Gordon Smith, 49, became CEO of Chase Card Services in June 2007 after spending more than 25 years — virtually his entire career — at rival American Express. While there, he led the consumer cards division and, more recently, the Global Commercial Card business, responsible for spreading American Express cards among corporations throughout the globe. Now, as chief executive officer for Chase Card Services, the credit card division of JPMorgan Chase & Co., Smith oversees an operation that has 150 million credit cards in circulation, with an annual charge volume of nearly $300 billion. Smith, a native of Glasgow, is clearly excited to bring his customer-focused sensibility to a company with the reach of Chase.

I think about innovation from a business perspective. It’s not just the products but a 360-degree business model of how you innovate across that entire cycle: the way we service our customers, the way we bring technology to bear, and the way we think about marketing and new product development. The key at Chase is really understanding customers and knowing where there are barriers for them that we can remove.

Our Blink product is one of those 360-degree innovations. An embedded computer chip allows customers to wave a credit card in front of a reader and immediately pay for their transaction. In a fast-food restaurant, for example, Blink helps customers get their orders more quickly and helps the restaurants move customers through more quickly. That’s just the beginning of what this technology can do. I think you’ll see it appearing in many more industry types, and I think it will be one of those examples where we’ll just make customers’ lives much easier. It’s like the E-Z Pass in the Northeast — you can pay your toll without putting money in the bucket and be on your way. [Blink] is rolling out very quickly now; customers will see it popping up in more and more retailers. It is already available on all our Freedom cards and will be added to many Chase credit cards.

This is just part of our effort to get in front of the right customers. We say, “Here is one set of customers who have engaged in using our services, and if I make them a compelling offer, they will use more of our services. But we have to be very careful to offer them the right things, to drive the right people to each merchant’s business. That’s why we do so much research in partnership with our merchants. There is just so much to be learned from customers — I often listen in on customer service calls or focus groups personally.

As a result of our customer research, we’re looking to open new segments, like using credit cards to pay for health care. It’s a relatively new space for credit card services, but customers say they would like to be able to use their cards in these situations. I learned from my parents how incredibly important it is to respect people and listen to their point of view. My dad worked as a chief executive in local government in England, a kind of village administrator, and he taught me how important it was to treat people well.

Early in my career, I also learned to understand how important high-quality transactions are for customers. My early career was spent in the technology side of things, developing large computer systems. It was an invaluable experience because you have to sit down with customers to understand their needs at a high level of granularity, and then design systems based on that understanding. It was excellent experience in recognizing the importance of detail. If a line of code is wrong, everything breaks down.

That’s how I want to approach the next level of improvement for our customers. I don’t think of [credit cards] as a commoditized business. By offering the right experience and the right offers at the right point in time, that will differentiate us. For example, we’re rolling out a product now that will offer simplified reporting of spending and borrowing for customers.

This is a terrific company in a competitive market. We’ll continue to stay focused on customers to stay ahead of the competition. I enjoy this immensely — I feel like I never work a day in my life.

— Brion O’Connor

Kurt Landgraf knows firsthand the difference that a good education and a caring teacher can make in a young person’s life. An admitted “poor student” in elementary and high school, Landgraf fondly recalls an economics professor in college who he says changed his life and helped make him into a better student and person. “A single teacher can make all the difference in the world,” he says. “There’s no more important job.”

Landgraf followed through on that formative experience to build a career that’s landed him in the role of president and CEO of Educational Testing Services. A not-for-profit institution, ETS is best known for its academic testing services — including the GRE and the College Board’s SAT. But when Landgraf took the helm, one thing the firm wasn’t well known for was financial stability. Seven years ago, annual revenues at Princeton, N.J.–based ETS were roughly $500 million and came solely from U.S. operations. “When I came here, the place was not financially stable,” he recalls.

Since taking the helm in 2000, Landgraf has, just like a good teacher, provided inspiration, guidance, and new ways of thinking. His personal mission at ETS has been to diversify, expand, and enhance the 60-year-old company’s offerings. In short, he has ETS thinking more like a for-profit corporation. “I remind them that not-for-profit is a tax status, not an operating style,” he says.

That shift in mind-set, a by-product of Landgraf’s 25 years working in the private sector, has brought financial stability to ETS. The company now earns nearly $860 million in annual revenues, and while it still administers nearly 50 million tests each year, it has moved into new areas of growth. ETS now offers research services, assessment development, test administration and scoring, and instructional products and services. It spends $100 million a year on its own research and has more than 1,100 experts in education, psychology, statistics, psychometrics, computer science, sociology, and the humanities on staff. (Six hundred employees have advanced degrees, and 250 hold doctorates.)

Under Landgraf’s oversight, ETS has expanded its operations into more than 180 countries, which is part of the CEO’s grand plan. “Our mission is not just a U.S.-oriented mission but a global mission,” he says of the nearly two-year-old international endeavor. “We can offer educational systems to the world, but to do that, you have to take a lesson from the commercial world. And you can’t just do that in Princeton.”

For all the challenges global expansion poses, it’s the state of the U.S. educational system that gives Landgraf cause for concern. A grim 2007 ETS report, titled “America’s Perfect Storm,” details the convergence of three powerful forces: substantial disparities in skill levels (reading and math); seismic economic changes (widening wage gaps); and sweeping demographic shifts (less education, lower skills). In addition, ETS found that national test results have shown no improvement during the past 20 years, and Landgraf says that nearly 100 million adults in the United States (more than 40 percent of the adult population) are functionally illiterate. “People are waking up to the fact that our K–12 educational system really needs to be reformed,” he says.

To that end, ETS will continue to help improve the quality of teaching and curricula. “Every day, there’s an opportunity to help somebody,” Landgraf says, “whether it’s an employee, a student, or a school system. I don’t have delusional views of what we can do, but there are opportunities where we can make a difference.”

For many, hope is an idea, an intellectual construct. For the disabled participants of Challenge Aspen, however, hope is a physical reality. The proof is in the gleaming sweat on their brow, and the welcome ache of accomplishment they feel after a dash down a mountain. Kevin Jardine, competition program director for Challenge Aspen’s ski racing team, says the feats of those who’ve dealt with amputation or spinal cord injuries continue to inspire him.

“Every athlete here surprises me. That’s what we’re going for,” Jardine explains. “I love proving to people that disabled athletes can be competitive, and expanding the barriers about what people think is possible for individuals with disabilities.”

Houston Cowan couldn’t agree more. Cowan (pictured), Challenge Aspen’s CEO, was a Chicago-based commodities trader and real estate developer, admittedly “living for the dollar,” when in 1991 he read about Peter Maines, a blind skier from Aspen. Fascinated, Cowan contacted Maines to learn more. That’s when the epiphany struck. “I took the afternoon off from work — I had a company with 17 employees,” Cowan, 56, recalls. “The next morning, I called everyone in and told them I was liquidating and moving to Aspen to teach blind people to ski.”

Cowan went west, planning to stay for a year. He soon met Amanda Boxtel, who was paralyzed in a 1992 skiing accident, and began teaching her how to mono-ski. The two then collaborated to develop Challenge Aspen, an adaptive ski program launched in December 1995. Today, it’s a multifaceted organization that operates year-round, facilitating skiing, snowboarding, rafting, and rock climbing for participants who range in age from 4 to 94. Challenge Aspen also runs summer camps focusing on music, dance, art, and horseback riding. The program has helped establish adaptive recreation programs in five other countries (Spain, France, Iceland, Chile, and Argentina) and now also specializes in the needs of disabled veterans, including a groundbreaking traumatic brain injury curriculum.

In addition to serving skiers with all types of disabilities, Challenge Aspen also opens its doors to those who care for them. “We include the family in every experience we offer,” Cowan says. “If we have a child in a mono-ski, we’ll put the mother and father on a mono-ski. The siblings of a disabled child, the husband of a wife who has MS, the wife of a husband who’s been paralyzed in Iraq — instead of saying ‘Our life ended when this happened,’ they can now say, ‘Wow, we as a family now are able to go out and do things that we never thought we could do together.’”