The former Anna Wintour protégé and ex-editor of Harper's Bazaar, Betts now oversees style coverage for Time and The Daily Beast.

Betts didn't waste any time climbing the fashion media ladder. After graduating from Princeton, she moved to Paris, interning briefly at the International Herald Tribune before landing a reporting gig at WWD's Paris bureau. A protégé of John Fairchild, she was promoted to bureau chief by the age of 27. Two years later she was summoned to New York by Anna Wintour, who named her Vogue's fashion news editor. Despite some early stumbling blocks (she says she cried in her little office for the first three months because no one would talk to her) Betts quickly became a hot commodity at Condé Nast and one of Wintour's most trusted lieutenants, not to mention the ice queen's oft-speculated heir apparent. But when it became clear that any succession was a long way off (and when Wintour found a new BFF in the office, Plum Sykes), Betts made her escape plan.

After dismissing two offers from Condé Nast, she went after the editorship of Harper's Bazaar, which was vacant following the death of Liz Tilberis. Betts quickly set about giving Harper's a complete overhaul, but her more austere version wasn't a hit. When subscribers protested and advertisers threatened to depart, Betts was fired after just two years. In 2003, she became a contributing editor at the far less fashion-centric Time, and habitually contributes to Tina Brown's The Daily Beast and can be found on CNN. In an effort to keep busy, she also penned the book 2011 Everyday Icon: Michelle Obama and the Power of Style. [Image via Getty]