Women are ascending the ranks of media across all platforms—running movie studios, winning an Academy Award for best director, anchoring network evening news and launching innovative Internet companies. Many are Moms-in-Chief, finding ways to juggle a booming career and family life. Working Mother highlights those dual accomplishments. We choose workingmother.com’s Most Powerful Moms in Media with specific criteria. First, the woman must be a major mover and shaker in the media world—an innovator, influencer or someone with massive earning potential. Each woman must have at least one child in her household under 18 years old. We have tried to represent the top working mothers from a variety media platforms including television and radio, the movies, and the Internet, behind the scenes and in front of the camera. The women on this list range from the super famous (it’s hard to imagine someone not knowing who actress Angelina Jolie is) to women whose names are less recognizable, but whose influence is just as palpable and whose companies may be household names.

Most Powerful Moms in Media in pictures

One place media mavens have really hit their stride is Hollywood and not just on the Walk of Fame. Amy Pascal got her first job in junior high school wrapping books in a Los Angeles bookstore. She’s come a long way since then and is now the Co-Chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, a multi-billion dollar movie studio. Pascal and her husband, who is the Hollywood reporter for the New York Times, adopted a son eleven years ago just as her career was revving up. Pascal has never regretted the decision. She says, “Now, we try to set boundaries of how much we live in the entertainment world and how much we live in the world of our own family. It's hard, like juggling mountains." Pascal isn’t the only woman in Hollywood juggling the demands of a booming career and a family life.

Two of the world's best known actress moms are proving that the big screen and the demands of family and the greater community can come together. Angelina Jolie is the top-earning actress in Hollywood, earning $27 million dollars in 2009 according to Forbes, travels the world for the United Nations and has a brood of six kids under 8, three of whom are adopted. Her reach and influence are undeniable—just turn on the TV or head to the newsstand to look at magazine covers. Right there at the top is Julia Roberts is one of the most successful actresses in American film history—her movies have grossed over $2 billion collectively (she is the first woman to reach this milestone). Mom of three under age 5, she puts her insurmountable energy behind special causes like The Hole in the Wall Gang camps, founded by her friend Paul Newman. The camps serve children with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses worldwide.

Women are playing increasingly important roles in television. Former lawyer Debra Lee became the CEO of BET Holdings in 2005, and has since set about increasing the revenue and reach of the first media conglomerate to specifically target an African American audience. BET’s flagship cable channel had its highest viewership numbers in the company’s history in 2009 with an average of 512,000 viewers. The 2009 BET Awards drew 10.7 million viewers and was the number one watched cable awards show of the year. A testament to BET’s power, “A few months ago, President Obama invited me to come in and meet with a group of 12 CEOs to talk about the stimulus package,” says Lee. “He said BET should be there talking with the likes of Mattel and Xerox.” Lee is also the highest-ranking African-American woman executive at BET’s parent company, Viacom.

Katie Couric also makes the list as the anchor of CBS’s Evening News, a role that she assumed in 2006. At the time, she was the only woman to hold the lead anchor position on a network evening news bradcast. (Since then, Diane Sawyer has become an anchor on ABC.) There are few newsmakers Couric hasn’t interviewed in her career, and from her position in the anchor chair, she helps call the shots of what CBS Evening News is reporting on a daily basis. The birth of her daughters seemed very public, as she was the face of morning television on NBC's Today. Now she has the challenge of dealing with two teen girls at home.

On the Internet women are particularly making their presence felt—and innovating the way that media works. Sheryl Sandberg became the COO of social media powerhouse Facebook in 2008. She was tasked with monetizing the site, and her efforts appear to be paying off. While Facebook does not release revenue numbers, industry insiders estimate that the company raked in around $700 million in 2009 and is on track to do $1 billion in revenue in 2010.

Many women are also succeeding by starting up their own companies and capitalizing on the changing face of the media. Large numbers of seasoned women journalists are making the leap onto the web, but few have been as innovative about their approach as Lisa Stone, who is a co-founder of the blogger network for women, BlogHer. The network reaches 20 million people each month (to put that in perspective that number is not far behind the NYTimes.com which receives around 17.5 million unique visitors a month–where CEO Janet Robinson sits at the helm).

The increasing influence that women hold in new media is particularly important, as it will open doors for women in the next generations to play vital roles. And hopefully, as moms in media rise to the top they will build and lead companies with family-friendly work environments–something the 24/7 media has not always been known for.