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Canada

Phyllis Yaffe
Ceo, Alliance Atalantis Broadcasting Group
Phyllis Yaffe concedes that her gender helped launch her into Canadian broadcasting during the early 1990s. Ultimately, though, surrounding herself with "smart" people mattered more to her ascent through the ranks than anything else. She is now CEO of the Alliance Atlantis Broadcast Group, where she oversees 14 Canadian specialty channels. "I do think I've been incredibly lucky," she says. "I've been championed by people who could help me, and I've been able to deliver on the goals that people set." Yaffe argues that it made sense for then-Canadian producer Alliance Communications Corp. to position a woman as the proposed president of its broadcasting arm when, in 1994, it applied to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission for a license to operate Showcase Television, a specialty channel devoted to reruns of popular dramas. "I remember being at the CRTC and watching other groups going up to ask for a channel and seeing whole teams where there were no women at all," Yaffe says, arguing the TV watchdog was clearly sensitive to gender-equity issues. Yaffe was named to her present post in 2001, taking control of seven analog Canadian specialty television networks and another seven digital channels launched in September of that year. Along the way, Yaffe has had the good fortune of heading broadcasting at Alliance Atlantis as it increasingly moves away from cash-intensive film and TV productions to focus on owning and operating Canadian specialty TV channels. "We used to say we were the caboose; now, we seem to be the engine (at Alliance Atlantis)," she jokes.
-- Etan Vlessing

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France

Simone Halbertstaad Harari
Founder/chairman/chief executive, Tele Images
Simone Halberstadt Harari is founder, chairman and chief executive of Tele Images, one of France's leading independent television producer-distributors. By her own admission, Harari is a pure product of the French establishment, having attended the elite university Ecole nationale d'administration. She was part of the founding management team of nascent pay TV group Canal Plus in 1983 but had already left the company before it made its first broadcast in 1984. Tele Images has been in negotiations to buy Studio Expand, Canal Plus' TV production entity. Talks were ongoing at press time, but if Harari manages to pull off the deal, it will make Tele Images the undisputed leader in independent Gallic production. "My objective is not to be the biggest but to be as creative as possible and as profitable as possible," she says. Harari says the French TV industry is not as male-dominated as one might imagine. "I think that among French networks, the power is still very much in male hands," she says. "But in production, there's probably a majority of women."

Hengameh Panahi
Founder, Celluloid Dreams
Hengameh Panahi has built a reputation as one of the shrewdest women in independent international film sales with her company, Celluloid Dreams. The Paris-based company has enjoyed a great year, selling three major festival hits to U.S. distributors: Francois Ozon's "Swimming Pool" to Focus Features, Sylvain Chomet's "The Triplets of Belleville" to Sony Pictures Classics and Takeshi Kitano's "Zatoichi" to Miramax. "We're working with everyone; that's the good part of being independent," Panahi says. "I can decide what I want in a minute." Born in Iran, Panahi moved to Belgium when she was 12. After studying languages and journalism and working as a translator, she worked on a friend's documentary -- editing the film, writing the script, casting the voices and so on. That inspired her to start her own movie company in Belgium in 1985 (she moved to Paris in 1993). The company initially was called Celluloid Dealers -- a reference to an Alfred Hitchcock comment on the nature of moviemaking -- but the name was changed because its executives encountered too much trouble with customs officials. Panahi's guiding principle has been to follow the careers of directors whom she believes possess great potential. "We have two directors, Ozon and Kitano -- both of whom we started working with when they were unknown or at least little-known -- and have followed their work entirely," she says. Panahi believes that the movie industry remains a man's world and is a tough place to navigate as a femme. "It's still difficult," she says. "It took me years to be taken seriously."
-- Charles Masters

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HONG KONG

Tiffany Chen
Vice chairman, China Star Entertainment
Curiosity may have killed the cat, but for China Star Entertainment vice chairman Tiffany Chen, asking endless questions has been key in making her one of the most respected producers in the Hong Kong film industry. A Taiwan native, Chen moved to Hong Kong during the early '80s when she married film producer and now-China Star chairman Charles Heung. At his persuasion, Chen quit her career in trading and submerged herself in the world of film, working with Heung at Win's Entertainment. "It's always hard starting out, whether you're a man or a woman: When I started helping my husband, I didn't know anything about the business; I would call people up all the time and ask relentless questions," says Chen, who has helped Heung build China Star into a media empire with interests in Hong Kong and mainland China. "I learned very early on that it's all about trust," she adds. "The artists trust that we'll do right by them, and my colleagues trust that, through my contacts, I can help solve whatever problems they encounter."
-- Winnie Chung

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RUSSIA

Yelena Yatsura
Independent Producer
There are plenty of women in the entertainment business in Russia, onscreen or onstage, but only one independent female film producer. Yelena Yatsura, a 35-year-old partner in Moscow's Slovo Film Studio, knows what a rare bird she is. "There are a few women working as producers, but I am the only one who owns part of a production company," Yatsura says. Achieving her position was no easy task. Without going into detail, she alludes to the obstacles any woman faces in breaking out of the gender-stereotyping that remains strong in today's Russia. Yatsura began as an assistant to Slovo's chief editor when the company was founded in 1993. Today, she is responsible for production and distribution of the half-dozen or so features the company releases annually, with production budgets of $250,000-$1.5 million. Featured recently in a glossy Russian magazine about successful career women, Yatsura and her achievements have not gone unnoticed by the industry: In September at the Russian film festival Kino Shock, Yatsura was voted best producer in Russia and the Baltic states, an honor shared only by leading Russian producer Sergei Selyanov. "Attitudes are slowly changing in Russia," Yatsura says. "I had a very complicated life as a younger woman here, but the situation is now beginning to shift."
-- Nick Holdsworth

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SOUTH KOREA

Savannah Hahn
CEO, Electronic Arts Korea
At 34, Savannah Hahn has completed a stint as head of Sony Music Korea and is now head of Electronic Arts Korea. It's an impressive resume, especially for someone who has had to overcome the Confucian double whammy of age and sex. Hahn spent two years teaching piano at the Boston Conservatory, during which she began working part-time at PolyGram Records. That led to a full-time position at Sony Music Korea, where she worked before taking off in 1999 to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School. Although classical piano might seem a world away from being a star executive, Hahn sees parallels between the two. "The discipline one learns as a musician, doing one thing seven to 10 hours a day, is tremendously helpful in business," she says. That is especially true for women, Hahn believes. "Korean women have a lot to prove, so they tend to work really hard," she says.

Shim Jae-myung
CEO and co-founder, Myung Film
Her movies include art house favorites like Kim Ki-duk's "The Isle" and the second-biggest film in South Korean history, Park Chan-wook's "JSA: Joint Security Area." But Shim Jae-myung, CEO and co-founder of Myung Film, did not set out to become a film producer. "I thought about becoming a good film marketer instead of being a film producer because I didn't really have a producer for a role model," she says. Although Shim believes that the film industry has become one in which it is relatively easier for women to excel, she is creative managing director of the Women in Film Korea association. "Networking to expand and improve women filmmakers' situation in the local film industry is crucial, so Women in Film Korea is valuable and needed," Shim says.

Oh Jung-won
Founder, BOM Film
From her first films during the early 1990s, Oh Jung-won has had the eye for critical and commercial hits. She founded BOM Film in 1999, and her first movie -- "The Foul King" -- was the second-highest-grossing South Korean title the following year when it was released. But nothing in her experience compares to this year, when BOM has produced its two biggest films yet: The company's moody horror title "Tale of Two Sisters" set the boxoffice-opening record for Korean releases -- only to have that record shattered in early October by another BOM film, "Untold Scandal," a local retelling of "Dangerous Liaisons." After getting involved in the movie industry "purely by chance," Oh came up through the marketing ranks before moving into production during the mid-1990s. That emphasis on marketing is still a characteristic of how Oh makes her films, along with a "conviction in what I think is right" and in making films where the "characteristics of the director and producer are well-combined." Although women face many difficulties in Korean society today, Oh says that can "create an environment where a woman can get more attention for her achievements. But my faith is that a person's capacity, not one's sex, is becoming increasingly important."
-- Mark Russell

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SPAIN

Lona de Macedo
President,Columbia Films Spanish Prods.
Some may call her a "reloc"; others might say "start-up." But Iona de Macedo's title is president of Columbia Films Spanish Prods., a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment. Not only is she responsible for deciding when a project is ready to be greenlighted, but also she oversees the productions from beginning to end. De Macedo came to Spain in September 2001 with one goal: to implement Columbia's plan to make three local productions a year. With budgets ranging from €2.5 million-€5 million per picture ($2.9 million-$5.9 million), de Macedo's weight in the industry is considerable. Before coming to Spain, she worked in France, Portugal, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Argentina and the United States. "I'm just finding my way around in Spain, and it's very exciting," de Macedo says. "I'm right at the stage where I can synthesize all my experiences as a relocated executive, start-up company president and everything else." She's not keen on being called a "woman in the industry," de Macedo notes. "There are a series of anthropological factors -- education, religion, origin, language and, yes, gender -- that go into the mix of who you are," she says. "For all those things to be narrowed into one thing -- gender -- is unfair. But I guess even when you're born, gender is the first thing that defines you."
-- Pamela Rolfe

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UNITED KINGDOM

Dawn Airey
Managing director, Sky Networks
Having made a huge success of Britain's Channel 5, Dawn Airey easily could have stepped into the maelstrom of the merging ITV companies Granada and Carlton. Instead, she chose in January to become managing director of Sky Networks. Now, company parent British Sky Broadcasting, majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., has entered its own choppy waters with the departure of chief Tony Ball and controversy over the selection of STAR's James Murdoch to replace him. Airey, 42, is responsible for all nonsports programming at Sky. She recently moved to upgrade Sky Movies and is working to turn its flagship, Sky One, into a more upmarket outlet. While it hasn't always been smooth sailing, few doubt that Airey will turn Sky into an even more competitive force. Airey's career path has seen her climb steadily from management trainee at Central TV to top jobs at Central, ITV and Channel 4 before joining Channel 5. "The toughest test I faced was when I was a young, fresh-faced twentysomething thrown into the middle-aged, Cro-Magnon man world of ITV planning," she says. "It was a baptism of fire, and the only way to gain their respect was to be better at my job than they were at theirs. It was a tough old hike, but I got there in the end and proved that you don't have to be a man to have balls." Airey says the barriers are lower than they used to be and that more of the top jobs in British TV are held by women -- but she knows those jobs take their toll. "A job at the very top in television is more than a career; it's a lifestyle decision, and not every woman is able to make that choice," she says.

Lorraine Heggessey
Controller, BBC1
The most-watched TV channel in Britain, BBC1, is nearly too popular for its own good. As a public broadcaster, the BBC must fulfill stringent public- service requirements and is expected to be serious and sober as well as entertaining. Lorraine Heggessey, 47, the first female controller of BBC1 -- a post she has held since 2000 -- has kept the channel's ratings high, with shows such as "Spooks" and "Cutting It" joining such long-running hits as "Have I Got News for You" and "EastEnders." Heggessey began at the BBC as a news trainee in 1979 and prospered making factual programs for the BBC, ITV and Channel 4. She also spent time as head of BBC Children's Programs. Although television often is regarded as a boys' club, Heggessey does not believe that gender issues are significant now. "Certainly, in the BBC, it is now about the quality of the individual and whether they are right for the job," she says. "One of the biggest changes is that, for the first time, women can be themselves and be taken for the value of the work that they do." Heggessey adds that women no longer need to hide that they are wives and mothers. "I believe that my husband and children keep me in touch with the real world and help me make better decisions for viewers," she says. Content in her high-profile position, Heggessey has never had a career goal or a plan. "I have the best job in British television, and I hope to hang on to it as long as I can," she says.
-- Ray Bennett