David M. Cote is among the highest-paid CEOs in the country. He spent 25 years with General Electric, mostly as a senior executive. In 1999, he left the company and became the chairman, president and CEO of TRW Inc., a provider of products and services for the aerospace, information systems and automotive markets, where he worked until 2002. That year, he joined Honeywell International, a leading manufacturer of military aerospace products.

In 2011, Cote made more than $37 million in salary and bonuses from Honeywell, according to a review of public records. That year, JPMorgan Chase also paid him $245,000 for serving as a director on its board. Cote was a director at JPMorgan Chase from 2007 to 2013. In February of this year, Cote was nominated as a Class B director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for a term that would end Dec. 31, 2016. According to the bank's guidelines, a Class B director cannot be an officer, director or an employee with any bank -- meaning Cote won't be able to hold additional positions with banks like JPMorgan.

Cote advocates for expanding access to energy supplies in North America through development of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which, if built, could carry 830,000 barrels of oil daily from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. Environmental groups strongly oppose the pipeline.

Cote is also a member of the steering committee of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, a bipartisan group that advocates for a federal debt-reduction plan. He also is vice chairman of the Business Roundtable, a pro-business advocacy group.

In 2010, President Barack Obama named Cote to the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, known as the Simpson-Bowles commission. Obama also tapped Cote to serve as co-chairman of the U.S.-India CEO Forum.

A graduate of the University of New Hampshire, in 2009 Cote received an honorary professorship from the Beihang University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Beijing, China.