Who's Who In D.C.

By Sally Donnelly; Melissa August; Anne Moffett; Adam Zagorin; John Simons

BOB KORZENIEWSKI, 43 If there is one man who understands the transition from old Washington to new, it's Bob Korzeniewski, CFO of Network Solutions. An accountant by training, Korzeniewski worked for a decade for SAIC, a research and engineering firm. In 1995 SAIC bought Network Solutions, then the sole registrar of names on the Internet. Since that time Korzeniewski has inspired Network Solutions to morph from government grantee to NASDAQ darling, orchestrating the company's successful 1997 initial public offering. Last year many analysts predicted Network Solutions would be crushed when it had to give up its monopoly and let other Net registrars into the business. Instead, the company responded with an aggressive marketing strategy. It's now busting at its seams, adding 30 people a month to its 1,000-employee staff and "a domain name every five seconds," says Korzeniewski. Last March California-based VeriSign paid $17 billion to buy Network Solutions. The combined company is worth $35 billion. --By Sally Donnelly

PATTY ABRAMSON, 55 One of Washington's key providers of start-up money for entrepreneurs with vision, drive and a compelling idea, Patty Abramson knows a thing or two about start-ups from her own experience. In 1989 she left Hager, Sharp & Abramson, which was among the first female-owned advertising and p.r. firms in the capital, to start Abramson Communications. The scarcity of women-owned companies like hers inspired her in 1997 to found the $30 million Women's Growth Capital Fund, the largest venture-capital fund in the eastern U.S. and one of the few to focus on businesses owned or managed by women. In addition, Abramson and her partners created WomenAngels.net an investment club for 85 D.C.-area women who each commit $75,000 over three years to nurse along promising early-stage high-growth companies and reap the collective rewards. By the end of the year, her Women's Growth Capital Fund will be fully invested in 18 companies, and she plans to launch a second fund in the fall. --By Anne Moffett

BRANDY THOMAS, 32 Four years ago, while his co-workers were enjoying a dinner cruise on the Potomac River, Brandy Thomas was on deck brainstorming with a colleague about how to help businesses take advantage of the Internet. Both men suddenly realized no one was monitoring copyright violations on the Net and that as a result corporations were losing millions of dollars in revenue. That led them to the concept for Cyveillance, a sort of dotcom Web sleuth founded in 1997, which uses its proprietary NetSapien Technology to scour the Net for misuse of brand names, copyright infringements and clues as to what impact Web activity is having on a corporation's business. Some Cyveillance findings: Disney and Barbie are among the Top 10 brand names most commonly associated with pornography on the Internet, an abuse of their trademarks; and 4% to 8% of the 7,000 websites selling Rolex watches, Montblanc products and Gucci items actually sold fakes. Now the company has branched out into e-business intelligence, helping clients develop online strategies like locating potential business partners. Last spring the firm got its third--and largest--round of venture funding, $24.5 million from ABS Capital Partners, and is rumored to be on the brink of an IPO. --By Melissa August

SUDHAKAR SHENOY, 53 India produces some 60,000 electronics-engineering graduates a year, more than twice as many as the U.S. Twenty percent of start-ups in Silicon Valley are founded by graduates of the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, or I.I.T. And 2,000 top executives, whose companies generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue, are members of the Indian CEO High Tech Council. The council's godfather is Sudhakar Shenoy of Great Falls, Va. Born in Mangalore in southern India, Shenoy graduated from I.I.T. in Bombay with a bachelor of technology degree and got a master's in electrical engineering and an M.B.A. from the University of Connecticut. He returned to India but did not find a good job. Back in the U.S., Shenoy in 1981 founded Information Management Consultants, an award-winning systems-integrator and software-management firm. Shenoy has always been involved with the Indian-American community and in giving something back to the next generation. As he saw his three daughters through college in the 1990s, he devised an innovative scholarship program, in conjunction with George Mason University, called Global Technology Cooperative Partnerships, which attracts graduates of I.I.T. "My big pleasure," he says, "is helping young people succeed." Above all, Shenoy teaches them to trust in market forces, not in the sea of regulation that caused him to leave his homeland for America. --A.M.

WILLIAM SCHRADER, 48 Talk about growing by leaps and bounds: in a deal approved on June 15, PSINet, the world's largest independent Internet-service provider to business, doubled its size by gobbling up Metamor Worldwide. In so doing, William Schrader, PSINet's bearded founder, added Web-design and Internet-business applications to his company's globe-girdling network of fiber-optic cables. The Metamor deal capped a three-year spree during which Schrader paid $2.5 billion for 76 companies, including small ISPs in Brazil and Lebanon. Schrader's customers include Boeing, Merrill Lynch and Barnes & Noble.com as well as firms like MindSpring that provide dial-up Internet access. PSINet's systems carry traffic in 29 countries, with 60% of revenues coming from overseas. Schrader says his recent takeover of Metamor means that the time has finally come to make some money. "Because of all our investments, we've never made a profit," he notes. "Now we're going to show Wall Street what we can really do." --By Adam Zagorin

SHANNON HENRY, 30 Known as the dotcom diva, Shannon Henry has a reputation as the leading technology writer in Washington. She joined the Washington Post two years ago as a business writer after working for the Christian Science Monitor and the American Banker. Her Post columns, more than 200 of them since September 1998, cover everyone and everything from Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen to BlackBerrys (a new model of handheld e-mail device). Other subjects have included woman investors, venture-capital funding, the political battle over high-tech immigration policy, e-commerce, wiring at the Pentagon and spreading the dotcom wealth in northern Virginia. "Shannon is absolutely the No. 1 tech reporter in Washington," says Christie Hart, marketing manager at the Draper Atlantic venture-capital firm in Reston, Va. "She takes all the high-tech jargon, the acronyms, the slang, and makes it readable and understandable." Born in New York City and raised in Maryland, Henry studied English at Boston University and got a master's degree in journalism and public policy from American University in Washington. Five years into the tech beat, she has been listed by the prestigious Washington Business Forward magazine as one of the Top 40 agenda setters and market movers in the capital. Says Forward editor Eamon Javers: "The change from old political Washington to new business Washington is one of the most important stories around." And Shannon Henry is just the person to write about it. --A.M.

RAUL FERNANDEZ, 34 He can put a dollar figure on how much Washington has changed in a decade. In 1988, while serving as an up-and-coming aide to then Congressman Jack Kemp, Fernandez told his boss he wanted to quit Capitol Hill and start his own computer company. Kemp, stunned that Fernandez could think about leaving the epicenter of Washington political life, offered a major incentive to stay: "Stick around, and I'm sure I can get you another $4,000." Quickly calculating that that would bring his salary up to about $40,000 a year, Fernandez walked out the door. Today he is the CEO and founder of Proxicom, a consulting and development firm with a market capitalization of $3.1 billion and offices in 11 cities. Kemp eventually saw the light too; retired from politics, he sits on Proxicom's board. Currently Fernandez, one of the few prominent Hispanics in the northern Virginia tech community, embodies more than anyone else the dreams of new Washington and the fears of the old. He raises the distinct possibility that political life matters less than it used to. --S.D.

MICHAEL SAYLOR, 35 Few rising stars have fallen to earth--and then started to rise again--with greater speed than cocky, outspoken Michael Saylor, co-creator of MicroStrategy, the multibillion-dollar database powerhouse he founded in 1989 to help companies manage their storehouses of computerized information. Last March Saylor, as CEO, admitted that his company had unintentionally misstated its earnings several years in a row and had actually lost money. Wall Street's reaction was swift: the stock dropped from a high of $313 to a low of $17.93 in a matter of days. But now Saylor is bounding back. In June MicroStrategy rolled out what could prove to be a hot new product that does more advanced data crunching. The stock has significantly increased from its all-time low. He's still got enough left to move ahead with a $100 million pledge to set up an "online, Ivy League-quality university." And, oh, yes, there's been no cancellation of his planned $50 million mansion on the Potomac--modeled partly on the White House and partly on the Palace of Versailles. --A.Z.

JERRY BERMAN, 60 Free speech on campus and beer in the Bear's Lair" was Jerry Berman's campaign slogan when he ran for student-body vice president at Berkeley in 1962. "I wanted the radicals," he recalls, "but I was trying to get the fraternity vote too." Berman lost that race, but he has used his big-tent style to become a major political operator as head of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington-based advocacy group. As a proponent of free speech and privacy on the Net, Berman helped overturn the Communications Decency Act of 1996, Congress's attempt to outlaw pornography on the Internet. Now Berman and his nonprofit center are fighting for legislation to protect consumer privacy on the Internet. The very corporations he often opposes, including America Online and Microsoft, finance his $1.25 million annual crusade. Says Berman: "Being an advocate doesn't always mean being an adversary." --By John Simons

JAMES V. KIMSEY, 61 It may be the best office in Washington: a corner suite one block from the White House, with a sweeping view of the Washington Monument. It's only fitting that the office of Oliver Carr, the city's premier bricks-and-mortar developer for the past 40 years, now belongs to James V. Kimsey, co-founder of America Online and the guy who brought the new economy to Washington's doorstep by keeping AOL in his hometown. He entered the high-tech world in the early '80s when he became chief executive of Control Video Corp., an interactive-games company. Then Kimsey hired a kid from Pizza Hut named Steve Case. In 1985 he and Case started Quantum Computer Services, the company that became AOL, now a $135 billion giant that by the end of the year hopes to own Time Warner, parent of TIME. Kimsey chairs the philanthropic AOL Foundation and dozens of other charitable, business and educational boards. --M.A.