---

Andrea Ogunkoya, 32

Vice president of operations, sales and marketing

Storage Deluxe

You can't plan for this job," says Andrea Ogunkoya of the new responsibilities she was handed last year as head of operations at Storage Deluxe. "You have to think on your feet all the time--it's sink or swim."

To many, that might sound like the job from hell. Not to Ms. Ogunkoya. "I didn't realize how little I was challenged in my old job," she says.

Ms. Ogunkoya aims high and excels at convincing others that they should, too. Shortly after signing on at the Manhattan-based self-storage startup in 2004 as head of marketing, she set up the Storage Deluxe Olympics. The game got the firm's 120 employees at its dozen facilities out drumming up business as they competed for medals and cash.

"Her approach was very empowering," says David Lazarus, a senior vice president at Lehman Brothers and a former Storage Deluxe partner. "Everyone at the facilities became a salesman." With so many hands pulling on the oars, sales nearly doubled.

Creating campaigns that reach out to a broad range of people comes naturally to Ms. Ogunkoya, who was born in Nigeria and moved to England at the age of 8. On a trip to New York in 1994, she stopped in at a cell phone shop and left with a job offer as a sales assistant. She took it and then rose quickly. Later, at Nortel Networks, she became a senior sales executive before moving on to a marketing consulting firm, where her work caught the eye of her current boss.

Now she is restructuring the compensation system at Storage Deluxe to emphasize incentives over base pay. "If you bust your butt for us, you will be rewarded," she says.

- Erik Ipsen

---