BOSTON -- Here are the first 20 of the 100 most powerful women in and around Boston, as ranked by Boston Magazine. For the full list of "100 Women Who Run This Town," see the May issue of the magazine, on newsstands now.

1. Gloria Larson
53, chair, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority; cochair, government practices group, Foley, Hoag and Eliot Larson's southern charm belies her tenacity. Her stubborn push for the still-under-construction convention center-linchpin of the Seaport District-ties her closely with the mayor; her GOP pedigree (Mitt Romney reportedly asked her to be his running mate) allies her with the governor, who named her to his transition team. How much bipartisan clout does Larson have? This former state secretary of economic affairs is one of the few Republicans on the planning committee for next year's Democratic National Convention. She managed to dump well-connected longtime Hynes Convention Center chief Francis X. Joyce. She struck a deal for a planned convention center hotel without a major public subsidy. And she's kept the convention center itself largely on budget. Cochair of the government practices group at the law firm Foley, Hoag and Eliot and a member of any number of boards of directors, Larson is not mentioned merely as a candidate for lieutenant governor anymore. Now it's for governor.

2. Abigail Johnson
41, president, Fidelity Management and Research The likely successor to her 72-year-old father as Fidelity's CEO, Johnson already runs the core mutual fund business, giving her what Money magazine calls "the fattest wallet in the universe," with $775.4 billion in total assets under management for 18.4 million individual and institutional customers. She also controls 24 percent of the privately held company itself, putting her own net worth in the neighborhood of $10 billion. (Nice neighborhood.) Fiercely private, she's tied into the community through Fidelity's $306 million charitable arm, the Fidelity Foundation. Anyone who doesn't get how closely tied are the fates of Fidelity and Boston is beginning to find out the hard way as the company continues shedding more than 5 percent of its largely local 30,000-person work force.

3. Cheryl M. Cronin
48, partner, Brown Rudnick Berlack Israels Cronin is duct tape: She can fix anything. Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the engineering group accused of making multimillion-dollar mistakes on the Big Dig, tapped her to handle its negotiations with the Turnpike Authority-a job this Democrat landed in part because of her ties to Republican Jane Swift, who she counseled during the ex-governor's babysitter scandal. Cronin also steered House Speaker Tom Finneran, then-state Senate President William Bulger, and former Mayor Ray Flynn through potentially devastating imbroglios. And, as legal counsel for Boston's host committee, she helped raise more than $21 million to bolster the city's bid for next year's Democratic National Convention.

4. Myra Kraft
61, president and director, New England Patriots Charitable Foundation; trustee, the Robert K. and Myra H. Kraft Foundation Given their sizable bank account, Myra and her husband Bob could've sailed off to Tahiti years ago. But they didn't. ("We like to work. It's fun," says her son Jonathan, CEO of the Kraft Group, whose holdings include box factories, paper mills, a new stadium, and one NFL franchise you may have heard of.) Before her husband acquired the Patriots in '94, Myra Kraft was already running the family's charitable foundation and was on the boards of the American Repertory Theatre and Brandeis (where she's now vice chair). Since then, she's built the Patriots' charitable arm, which has handed out millions to needy causes. She's joined the board of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston (she was the first woman chair.) And her clout has reached into war-torn Israel, the beneficiary of millions being used for schools and the Kraft Stadium for American football in Jerusalem.

5. Cathy Minehan
56, president and CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston When Minehan talks, business listens. In addition to her role as head of the Boston Federal Reserve Bank, she chairs the Fed's Financial Services Policy Committee, which advises Alan Greenspan on national policy. She doesn't neglect the home accounts. Few can get Boston business leaders into a room the way Minehan does. As chair of the Boston Private Industry Council, she's pushed work-force training and education as keys to the city's future. She's the force behind the Creative Economy Council, which plans to pick up the slack in arts funding. For these reasons, she was named a New Englander of the Year last year by the New England Council.

6. Anne Finucane
50, executive vice president for corporate marketing and communications, FleetBoston Financial Finucane is one of three executives in charge of the entire personal financial services division of New England's biggest bank, which has 5.5 million accountholders. She controls Fleet's annual advertising budget-more than $100 million, making the bank the biggest customer of ad agency Hill, Holliday's Boston office (run by fellow power listee Karen Kaplan). Finucane used to work in the mayor's office, where she picked up something else it never hurts to have in this town: political savvy. Wife of radio talk-show host Mike Barnicle, she's also president of the Massachusetts Women's Forum, chair of the FleetBoston Financial Charitable Foundation (run by fellow power listee Gail Snowden), and a board member of the Boston Public Library Foundation and the Museum of Fine Arts.

7. Orit Gadiesh
52, chair, Bain and Company She stands over 6 feet tall in heels. She worked in military intelligence in her native Israel. And she runs one of the world's largest, most elite business-consulting firms, with big-hitter clients like De Beers, ITT, and Dell. Twelve years ago, Gadiesh succeeded Mitt Romney as head of what was once called the KGB of consulting firms. Given her connections to the governor, it was no surprise when he named her to his transition team. Gadiesh was one of only two Bostonians listed the last time Fortune magazine published its female power list in 2000.

8. Coleen Marren
50, news director, WCVB-TV, Channel 5
Lisa Hall
31, vice president and news director, FOX 25
Pamela Johnston
35, news director, WB56
Across the nation, roughly 25 percent of television news directors are women. Here in Boston, half of them are. Another newsy tidbit: According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Committee of Concerned Journalists, in an industry survey that looked at 17 large cities last year, Boston is ranked at the top of the list for the highest quality news programming.

9. Beth E. Myers
46, chief of staff, Governor Mitt Romney
Cindy Gillespie
45, chief of legislative and intergovernmental affairs, Governor Mitt Romney
Myers, who served as a key adviser to the Romney campaign (she played Shannon O'Brien during debate preparations), oversees the governor's operations, setting his schedule, coordinating his appearances, and deciding who gets face time with him. Meanwhile, Gillespie's job is to push Romney's proposals through the legislature. How much respect does she command? She's a Democrat, appointed by a Republican governor as his top inside player. "She's the one (Romney) looks to before he makes the final determination on just about anything," according to Senate President Robert Travaglini.

10. Gail Snowden
57, executive vice president and managing director, Fleet Community Investment Group As racial tensions divided Upper Roxbury half a century ago, Otto and Muriel Snowden founded Freedom House to help the community remain racially and socioeconomically mixed. Today their daughter, Gail Snowden, is following their example as one of the city's most powerful women executives, and a key voice in efforts to lure black executives to Boston. The first woman to run Fleet's loan officer training program, she heads the Community Investment Group, helping low- and moderate-income businesses and residents secure loans. She also runs the FleetBoston Financial Foundation, one of the Northeast's largest financial services philanthropies.

11. Teresa Heinz Kerry
64, chair, the Heinz Family philanthropies Heinz Kerry needs no introduction, either here or inside the Beltway. But what the hell. Raised in Mozambique, she came to the States and married future Pennsylvania Senator John Heinz of the ketchup family fame, was widowed when his plane crashed in 1991, then married Senator John Kerry in 1995. (The former staunch Republican registered as a Democrat in January, after her husband announced his presidential candidacy.) Though she shuns the spotlight, Heinz Kerry holds tons of clout as a social policy expert and as head of a foundation that distributes $4 million a year. Last year, Massachusetts adopted a new prescription-drug plan for seniors that her foundation developed. If John Kerry fares poorly in 2004, his wife may end up with more clout than him.

12. Carol Fulp
51, vice president for community relations, John Hancock Financial Services During her long career in nonprofit organizations, Fulp has sat on the boards of the United Negro College Fund, the Big Sister Association, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Boston YMCA, the Museum of Afro-American History -- you could build a house with all these boards. The Newton, Mass., resident is also a trustee of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a member of the senior executive team of the Partnership (run by fellow power listee Benaree Wiley). At her so-called day job, Fulp oversees John Hancock's corporate charity arm, which hands out some $4 million each year to programs all over Boston.

13. Heather Campion

45, executive vice president for corporate affairs, Citizens Financial Group Before she joined the area's second-largest bank as a senior executive in 1997, most of Campion's experience had been in politics and academia. She cut her teeth on President Jimmy Carter's White House staff and later worked on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. They may have lost, but Campion won herself the associate director job at the Institute of Politics at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In her current role at Citizens Financial, she heads up government relations, public affairs, and media relations, making her essentially the smiling face that fronts this huge bank, which just finished its 10th straight year of record earnings. Campion also controls the bank's charitable foundation.

14. Rear Admiral Vivien S. Crea

51, commander, First Coast Guard District; commander, Maritime Defense Command One After the buildings fell on September 11, Crea left her desk job in Washington, DC, to work the front lines of national security. Now she's in command of the Coast Guard's entire Boston-based northeastern fleet. With 2,000 miles of waterfront under her charge (from Maine to New Jersey), she has at her disposal 3,500 sailors, 350 Coast Guard vessels, and eight aircraft. (She personally can pilot turboprops, helicopters, and jets.) The first woman to make admiral in the Coast Guard and the first to command one of the nation's nine Coast Guard districts, she lives in a lighthouse in Beverly. To boot, she's got a sense of humor. When questioned by an NBC-TV reporter about what she brings to the job that a man wouldn't, she replied, "Well, I wear skirts."

15. Joan Vennochi
50, columnist, the Boston Globe Vennochi is herself this city's most artful chronicler of power, particularly in politics and business. She's a foil to a mayor who goes pretty much unchallenged elsewhere, and a contrarian about a lot of what the chamber of commerce types are pushing. Her institutional experience (she's been reporting in this town for more than two decades) makes it hard to argue with her. It also makes her one of the most powerful women in the local media, and the most powerful woman columnist in town.

16. Karen Kaplan
42, president, Hill, Holliday Boston office Two decades ago, Kaplan started at Hill, Holliday as a receptionist. Today she runs the Boston office of this advertising powerhouse, which pulls in $1 billion in annual billings. More than 400 people report to her, including 100 hired last year alone. Tough times? Not at Hill, Holliday. An indication of how hot Kaplan's firm is today: The Boston office dreamed up the Budweiser advertisement that ran after kickoff during the Super Bowl, arguably the most coveted TV ad spot of the year. Just about every media critic in America gushed over the ad, which featured the famous Bud Clydesdales playing football. "Anheuser-Busch's Clydesdales ad from Hill, Holliday was the day's gem," noted the Chicago Tribune. Other Hill, Holliday clients include Dunkin' Donuts, the Boston Globe, Fleet-Bank, and John Hancock.

17. Marian L. Heard
62, president and CEO, United Way of Massachusetts Bay Heard has a knack for wresting money from tightfisted local CEOs. The woman known in the Financial District as "St. Marian" can also invoke Governor Mitt Romney, who put the Democrat on his transition team-and whose wife, Ann, is on her board of directors. "Marian has probably had more impact on this community than anybody in the last 12 years," said one speaker at a benefit last month. Heard controls $38 million a year that's handed out to human service agencies, which are getting desperate now that the governor has all but wiped out social spending.

18. Barbara Hostetter
philanthropist, the Barr Foundation Nobody in Boston has more money to give away than Hostetter. The $850 million Barr Foundation, which she runs with her billionaire husband, Continental Cablevision founder Amos (he manages its investments; she oversees its donations), accepts grant proposals on an invitation-only basis. Over the past five years, the Hostetters have turned their foundation into the city's biggest charity based on asset size, giving away more than $40 million a year. Think she's in it for the glory? Nope. Most of her gifts are anonymous.

19. Micho Spring
53, chair of U.S. corporate practice, Weber Shandwick New England From her four years as deputy mayor (under Kevin White) to her contributions as a spokesperson for local Cuban-Americans to her role running the New England office of the world's largest public relations firm, Micho Spring has an impressive resume. Did we mention she was once CEO of a telecommunications company, and a spokesperson for the Red Sox? Spring has also been named a member of the host committee for next summer's Democratic National Convention. The most recent development: Weber Shandwick has made her chair of the firm's U.S. corporate practice, a position that takes her local clout and smears it across the nation.

20. Nancy L. Leaming 56, CEO, Tufts Health Plan This month, Leaming becomes head honcho of an HMO with nearly a million members, a network of 83 hospitals, and about 19,000 physicians. With total annual revenues of $2 billion, Tufts is one of the largest health plans in the nation. The former president and COO takes the reins at a critical time, when the healthcare industry is foundering. Along with some other healthcare execs, she was criticized last year for earning nearly $1 million in 2001 even as members were suffering major premium increases. Will the times be changing at Tufts? Stay tuned.