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Indian women CEOs are leading not only Indian, but global companies as well. Here is a list of truly inspiring women who show us the way.
Several Indians have made the country proud by bagging prestigious positions in global companies like Google and Twitter. However, among these high-achievers, there are several Indian women CEOs that people often forget.
These women CEOs have not only made India proud, but they have inspired several women to dream and achieve big. So, let us have a look at these 9 Indian women CEOs that are leading global companies.
Leena Nair became the CEO of the French luxury fashion brand Chanel in January 2022. Nair is an electronic engineering graduate from Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli. Moreover, she is a management gold medalist from XLRI, Jamshedpur.
Before joining Chanel, Nair was the Chief Human Resource Executive at British consumer-goods packaged food giant Unilever PLC before she joined Chanel in January 2022. Moreover, Nair was the first female, first Asian and the youngest Chief Human Resource Executive at Unilever. In 2021, she was awarded the Great British Business Woman Role Model of the year!
Amrapali Gan was appointed as the CEO of Only Fans in December 2021. Before she was promoted, Gan worked as the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at the company. Only Fans is a subscription-based platform where creators earn money from users who subscribe to their content.
Gan was born in Mumbai and pursued her bachelor’s from California State University, Los Angeles. Before Only Fans, Gan worked as the Head of Brand Communications at Quest Nutrition.
Sarmistha Dubey is the CEO of Match Group, which owns several dating platforms, namely Tinder, Match, OkCupid and Hinge. Brought up in Jamshedpur, Dubey pursued metallurgical engineering at IIT Kharagpur.
After graduating, she started her career as an engineer with Texas Instruments. She joined the Match Group in 2006, where she handled several roles. In 2017, she became the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Tinder, and now she is the CEO of the company. In 2021, Dubey was chosen as the Tech Leader of the Year at Vogue Women of the Year.
Anjali Sud is the CEO of Vimeo. Earlier, she worked as the general manager and head of marketing before becoming the CEO of Vimeo in 2017.
Sud holds a degree in Bachelor of Science in Finance and Management from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and pursued her MBA at Harvard Business School. Sud was born in Michigan to Indian immigrant parents, and she has worked in companies like Amazon, Time Warner and Sagent Advisors.
Revathi Advaithi joined Flex, previously known as Flextronics, as the CEO in February 2019. Advaithi started her career as a shop floor supervisor at Eaton in Oklahoma’s Shawnee.
Moreover, Advaithi serves as an independent director for the board of directors of Catalyst and Uber. Furthermore, she is an advocate for women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and she is a member of the MIT Presidential CEO Advisory Board. Lastly, in 2019 and 2010, she was named on Fortune’s Most Powerful Women List.
Reshma Kewalramani is the CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. She is the first female CEO of this massive US Biotech firm. Kewalramani started her career as a physician after graduating from Harvard Business School’s General Management Program.
Her past career in the biopharma sector for over a decade stood her in good stead when she joined Vertex Pharmaceuticals in 2017, and she was eventually made the President and CEO in 2020-21. Her achievements include being bestowed with the TiE Boston Healthcare Leadership Award and was named one of Boston Business Journal’s Power 50.
Sonia Syngal, the CEO of GAP Inc. Syngal studied mechanical engineering at Kettering University and pursued her master’s in manufacturing systems engineering from Stanford University in 1995.
Syngal joined GAP Inc in 2004; before that, she worked at Sun Microsystems and Ford Motor Co. Lastly, Syngal is one of the few female CEOs to be included in the Fortune 500 list.
Padmasree Warrior founded Fable, a curated reading platform focused on mental wellness in 2019. Warrior studied chemical engineering at IIT Delhi and pursued her master’s from Cornell University.
Previously, Warrior worked as the Chief Technology Officer of Cisco and Motorola. Moreover, she has been the CEO of NIO USA, a car company. Warrior has always been passionate about technology, entrepreneurship and business. Lastly, she got featured in Forbes’ list of 100 most powerful women in the world.
Priya Lakhani is the CEO of Century Tech, a London-based company in AI-based learning technologies for schools and colleges. After being struck by the number of students underachieving in schools, Lakhani founded Century Tech in 2013.
Lakhani pursued her Master’s in Law from the University of London but quit her law career due to her passion for business. Moreover, Lakhani is the co-founder of The Indian Institute of Ethical AI in Education. In 2019, she was appointed to the AI Council by the UK Government.
These Indian women CEOs mentioned above have one thing in common- and that is their core competencies. A study by Deloitte on women in the boardroom suggests that the underrepresentation of women in the boardrooms is a recurring problem globally.
Unfortunately, in the last six years, India has seen a decrease in the number of women CEOs. Although the numbers stood at 6.6% in 2016, by 2018, they staggered to 3.4%.
However, these nine Indian women CEOs have time and again shown us how determination and the will to do something would eventually result in good. These women have made the country and all women proud – it is time for us to make them proud now.
I am a journalism student with a penchant for writing about women and social issues. I am an intersectional feminist and an aspiring journalist. I identify as she/her. read more...
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