She's been called the first lady of American magazines - she spent more than 40 years in the world of publishing. But Cathie Black became the subject of front page news herself in 2011, during her disastrous, and very brief, appointment as New York City’s Schools Chancellor.

“I thought that the opportunity to make a difference for the 1.1 million children in New York City public schools was just incredibly energizing, incredibly motivating. And I wanted really to do it. What I didn't realize and I don't think the mayor realized it either, was that I was coming up against…was a very strong union in New York.”

It wasn’t just the unions which fought her appointment, she said. “When I became chancellor of New York City schools, I had absolutely no idea what it would be like to be hounded by every possible critic imaginable. I mean, there were three television trucks in front of my building, reporters chasing me down the street…I mean, I was eviscerated in the press day after day after

Meredith Whitney is the lightning-rod banking analyst who once shocked Wall Street and prompted a $40 billion sell-off. It's hard to believe she has ever been “intimidated ” by anything. But she was, she confessed, when she was first starting in the business.

Whitney rocked the financial world when, in 2007 at the age of 38, she predicted the mortgage bond bust. The Wall Street analyst wrote the most bearish of bearish reports on Citigroup and issued a timely - and what turned out to be prescient - outlook that the bank would be hard hit by the sub-prime mortgage meltdown.
The call shattered investor confidence in the bank and in the entire industry.

“I didn't think that people would care as much as they did. And I didn't think it would be the call that tripped the wires of the financial market,” she said. “I was hardly the toast of the town when I made the Citi call.”

It was the call that put her on the map and forced Citi’s CEO Chuck Prince out of his job.

“The day that it was