JUDY RUNSTAD Public Corporation Governance

Growing up in the small town of Fruitland, Idaho, Judy Runstad remembers discovering that "If you wanted to make things happen, you had to make them happen yourself." But with that can-do attitude came a strong credo: Anything worth doing is worth doing right.

She followed that principle as a Seattle real estate, land use and environmental attorney, helping to lead major civic and business enterprises. "She is one of the most well-connected people in the region," says Phyllis Campbell, president and CEO of The Seattle Foundation. "She's able to bring a board together around a position and really energize people toward action."

A former chairwoman of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, Runstad serves on the boards of Wells Fargo & Co., Safeco Corp. and Potlatch Corp. She also co-chaired the Washington Competitiveness Council and has served on five gubernatorial commissions. On issues of ethics, Runstad says, she listens to her "inner voice." She explains: "Anytime an issue pushes you over what you consider is the right thing to do, then you're beginning to blur and be beyond the ethical bounds."

KEITH GRINSTEIN Corporate Growth

"We're mentoring, not investing," Keith Grinstein once said in described his approach to helping young start-up companies.

The remark reflected Grinstein's focus on the personal and educational aspects of helping earlystage companies find their footing. "He's one of those guys who's so full of life and so funny that when he comes into a room, he dominates it in as positive a way as you can imagine," says Greg Gottesman, a partner with Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group.

Gottesman, who has known Grinstein for more than 10 years, says Grinstein understands that the job of a director isn't to "run the day-to-day operations of the company, but to help management see the big picture and to ask the tough questions to help them think more strategically."

Grinstein, whose education includes a law degree from Georgetown University, is a founding partner of Second Avenue Partners, one of Seattle's most experienced venture capital firms. He is chairman of Coinstar Inc., where he chairs the company's compensation committee and is responsible for board oversight, strategy and compliance. He's also a former chairman of Wireless Services Corp., and his service on other boards includes F5 Networks and Nextera.

PETER VAN OPPEN Guidance in Transition

Where others saw recession, Peter van Oppen saw an opportunity for growth. At least as early as 2000, when shareholders and investors were prodding companies to cut back, van Oppen, chairman and CEO of Redmond-based Advanced Digital Information Corp., invested millions in research and development, and sales and marketing to position ADIC to outdo its competition after the recession ended.

His strategy paid off. After posting a rare annual loss in 2001, the company, which builds data-storage systems for large companies, posted record revenues in 2003. "The right thing to do was to bet on the future of the business," van Oppen later said.

During 2005 and 2006, van Oppen served on the boards of Western Wireless and the Basketball Club of Seattle, the former owner of the SuperSonics, guiding those companies through the acquisition process while working with his own board on the sale of ADIC to Quantum Corp. He continues to serve as a director of the Basketball Club and has served as a director of numerous public corporations and private entities. Chris Bayley, chairman of Seattle-based environmental group Stewardship Partners, says van Oppen is able to see the next step in the evolution of a business. "What he saw was that the computer age had matured to the point where it wasn't so much the computers but the data that was becoming more and more significant, and the growth would take place in how to take care of all this data that was multiplying every year."