Top 50 Power Showrunners 2011

Rhimes and her prolific Shondaland production company business partner Betsy Beers couldn't have come from more different backgrounds. Rhimes spent most of her suburban Chicago upbringing reading and rarely watching TV, while Long Island native Beers gained what Rhimes calls an "encyclopedic knowledge" of television. "It actually didn't occur to me that television was a real job until after I was out of college," says Rhimes, who is the medium's most prolific female drama series creator. With Beers, she now has three series with ABC -- Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice and the midseason legal soap Scandal -- and at least two more in development. Rhimes, 41, says she and Beers are embracing their "very different jobs," with the former focused on writing and the latter on managing the busy company's creative affairs. But that doesn't mean they aren't always a phone call away. Says Beers: "If she rang me at 3 o'clock in the morning and asked me to bury a body, I'm there, no questions asked, with a shovel."