Contributors

 

At first, Howard Lefkowitz, CEO of Vegas.com, seemed like a typical "I'm-on-my-BlackBerry-all-day CEO," says Inc. associate editor Hannah Clark Steiman (The Way I Work). Then she heard about the scuba pool in his yard. And the fact that his last assistant left the company to become a stripper. "Lefkowitz manages to participate fully in the madness of Vegas while running a company," Steiman says. "I'm not sure where he gets the stamina." But that doesn't mean he ignores his BlackBerry; indeed, he gets sales updates e-mailed to him every half hour.

Jennifer Gill has never been offered a sign-on bonus or any of the other perks she looked into for Inc.'s guide to executive salaries (here). But as a researcher at Newsweek, in the early 1990s, she did get to take a company-paid car service home when leaving the office late at night. "My driver one night was so wonderful that I married him," she says. Gill also writes for Working Mother and Real Simple.

For this month's cover story on Zipcar photographer Michael Edwards stuffed 18 people into a convertible Mini Cooper. (The record is 21 people--in a hardtop.) It was easier than he thought it would be. "I lined them up, each one staked their claim, and within three minutes, they were in the car," says Edwards. Could a new record be far behind? Edwards has worked for New York, Esquire, and Newsweek. He lives in New York City with his wife, daughter, and pit bull.

Underwater photographer Ric Frazier has swum with sharks, manta rays, and Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps. For The Way I Work, he got wet with Vegas.com CEO Howard Lefkowitz. Lefkowitz came prepared, wearing a suit lined with lead fishing weights. The two bonded over their shared obsession with scuba, and Frazier spent time with Lefkowitz and his family after the shoot. "People are really attracted to him for some reason," says Frazier. "He's very outgoing. He'll talk to anyone about any given subject."

Jill Hecht Maxwell talked with a dozen CEOs for "How the War Changed My Business", including several who had left their businesses behind when they were called to serve. "One said he knew that if he were deployed, his business would be dead, so he just shut it down," she says. Maxwell, a former staff writer at Inc., is based in Boston. This is her first article since she left the magazine five years ago to raise two children.