An equal music: A brigade of Indian women CEOs is steering global companies through a pandemic

International MUSIC - 07 Jan 2022

Women of Indian origin are currently at the helm of several global companies – be it Anjali Sud, the CEO of Vimeo, Sonia Syngal who is leading the GAP Inc or Leena Nair, the newly appointed CEO-designate of Chanel. They are not only redefining the spheres of technology, business operations, manufacturing and innovation, but also inspiring generations of women to take up leadership roles.
They are deconstructing gendered workspaces, and revolutionising existing company cultures, making them more inclusive and accessible. Here’s a list of such women leaders who are calling the shots.

Fashioning A New Runway
Leena Nair will take the top seat at Chanel from January next year after a career of three decades with British consumer-goods packaged food giant, Unilever PLC. She was reportedly poached by the French luxury brand as it strived to overcome its  .

They are deconstructing gendered workspaces, and revolutionising existing

company cultures, making them more inclusive and accessible. Here’s a list of

such women leaders who are calling the shots.

Fashioning A New Runway

Leena Nair will take the top seat at Chanel from January next year after a career

of three decades with British consumer-goods packaged food giant, Unilever

PLC. She was reportedly poached by the French luxury brand as it strived to

overcome its pandemic slump.

Nair is a rank outsider in the field of luxury fashion, and that has been a topic of

many media articles. However, she has been the person to do several things for

the first time in her previous organisation too. At Unilever, she was “the first

female, first Asian, youngest ever" chief human resource executive.

Parenting A Teen

Born to Punjabi parents who emigrated to the USA, Anjali Sud was appointed the

CEO of Vimeo in 2017 and had since then pivoted Vimeo to a SaaS (software as a

service) company, so that it can outgrow the of ‘the smaller Youtube competitor’

label. As a 16-year-old company, Vimeo is still establishing its footing, and Sud

has done a spectacular job in keeping it going during the pandemic. During the

pandemic, in fact, Vimeo’s video consumption went up, ‘as the firm had over 200

million users globally, with 1.6 million paying subscribers, as of March 2021’. But

to Sud, success doesn’t only mean commercial. She is actively working to

upgrade the company’s culture too.

As a mother of a two-and-half-year old boy, she has focussed on Vimeo’s work

space and made it more kids-friendly so that Vimeo staff don’t have to forgo the

‘parent experience’.

Filling The Gap

Sonia Syngal, who grew up in Canada, and later settled in the US, took over the

reins of GAP Inc in 2020 after the surprise exit of its then lead, Art Peck. Often

described as a ‘passionate leader’ by her colleagues, she did a commendable job

in the driver’s seat, steering GAP away from a turbulent transition phase after

Peck’s exit.

An engineer by profession, she joined GAP in 2004, and had a notable stint as

the leader of its Old Navy unit.

Before Gap, Syngal worked in several Fortune 500 product companies – including

Sun Microsystems, and Ford Co, and had varied job roles. For instance, in Sun

Microsoft she led manufacturing operations and logistics, while at Ford she did

product design. Riding on the back of such diverse experiences, Syngal is taking

GAP into a new direction, despite the pandemic woes.

Starting Up, Going Steady

In her late twenties, Ankiti Bose is leading one of the largest B2B E-commerce

companies in Southeast Asia - Zilingo, which has raised almost $308 million in

funding already. Bose, who founded the brand said that it was a struggle initially

to lead the start-up, because she was a young woman, and no one – from factory

workers to managers – took her seriously. But, she stayed at it, and things Agencies

By 2017, her start-up had teams in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines,

Australia, the US and India and Bose is still on a growth curve. Her advice for

women leaders is simple: Don’t be shy to ask your worth. She believes that the

best way for a woman to move forward is to make herself heard, push their way

into meetings.

Playing Matchmaker To Millenials

Originally from Jamshedpur, Sharmistha ‘Shar’ Dubey is the CEO of Match Group,

which owns dating apps like match.com. OkCupid, Tinder and Hinge among

others. Therefore, it goes without saying that she has had a significant

contribution in the way millennials date, and meet new people these days.

Winner of the Tech Leader of the Year at Vogue Women of The Year 2021,

Dubey’s keen insights into human behavior, coupled with her technical skills and

product building capacities has led to the humongous success of several dating

apps.

Dubey took over as the CEO of Match Group in early 2020, just a few weeks into

a global pandemic, and it wasn’t easy to manage apps that fundamentally

required two people to meet. But, Dubey cruised through, with innovative video

A Tech Warrior Rules

An Indian-American tech executive, Padmasree Warrior had been the CTO of

Cisco and Motorola, and also served as the CEO of an American electric car

making company. However, her most meaningful job so far has been as the

founder and CEO of Fable – a platform that focuses on mental wellness.

“I started Fable so that all of us can fill the micro-moments in our hectic lives

with stories. Our mission is to deliver the world’s best social experience with

exceptional stories in service of mental wellness,” says Warrior in her

introductory bio on Fable’s website.

In 2014, she ranked among the 100 most powerful women in the world in

Forbes’ list and in 2018 she was also featured among "America's Top 50 Women

In Tech" by Forbes.

Flexing Some STEM Muscles

Revathi Advaithi is an Indian-born American business executive, who is currently

the CEO of Flex, one of world’s largest manufacturing companies and the central

nerve of the global supply chain. A champion of women in STEM fields, she

assumed the CEO’s role in 2019 and had since then managed the company’s

strategic direction, as well as technological innovation.

She is also responsible for sustainable manufacturing solutions across variousAgencies

industries and end markets. Before Flex, Advaithi was president and COO for the

electrical sector business for Eaton. Advaithi is also on the Board of Directors of

Uber and Catalyst.org. She is a member of the Business Roundtable, MIT CEO

Advisory Board and the Catalyst CEO Champions For Change initiative.

 

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