34. Resi Cooper

Quiet, unassuming, ever-present, but never heavy-handed—Resi Cooper has a way of being in the middle of some really important things without drawing much attention to herself. When the Long Island Association wanted to get a collaborative program off the ground with the region’s major research organizations in order to give a boost to Long Island’s tech sector, it was Cooper who was tasked with organizing Accelerate Long Island. She appeared on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Regional Economic Development Council, working alongside many of the Island’s top CEOs and powerbrokers to determine projects of regional significance. And when Hillary Clinton made her most recent presidential bid, she tapped Cooper—her Long Island aide when she was senator—to run the New York operation. Some viewed this as an obvious move, when in fact it was anything but. It had been a full decade since Cooper worked with then-Sen. Clinton, having struck out on her own to form CooperHill, LLC, a boutique political consulting firm that has flourished under her tenure. Politics and conspiracy theories aside, the Democratic former U.S. Secretary of State did win the popular vote by an impressive margin of nearly 3 million votes. So regardless of who currently occupies the White House, Cooper has proven, once again, that she delivers for her clients, every single time, no matter the odds stacked against them.