(FORTUNE Magazine) – JAMES M. LI, 43 AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. Talk about membership having its privileges: As Chinese army tanks rumbled through Beijing last year, American Express's Tiananmen Square office hustled to get cardholders everything from plane tickets to a place to sleep. ''We have to be our customer's champion,'' says Li, who supervised the operation from Hong Kong, where he spent five years as president of Amex's Travel Related Services in the Pacific region, excluding Japan. When he wasn't / running rescue missions, Li managed to quadruple profits. In his new job as TRS's chief quality and credit officer in New York City, Li plans a new service that will champion customers who have disputes with merchants over purchases.

CAROL A. BARTZ, 41 SUN MICROSYSTEMS INC. Bartz loves to jump-start startups. She joined this workstation manufacturer back in 1983 when it was still a fledgling. ''I had no idea what going to a 100-person company entailed,'' admits Bartz, a veteran of mammoth Digital Equipment Corp. ''No support system, no expense forms.'' Bartz built Sun's marketing department, increasing the staff from ten to 120. In 1987, Bartz took over Sun's embryonic federal division -- ''I was in a startup inside a startup,'' she says -- and tripled government sales to $115 million in one year. Her mission as Sun's VP for worldwide field operations: ''To make sure we remain the marketplace leader in countries where we already are. And in countries where we're just starting, like Italy, my goal is to become the market leader.''

RAJEEV G. BAL, 37 CHELSEA INDUSTRIES INC. ''Recycling is like motherhood,'' says Bal, president of Chelsea's Webster Industries unit, which makes mid-priced trash bags, including the Good Sense, Renew, and Handi-Bag brands. ''Everybody loves it.'' He should know. Bal led the team that produced the Hefty Cinch Sak for Mobil Corp., the oil giant. He joined Webster in 1986 and built sales from $76 million to $144 million. Webster makes its products with recycled polyethylene and claims that its bags either decompose after exposure to sunlight or biodegrade. To critics who charge that the bags are far from a panacea, Bal retorts: ''There isn't one ultimate solution to the environmental problem.'' Another might be the waste bags Webster is testing: They're supposed to turn into compost.