Katz is a former Democratic City Council member who represented the Queens neighborhoods of Forest Hill, Rego Park, and Kew Gardens. These days in the private sector at Greenberg Traurig's.

After law school at St. John's University, Katz took a job as an associate at the white-shoe firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, working in the mergers and acquisitions group headed up by Dennis Block. In 1994, she quit law to run for State Assembly member Alan Hevesi's seat when he became city comptroller. After an unsuccessful campaign for the Congressional seat vacated by Charles Schumer in 1998—Anthony Weiner eked her out by a nose in the primary—she was elected to the City Council in 2001.

While on City Council Katz headed up the Council's land use committee, which was responsible for approving rezoning measures that will ultimately give an extreme makeover to wide-ranging pockets of the city from Greater Jamaica to Williamsburg and Greenpoint. It was the Katz-led committee that also approved an Ikea in Red Hook, although it rejected a big-box BJ's in the Bronx, after which Wal-Mart dropped plans for a similar project in her Queens district. But while Katz remains the Council's queen of land use, she seems to hold a weaker political hand than she used to, and in 2009 she left City Council to enter the private sector, where she still focuses on development and rezoning projects.

Katz is unmarried, but her love life has generated plenty of discussion in political circles. In 2006, Page Six reported that several politicos had seen Katz and her married mentor Hevesi "making out" in public; Katz hotly denied the rumors. In 2008, she gave birth to baby boy whom she conceived via in-vitro fertilization. [Image via Getty]