing the work of her signature creation, the Cook County Land Bank Authority, which has helped convert more than 500 vacant properties into affordable housing, and winning $500,000 in funding to improve conditions for women at Cook County Jail. She also recently launched the Chicago chapter of Off the Sidelines, which encourages young women’s political activism.

Age: 43
Occupation: Author and activist

In 2013, when feminists were encouraged to lean in, Kendall started a viral hashtag instead: #solidarityisforwhitewomen. Lean-in feminism, she argued, benefits privileged women at the expense of those who lack basic needs like jobs and childcare. “Hood feminism” — also the title of her much-feted new book — is for them. And now, with Kendall’s rising national profile, including a March appearance on The Daily Show, it may be for all of us.

Age: 55
Occupation: Presumptive U.S. representative for the 3rd District

Assuming she prevails in November, the former management consultant from La Grange might be the most famous freshman in Congress next year. Newman is a progressive heroine for defeating pro-life congressman Dan Lipinski (on her second try), thus ending a machine dynasty.

Age: 31
Occupation: Creative director at Kumiko and Kikko

The role of the modern bartender goes way beyond making a perfect martini, and there’s no better poster child for the new era than Momose. She has led the charge for complex, delicious nonalcoholic beverages (her term “spiritfree” is now ubiquitous), and through her consulting work with Menu Collective, she is the beverage creative lead for Starbucks Reserve Roastery, meaning her drinks are available from Seattle to Milan and beyond.