THR's Women in Entertainment 2011: Power 100

Colligan has rocketed up the food chain to become one of Hollywood's marketing stars. She rose up through the studio specialty ranks, working at Miramax and Fox Searchlight before joining Paramount Vantage in 2005, where she helped land the rights to Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore. Years earlier, Colligan had worked for a nonprofit public relations firm in Washington and assisted on Gore's presidential campaign.

In 2008, Colligan, 38, joined the studio big leagues when she was named co-president of domestic marketing for Paramount. She and fellow co-president Josh Greenstein quickly impressed with their campaigns and are having another banner year, successfully launching Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger, as well as the third installment in the Transformers franchise and original tentpole Super 8. "The summer was very satisfying. We had really big movies with complicated challenges, and our team rose to the occasion," says Colligan, who is now preparing for Christmas tentpole Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol in addition to a busy awards season. "The structure of Paramount is such that we do all kinds of movies, and it makes for a very creative process," she says.

THR's 2011 Women in Entertainment Power 100

This fall, Colligan was promoted to president of domestic marketing and distribution, an unusual blend, since distribution and marketing are usually parallel operations. Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore credits Colligan for coming up with innovative distribution strategies, such as for the first Paranormal Activity. "Distribution is something I've always taken an interest in, and I feel very lucky," she says.

Colligan has three young sons and is married to Mark Roybal, the former president of Scott Rudin Productions who now runs Indian Paintbrush. The couple met while attending Harvard. "I was an investment banker right out of college," says Colligan, "but I quickly became jealous of these people with cool jobs in film and politics."