(FORTUNE Magazine) – Pattie Sellers's title is editor at large. Here's what she really is: schmoozer-in-chief. Pattie knows everybody, and her incessant networking--jargon for old-fashioned reporting--makes her a fountain of story ideas and scoops (her latest was the news that Disney's Michael Eisner does not intend to remain as chairman after 2006). She also writes memorable profiles that shed new light on big names like Oprah Winfrey, Ted Turner, Hank Paulson, and now eBay's Meg Whitman. Which explains why for seven years Pattie has been the driving force behind our annual 50 Most Powerful Women list.

Speaking of powerful women, Carrie Welch, our vice president of communications, has been an absolute dynamo since she blew into these parts three years ago. Besides being smart, creative, and enterprising, Carrie boasts a broad range of experience--she spent much of her career in Asia and Europe, reporting for Time International, organizing news tours, programming conferences, and generally marketing like crazy. So she gets what we journalists do and also knows what our business colleagues and the folks who write about us need. (Such multi-purpose talent could be annoying--if she weren't so charming.) She's the perfect link between FORTUNE and the outside world.

Rik Kirkland

MANAGING EDITOR