"She is one of the premier women in the field," says Rob Moorman, chief marketing officer of Saatchi & Saatchi, New York about CEO Mary Baglivo. "If you look at what she and [chief creative officer] Tony [Granger] have done at Saatchi, New York, the turnaround has been nothing short of amazing and she obviously gets a lot of credit for that. She put the team together, put it in place and that says a lot about her leadership."

Much praise has been heaped and many accolades bestowed upon Baglivo, recognizing her contributions as a top woman in the ad industry. She has already received such distinctions as being one of Advertising Age's "Women to Watch," Today's Chicago Woman magazine's "100 Women Who Make a Difference" and Advertising Women of New York's "Woman of the Year." She's been CEO of Euro RSCG Tatham in Chicago, COO of JWT and president of Arnold Worldwide, New York. Indeed, Baglivo's accomplishments, inspiring to future generations of women in advertising, supercede gender.

Her tenure at Saatchi & Saatchi, NY, which includes a seat on the worldwide executive board, helped to turn around the fortunes of the agency, bringing in new business from major brands in sectors that the shop hadn't traditionally dealt with, such as Ameriprise Financial, Wendy's and JC Penney.

She serves on the boards of the Ad Council, the American Advertising Federation, the Advertising Club of New York and the American Association of Advertising Agencies. On top of that she's involved with inner-city student causes for the Harlem School of the Arts and The Kids Corporation of Newark, New Jersey, while still balancing her family life as the mother of two teenagers.

Put those accomplishments up against any person in the industry - regardless of gender - and Baglivo's stands out as a stellar career, period.

I didn't think I was going to be in advertising. I don't think most people really think about that - it's not what you really learn about in school. But, when I had the opportunity to explore it I enjoyed what was happening here.

I started out working in an ad agency, Benton & Bowles, in a bullpen full of really brilliant, young people where we were all administrators. I went to graduate school [at Northwestern University for a master's in advertising], and from graduate school I went into the industry on a real level.

What I love about this industry is the creativity. It's filled with people who come from really creative backgrounds and walks of life: a lot of people are musicians, filmmakers and writers. The second thing is that it's always a team sport. It's a total collaboration. And it's always changing. The products and services that we represent are varied. The media in which we make content and distribute content, whether it be the Internet or television is varied. The consumer targets that we speak to are varied. It's a mix-up in a good sense.

With Saatchi, we had a very clear plan about how we were going to turn the company around. It had to do with the right people, strengthening our relationships with our existing clients, enhancing our creative capability and being aggressive in seeking new business, particularly in categories that the company hadn't traditionally participated in. Particularly, we were interested in retail and, lo and behold, we've become Agency of the Year at Cannes this year.

As an industry right now, we aren't really paid appropriately for the contributions that we make. Advertising campaigns, as with marketing campaigns, can really lift the value of a product or service into something that's very powerful and engenders loyalty beyond reason, as well as a tremendous amount of profit for the company that owns the product or service. Frankly, agencies don't really get paid [enough] for the value of those ideas. If I could change anything, I'd change the way we get compensated.

My advice to women getting into advertising would be the same for any industry: you can have what I call an "and/and" life if you want to. If you work hard at it, you can be a very involved parent and be an active member of your community and do volunteer work and be successful. I think a lot of young women over time are concerned that they're going to have to make choices because they can't do it all. I say to them that you can have one big life with lots of aspects to it. It's really hard, I've struggled with it personally for years but it's very doable and you absolutely can.