Kim Paulsen, SVP, Technology Media Group, Penton

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Kim Paulsen, EVP of Penton's Windows group, started in the industry right after college with Skies America, an in-flight magazine publisher based in Portland, Ore. In time, she moved on to the East/West Network--another airline magazine publisher--and eventually was introduced to Spencer Longshore of The Longshore Group, for whom she went to work. "[Longshore] really taught me how to sell," she says.

Paulsen built Penton's Windows group franchise by transforming it into a suite of customer-oriented publishing products. "Instead of working for just vendors, I worked to make the whole ecosystem thrive, evolving it into a much more 'today' picture of the publishing model," she says of the transition. She added to the Windows IT Pro print products to increase the brand's value, including the Windows IT Pro Readers' Choice Awards, the Best of Tech-Ed 2008 Developers Awards and the Best of Tech-Ed 2008 IT Professionals Awards.

Paulsen is proud of the open, bottom-up management style that has enabled her to promote opportunity for and dole out kudos to a wide range of people. In addition to being motivational, she believes this tactic gives Windows group employees the opportunity to share their wisdom and ideas with each other. Paulsen maintains that women sometimes eschew their feminine qualities in business, but that it's unnecessary in order to achieve success. While it was challenging for Paulsen to find a balance between her profession and her femininity in the beginning, she says: "I eventually struck that balance through success. I wasn't afraid to ask questions and I benefited from the answers and mentoring of industry experts," such as Doug Green and Davis Nussbaum, who jump-started her career while she was at New Hope (subsequently acquired by Penton), where she got her start in upper management.

Paulsen lives in Loveland, Colo., with her husband, Eric, to whom she's been married for nearly 20 years in September, their two daughters, Jordan, 13, and Sydney, 15, and the family's two chocolate labs, two cats and a plethora of both aquarium and pond fish. Paulsen water and snow skis, snowboards, gardens and travels. "I like tropical," she proclaims. In her downtime she enjoys reading Real Simple, Sunset and Savor.

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