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Michael Duda, 35

Partner

Deutsch Inc.

Even when Michael Duda is sitting at his tidy desk in the high-ceilinged Chelsea offices of advertising agency Deutsch Inc., his mind is never far from Wall Street. A video monitor is tuned to CNBC so he can follow the markets, and a vertical file overflows with articles from Private Equity Week and other financial journals.

Mr. Duda, the baby-faced director of business development and corporate initiatives at Deutsch, lives and dies by the decisions of corporate marketing officers who hire and fire ad agencies. But he also needs to get inside the heads of the investors who ultimately pass judgment on whether agencies make the grade.

"At the end of the day, you are going to be held accountable to them, because that's who our clients are held accountable to," he says.

That approach is not lost on Deutsch's clients. "My job is all about increasing shareholder value, and Mike gets that," says Paul Guyardo, executive vice president of sales and marketing at DirecTV.

One of seven partners who run 1,000-employee Deutsch, Mr. Duda is the youngest person to hold the title. He was promoted in 2005, shortly after agency leader Donny Deutsch turned over day-to-day operations to a new chief executive. During that tumultuous period, accounts were lost, and revenue declined. "It was a bad year," Mr. Duda admits.

2006 was a different story. Mr. Duda was instrumental in securing the return of client DirecTV, which had fired his agency two years earlier. The deal was a coup, since DirecTV spends $180 million a year on advertising.

"The mark of a champion," says Mr. Duda, "is your resiliency when you face bad news."

- Richard Barbieri

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