Marc Cherry

Biography: A self-declared "somewhat conservative, gay Republican," Cherry began his career in the late 1980s as Dixie Carter's real-life personal assistant for Designing Women before becoming a writer-producer on the last few seasons of The Golden Girls. Over the years he worked on a handful of other shows, including The Five Mrs. Buchanans, which starred Desperate Housewives' Harriet Sansom Harris and featured a character named Bree. By the 2000s Cherry was struggling again in the television industry, and HBO, FOX, CBS and NBC all passed on producing Desperate Housewives. However, ABC took a chance on the show in 2004 and hit pay dirt. The next year Cherry was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2005.