Corporate development is a pretty mobile profession, with many executives rotating into the job and later transitioning into other positions within their company or outside it. Aileen Stockburger isn't one of them. Stockburger joined Johnson & Johnson 19 years ago, straight out of the Wharton School of Business, and has spent nearly all of the years since in business development at J&J. For the past year she's been vice president of worldwide business development for J&J's medical devices and diagnostics group.

"You have two kinds of people," says Stockburger. "Those who come in and learn business development for a couple of years and move back to where they came from, often to get on a controller, CFO track. Others see it as a profession like finance or marketing. We have both at our company. I'm a professional corporate development person."

Stockburger has worked in finance for the corporate M&A group, and done biz dev stints in healthcare, orthopedics and consumer products -- where she led the 2006 $16.6 billion deal to buy Pfizer Inc.'s consumer healthcare unit. What's kept Stockburger making deals? "It's exciting. There is no standard, every deal is unique and you can never anticipate what's going to happen." - Suzanne Stevens

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