Impact players: looking back over the magazine's history, we decided these people had key roles in what has happened here.

• Position: 25TH ANNIVERSARY

Since its beginning, this magazine has told the story of business in North Carolina by telling stories of business people. So it seems logical that to mark BNC's silver anniversary we would pick the 25 people we thought had the most impact on the Tar Heel economy during the past quarter century. After months of mulling hundreds of names and debating their merits, the magazine's editors came up with the two dozen whose careers are condensed in the capsules on the pages that follow and one more--not an individual but another nation's class of people--who may have had the biggest impact of all. Telling that story takes a full feature, which begins on page 70. Perhaps it's worth noting that this list, with that exception, is all male and, but for one, all white. It's likely to be more diverse 25 years hence.

A few years ago, a political scientist pondered whether Marc Basnight, president pro tem of the N.C. Senate since 1993, might run for governor. "Why would he take the cut in power?" the scholar mused. Considered by many the most powerful figure in state politics, Basnight (1947-) has never dazzled audiences with his oratory, but he doles out patronage with aplomb, disburses political money astutely, strong-arms unruly members of the upper chamber into line and consolidated the power of the office he holds. Nowhere is his influence as evident as in Eastern North Carolina's infrastructure: The Dare County Democrat has poured billions in road and pork-barrel spending into the region, the state's poorest. As for the future, some suggest he might make a run at the U.S. Senate. But Basnight has shown little interest in a demotion.

Twenty years after he retired, Bill Friday's name remains synonymous with one of the state's most powerful economic-development engines: the University of North Carolina. During his 30 years as its president, the longest tenure of any university president in the 20th century, Friday (1920-) took the system from three campuses to its current 16, guiding it through all the social and political tumult those decades held. A gifted politician, he worked the legislature like a magician, convincing lawmakers that, despite partisan politics, differing constituencies and regional rivalries, the university system was an asset the entire state should rally around and invest in. He was especially adept at getting the money that turned UNC Chapel Hill and N.C. State into top-flight research universities. Even now, Friday remains a potent behind-the-scenes power.

North Carolina can thank Tom Davis (1918-1999) for the US Airways hub at Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which, certainly more than the Queen City's professional sports teams and perhaps even as much as its big banks, made the city what it is today. Without the flight connections provided after Piedmont Airlines opened the hub in 1981, Charlotte could not have grown into a major financial center. Davis had launched Winston-Salem-based Piedmont in the late '40s. It grew into the nation's 10th-largest airline--and the world's 17th-largest--by the end of 1983, the year he retired. Piedmont would become the eighth-largest U.S. carrier in 1986, the year before it agreed to merge with USAir. Charlotte Douglas became--and remains--US Airways' biggest passenger hub and last year was the nation's 18th busiest airport.

When Charlotte elected Harvey Gantt (1943-) mayor in 1983, it solidified its reputation as a place open for business: a white-majority Southern city where the color that counted most was the color of money. A South Carolina-born architect, the first black American admitted to Clemson University, he had been on the City Council since 1974 and worked well with the business elite, who knew the value a progressive sheen gave the Queen City in the eyes of national companies who would hesitate to set up shop amid old Dixie's dregs. In his four years in office, Charlotte boomed, adding thousands of jobs and seeing its banks emerge as regional leaders. When Gantt ran as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate against incumbent Jesse Helms in 1990 and '96, Old South prevailed over New. But Charlotte's image--and North Carolina's--had been set.

Jim Goodnight (1943-) brought Silicon Valley to Tobacco Road. His Cary-based SAS Institute is the world's largest privately held software manufacturer, a...