(FORTUNE Magazine) – Ellen M. Hancock Making IBM a major force in telecommunications is a twofold job for Hancock, 43, vice president of the communications products division. ''My challenge is not only to bring the right products to market but to make sure our customers understand the direction we are taking,'' she says. That direction is to provide links for customers' computers and peripherals -- even those not made by IBM. A mathematician, Hancock started as a programmer in 1966 and moved on to develop software for brokerage firms and banks and for IBM's internal communications network. One of Big Blue's highest-ranking woman executives, she oversees development of telecommunications products for IBM, but not for its Rolm subsidiary. Robert S. Shulman When Shulman quit the market research firm of Yankelovich Skelly & White in 1982, he never dreamed he would end up its chief executive. Convinced that computer software could be put to greater use in market research, he started Clancy Shulman, a firm whose clients included American Express and H.J. Heinz. Shulman and Yankelovich were reunited when Saatchi & Saatchi, the ever- acquisitive London-based advertising agency, bought both firms. The Saatchis combined the operations and put Shulman, 34, in charge. He hopes to double % revenues, now $20 million, in two years. Robert A. Gerard Lifelong devotion to the Big Apple helped New Yorker Gerard, 41, become the architect of Morgan Stanley's fast-growing tax-exempt securities division. In the mid-1970s former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon tapped him to represent the U.S. government during New York City's financial crisis. Later, at the Wall Street investment firm of Dillon Read, he developed the concept of securing New York subway bonds with turnstile revenues, a highly successful financing technique. Morgan Stanley recruited him in 1983. ''It was a once- in-a-lifetime opportunity to build a major business from scratch,'' says Gerard, whose team of 70 chalked up $25 billion in underwritings in 1985. Richard L. Schlott Despite New Jersey's un-glamorous image, Schlott, 48, found sweet success on the far side of the Hudson River. In 1971 he started Schlott Realtors, which grew to six offices in the Garden State in eight years. Then divisions of IBM, AT&T, and Nabisco expanded their operations, and Schlott's business took off. Handling $2.8 billion in annual sales volume, the company is the second- largest privately owned residential real estate broker in the U.S. after Virginia's Long & Foster, according to the most recent edition of The Top Real Estate Brokers. Like any real estate agent, Schlott still craves the satisfaction of bringing buyer and seller together. But lately he has been a buyer himself, acquiring 20 other real estate brokers since 1979. He has also opened 47 new offices since then, and now operates 103 branches in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Holliston Hill Early in life Hill, 25, learned to love pork belly futures. As the 12-year-old daughter of a North Carolina commodities trader, she charted minute-by-minute price changes from a ticker tape. While still in school she worked with her brother and father to devise a technical trading system that applies a mathematical formula to chart patterns of certain commodities. Her father wouldn't let her handle accounts until she graduated from college. That accomplished -- she has a degree from Boston's Simmons College -- Hill got her first customer for the family-run Commodity Research Institute in 1984. Last year the 45 trading accounts she managed for individuals gained an average of 186%. Her more aggressive personal account was up 343%.