KENNETH FELD CEO, Feld Entertainmentt The CEO of McLean-based Feld Entertainment since 1984, Feld has steered his family’s iconic Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus in new directions, including Disney on Ice!, Doodlebops Live!, Disney Live!, Monster Jam, the International Hot Rod Association and the AMA Supercross Championship. He has also produced several Broadway plays. Feld and his circus have been criticized by animal rights activists for more than two decades with Feld fighting back against those who maintained his circus mistreated animals, most notably its elephant population. He even won an $11 million libel judgment against PETA when a judge ruled that the accusations were not true. In 2015, Feld decided to move the circus in a new direction by eliminating the elephant acts altogether. In their place, the “new” circus now has more trapeze artists, a BMX bike act and acrobatic dogs. HOWARD FINEMAN & RYAN GRIM Global Editorial Director and Washington Bureau Chief, The Huffington Post Howard Fineman and Ryan Grim help keep the 11-year-old news site ahead of other digital-native outfits such as BuzzFeed, Vice and Vox, and on pace with other topranked sites such as CNN and The New York Times. A combination of old school and new, who schmoozes at lunch while checking Twitter and prepping for hits on MSNBC, Global Editorial Director Fineman tends to HuffPost’s expanding worldwide audience. In the last year mobile and international traffic has soared as HuffPost added more video and upped the the number of its editions to 15 (Australia is the newest). The site made its own headlines earlier this year when it publicly elected to cover Donald Trump as “entertainment” in a provocative post by Washington Bureau Chief Grim. A dogged reporter and shrewd, well-liked manager, Grim also bylined on the viral headline “A Racist, Sexist Demagogue Just Won The New Hampshire Primary.”
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Chris Wallace, Moderator, “Fox News Sunday,” which celebrated 20 years in April. Photographed at Fox News.
JACK GERARD CEO, American Petroleum Institute With the national average gas price hovering at $2 per gallon, the American Petroleum Institute and its president have a lot to fret about, but also a lot to celebrate with their unexpected lobbying victory to lift the U.S. oil export ban. Although they were not able to keep the Department of the Interior from scrapping
plans to increase Atlantic oil drilling (via the optioning of drilling off the coast of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia or Florida), pro-oil insiders have commented that they are “most impressed” that Gerard prevailed on lifting the oil export ban, something they never believed would happen, and under a Democratic president no less. Hess Oil’s top lobbyist, Drew Maloney, was also instrumental in this victory for fossil fuel advocates, a victory that is a true testament to their power.
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