39. Katherine Heaviside

If you want to search for a list of influential companies on Long Island, there’s an online resource that rivals Google—the Epoch 5 website. Huntington-based Epoch 5’s client roster reads like the encyclopedia of important Long Island corporations—the result of decades of hard work and relationships forged by the firm’s CEO, Katherine Heaviside. The term “publicist” has become somewhat of a punchline in an industry rife with self-proclaimed “social media experts” and self-employed (Read: unemployed) marketing gurus with a degree in communications. But publicity done at Heaviside’s level is no laughing matter. Companies large and small rely on Heaviside’s deep knowledge of the market and the players behind the scenes for everything from promoting new projects to doing serious crisis management.