Stand and deliver: tough times? Hard choices? Bring it on, say Latin America's most capable young CEOs.

Ask top young Latin American executives what they most like about their jobs, and they'll tell you they love a challenge.

"You have to expose yourself as quickly as possible to difficult situations because that's where you learn most," says Ernesto Vogeler, CEO of Protinal-Proagro in Venezuela, who took over the failing feedstock company and turned it into a moneymaker in short order.

Vogeler is among 13 executives tapped as the most talented of a new generation of Latin American business leaders that seems to feed on challenge. According to an exclusive LATIN TRADE poll of top international recruiters, today's executives are flexible and can adapt quickly to new circumstances. They are daring yet methodical, have no fear of risk and like to create, fix and transform their enterprises.

LATIN TRADE asked 50 recruiters from across the region to name their top picks for outstanding young business leaders. We received 229 candidates from 13 industries. Of those, a handful were repeated at least twice by headhunters at unrelated firms and three stood out--with multiple nods--as the go-to managers for the coming decades.

Mergers, restructurings and generational transformations are the signs of the times. Our young execs have traveled abroad to learn how other companies manage similar situations. Many introduced new foreign partners and investors that later took active roles in changes. Our young leaders also worked to develop new markets after domestic growth limits were reached.

Latin America's best young CEOs are "professionals who believe that Latin America is not different [from other regions] ... and are trying to create change," says Jose Macaya, a consultant for Macaya & Suarez Battan Asesores in Argentina.

Colombians are in heavy demand. Seven are in the final cut of 13 top choices. And although they are leaders in different industries, they also all feel a very strong social commitment to their native land.

"We are a country that has been affected by guerrilla warfare for 40 years and we continue to struggle, build and develop" says Enrique Bayer, general director of Clinica Universitaria Teleton in Bogota. "We are still here. We are brave to stay here in our country, providing our ideas, our time and our integrity, for the future of a better society."

The large number of Colombians in the listing is no coincidence. They have traveled a hard road, learning from mistakes made in the past, and they are eager to see their country improve. "This generation understood that we come from a directing class that lacked leadership and these young men feel the commitment, enthusiasm, attitude, energy and dynamism to lead their country forward," says Lourdes Cabrales, a consultant with Heidrick & Struggles in Colombia.

The top young CEOs share a thirst for change, Samuel Azout, CEO of Colombian retailer Carulla Vivero, as did Vogeler and Bayer, turned companies on the verge of bankruptcy into dominant institutions in the region. Emilio Azcarraga, CEO of Televisa in Mexico and Lorenzo Mendoza, CEO of Empresas Polar in Venezuela, broke with tradition and made drastic changes in their family businesses. Mauricio Campillo, CEO of Tecnologia Empresarial de Alimentos (TEAM) spearheaded the merger of four vegetable and cooking-oil companies, a plastic bottler and a food trading company in Colombia. The process included a US$50 million investment, of which $35 million was raised from the company's own cash flow.

Argentine Alec Oxenford, CEO of auction Web site Deremate.com, not only survived the Internet crash but took advantage of tough times to solidify his business, quickly making it the leader in online sales across Latin America. Since founding his company in 2001, Oxenford has developed an expansion strategy for 11 countries, creating the biggest online marketplace in the region. He led three rounds of financing for the company, raising more than $60 million and implemented alliances with multinational companies like Terra Lycos and Microsoft.

All this before his 35th birthday.

When describing their task as CEO, they all agree on one thing. They all got involved because the challenge was interesting. In Colombia, for instance, Bayer transformed Clinica Universitaria Teleton.

Six years ago, the clinic was a physical rehabilitation center with no patients and little technology, Bayer says. Today, it is one of the five most-respected physical rehabilitation centers in the world and the only one in Latin America that offers hydrotherapy rehabilitation and services to patients of all ages, not simply children. It is also a hospital with an interdisciplinary staff practicing in 95% of medical areas.

The institution is also a research and practice center for Universidad de la Sabana, which signed a contract six years ago to run the clinic and hired Bayer as head of the new organization. "Next, we will open intensive care facilities in pediatrics and maternity. We want to be able to perform transplants and heart surgery," says Bayer. "We have a lot to do and a long way to go."

Calculated risk. Like his Colombian colleagues, Bayer feels a responsibility toward his country, too. "We combine youth and calculated risk-taking with the studies of what needs to be done," Bayer says.

Similarly, in Venezuela, Vogeler presented a restructuring plan for the company he now presides over, based on a field study he did while completing a master's degree at Harvard. When he became CEO of Protinal-Proagro he sold two units that were not part of the core business--poultry--to reduce costs, concentrating instead on developing a marketing strategy to position the brand at the top of the market.

In eight months, the company doubled sales despite reducing headcount by 1,700. "With the equity raised by asset sales, debts were rolled over and we renegotiated with creditors," Vogeler says.

One of those creditors, AGP, a U.S. cooperative made up of 250,000 agricultural companies with $2 billion in revenues, became co-owner of Protinal-Proagro. "Our strategy was to get back to basics. We concentrated on the core business of the company and then went international," says Vogeler, who is also director of the Venezuelan-American Chamber of Commerce.

The 40-year-old CEO says that thanks to volatile governments and economies in Latin America, young people have had to take responsibility for risk. That responsibility has led to the drastic, if calculated, decisions that have positioned Protinal-Proagro as a dominant agricultural company in the region.

Azcarraga and Mendoza, on the other hand, have managed to break the traditional structure of their businesses imposed by preceding generations. In addition to improving their companies' way of doing business, generational differences have marked them as unusual young men.

Azcarraga inherited media giant Televisa, a typical Mexican family-owned business, where being boss meant being strong and distant. That's no longer true. The first action he took was a house cleaning of operations and a dismantling of hierarchical barriers, say recruiters.

Latin America's young executives no longer sit in a top-floor office, recruiters say. Instead, they are seen walking the hallways and personally training new work teams. Mendoza did something similar to Azcarraga at Venezuela's Polar. Before turning 40, he dissolved the traditional company structures built by his family, consolidated the company and carried out a tough restructuring, creating new businesses and buying new companies. Today, Polar's portfolio includes Quaker, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, and Frito-Lay. All this in his first five years as CEO.

What give these new business leaders such a potent combination of abilities is their broad academic and professional backgrounds. Many are engineers with masters in business administration (MBA) degrees from the United States, including Mendoza; Guillermo Aponte, country manager of Coca-Cola in Colombia; Eduardo Franco Mackenzie, president and general director of Oracle Colombia; and Mauricio Camargo, principal consultant at McKinsey & Company, also in Colombia.

Higher learning. Four CEOs from our ranking--Aponte, Vogeler, Pfizer's Guillermo Azuero and Oxenford--received their MBA degrees from Harvard. Camargo and Mendoza went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. One, Samuel Azout of Carulla Vivero, studied at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Knowing how to handle both the commercial and financial issues are key now, says Maria Cristina Mejia, a consultant with Heidrick & Struggles in Colombia. And these men, she says, have done it well. "The more abilities you have, the better," says Mejia. "You have to be prepared in the mechanical aspect, but you have to be fast and sharp to be able to conduct business well."

In addition to the innate leadership shown by these young CEOs, some of them benefited from the preparation that some companies--often multinationals--provide to their executives, recruiters say. One is the consultancy McKinsey & Company, where Colombian Mauricio Camargo is a partner. While playing a major role in the company's growth in Colombia and Venezuela, Camargo gained experience and professional development at McKinsey. "Since I've gotten here it's been like school," says Camargo. "The key has been working as a team and that's how we do it in Colombia. We invested in getting the right people to make change, and we achieved that, as a team."

Nevertheless, Camargo recognizes that his job is just beginning and what has been his training ground in some senses is also his biggest professional challenge. "There's always a very long road ahead" he says.

The top young executives in Latin America not only want to learn, they know they need to learn. Competition is no longer about the other leading companies in their home country but thousands of foreign competitors who also want to be No. 1. Business at this scale is faster and more aggressive than ever.

Until the 1980s, protectionism and closed economies provided the opportunity to build empires, says Ricardo Weihmann, a recruiter for Egon Zehnder International in Mexico. The local market was guaranteed.

With the development of advanced technology and globalization, the ability to enter international markets became the top priority. Those that could not compete disappeared. "That's why now you see more young people assuming key positions of high responsibility in organizations," Weihmann says. "They are well prepared, have new mindsets ready to produce, and are reaching fast the decision-making roles in their businesses."

Previous generations, too, were often independent individuals, recruiters say. Today, the only way to assure a company's permanence and success is to know how to pull together and lead a great team. "You have to have the ability to effectively position yourself in a highly educated world," says Weihmann.

Carulla Vivero CEO Azout agrees. A clear vision of what you want to create is key, as is the ability to communicate that idea to those who work with you so everybody can embrace it and work together. "For extraordinary times," he says, "you need an extraordinary team."