As general manager and vice president of multicultural beauty at Alberto Culver Co., Sheryl Adkins-Green develops and implements strategies to build market share through consumer awareness of the company’s brands. In the course of her tenure at the Melrose Park, Ill., hair and beauty-care conglomerate, she has taken its portfolio of multicultural brands, notably Pro-Line International, into the global marketplace and lifted Alberto Culver to the No. 2 spot in the industry—no small feat. Deploying Pro-Line worldwide was daunting, she concedes. But “challenges are opportunities to excel,” she says.

Adkins-Green holds a M.B.A. from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin. She cut her business teeth at corporate giants like Cadbury Schweppes, Citigroup and Kraft Foods, with responsibilities from strategic marketing and operations to product development and fiscal oversight. “One’s career is more of a reflection of results and the effort one invests versus the title one is given or the employer one works for” she says.

Of all her accomplishments, Adkins-Green hails as one of her greatest A Better Chance of Westport, Conn., an educational initiative she co-founded to provide high-potential minority youth with the assistance they need to attend the best private and public preparatory schools before venturing off to college. “Success is not in how much money you make, but rather the difference you make in the world and in the lives of others,” she says.