Dina Powell McCormick

Dina Powell McCormick is vice chairman at BDT & MSD Partners, a Chicago- and New York–based merchant bank with $70 billion in assets under management from some of the world's wealthiest families—but her title belies her power. The former Goldman Sachs exec, who was the bank’s global head of sovereign business with a focus on institutional investors, wields enormous behind-the-scenes influence that is ever-growing as the second Trump administration gets further underway. Powell McCormick, who was deputy national security adviser during Trump’s first term, joined execs like Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat on the president’s May visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, suggesting her potential influence on business relations between the U.S. and the Middle East. (Her husband, David McCormick, is a GOP U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.) Earlier this year, Powell McCormick joined the board of Meta—and she sits on the board of Exxon.