Top 30 Most Powerful Women in the World

Top 30 Most Powerful Women in the World

1) Angela Markel: Merkel became the first female chancellor of Germany in 2015 and is serving her fourth term right now. Her leadership against Donald Trump on allowing Syrian refugees into Germany is quite laudable. She is currently leading a coalition government, quite unpopular though with the Brexit turbulence and anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe.

2) Christine Lagarde: She is the first woman to head the European Central Bank on November 1, 2019. Before that, she headed the International Monetary Fund that worked on the stability of the global monetary system. She has also called for gender reform after the 10-year anniversary of the bank collapse of 2008.
3) Nancy Pelosi: She is the 52nd Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives, making her by default the highest ranking elected woman in the country. She initiated the fourth-ever impeachment proceedings against in U.S. history against Trump.

4) Ursula von der Leyen: She is the president of the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union. She is the first ever woman to fulfill this role and under her, the commission comprises of 11 females commissioners and 15 male.
5) Mary Barra: She is the CEO of General Motor’s since 2014 , investing billions in electric vehicles, self driving cars. Her company was also ranked No.1 on Gender Equality in 2018 as it was one of the only two global businesses that had no gender pay disparity.
6) Melinda Gates: She is the Co founder of the world’s largest private charitable foundation with a $40 billion trust endowment. Her primary focus has been women’s rights and solving global challenges from education to menstrual hygiene.

7) Abigail Johnson: She has served as CEO of Fidelity Investments since 2014. She owns an estimated 24.5% stake of the firm, which was nearly $2.7 trillion in managed assets.

8) Ana Patricia Botin : Botin became chair of Santander in 2014. She has provided insights in developing new models of entrepreneurship, backing small enterprise and women-owned businesses. It has later led to the creation of the country’s first multi-sector block chain- based platform.

9) Ginni Rometty: She has led IBM’s transition to a data company, giving focus on cognitive computing at the centre of its strategy for the future and made massive bets on blockchain and quantum computing. She has a strong competitive reserve as IBM purchased Red Hat for $34 billion, placing it to compete with Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing.

10) Marillyn Hewson: She is CEO of Lockheed Martin since 2013, under her watch the stock has surged more than 300%. The company is also developing a supersonic aircraft that breaks the sound barrier without a sonic boom.

11) Gail Boudreaux: She was named CEO of Anthem in 2017, previously one for UnitedHealthcare, the largest division within UnitedHealth Group. One of the largest U.S.’ health insurers, under her watch , the company will launch it own Pharmacy Benefits manager in 2020.

12) Susan Wojcicki: Former CEO of Alphabet subsidiary Youtube, she was the 16th employee of Google in 1999. Beofre joining Google, she used to work t Intel and sered as a management consultant at Bain&Company.
13) Isabelle Kocher: She has head the world’s largest non-state –owned energy company since 2016. She made a radical shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy in her three year plan as her first move.

14) Safra Catz: Catz became the sole CEO of software firm Oracle where she made $40.7 million in compensation. She is taken for spearheading the aggressive acquisition strategy, having close more than 100 acquisitions since 2005.
15) Kristalina Georgieva- Former CEO of the world bank, she was appointed managing director of the International Monetary Fund since October 2019. Her main focus in her policy is towards climate crisis and the financial debt crisis in Africa.

16) Julie Sweet- In September 2019, she was appointed as the CEO of global services company Accenture. She also serves on the Business Roundtable, the World Economic Forum’s International Business Council and catalyst’s board of directors.
17) Emma Walmsley- She is the first and the only woman to run a major pharmaceutical company i.e. GlaxoSmithKline in April 2017. She has aimed for major investment in R&D through her savings from restructuring program.

18) Sheryl Sandberg- As the Chief Operating officer of Facebook, she brought the company from $56 million loss to $22.1 billion in profits in 2018. She defended the company in the controversial scandal of Cambridge Analytica and online data privacy risks. In her leadership, there has also been increase in ad revenue by 38percent during 2018.
19) Ruth Porat– CFO of Google parent company Alphabet since 2015, she has eliminated spending on “moonshit” divisions that only account of .9% of company revenue. She is also accounted for the recent boast in acquisitions focused on mobile research and mobile programmatic advertising.

20) Oprah Winfrey– The first multi billion African- American woman launched her own cable channel OWN in 2011. In September 2019, Winfrey brought “Oprah’s Book Club” to Apple’s new streaming subscription service .
21) Judith Mckenna- She started as President and CEO of retail giant Walmart International in February 2018. She leads more than 6000 retail stores and 700000 associates across 26 countries. The company is looking forward to open 25 institute hubs in India in next five years, which will train 50,000 entrepreneurs.
22) Jessica Tan– An Engineer graduate from MIT, she was formerly a partner at Mckinsey. She is groups co-CEO of Ping- An, A Chinese finance insurance giant. She has immense followership at her dispersal.

23) Ho Ching– Executive Director and CEO of Temasek, Ching has opened several offices in San Francisco in 2018 and invested money in sectors like life sciences, tech, agribusiness.

24) Phebe Novakovic– One of the only female executives in the military industrial space, she has been serving as chairwoman and CEO of defense giant General Dynamics since 2013. Former CIA operative, she also acquired $9.8 billion of IT service CSRA in April 2019.

25) Shari Redstone- The first woman to have a large stake of a U.S. media business, controlling a $30 billion media empire. Chairwoman of media empire Viacom CBS, she successfully facilitated the 2019 $12 billion merger deal between CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc.

26) Amy Hood- She is responsible for leading Microsoft’s worldwide finance organization, including acquisitions, treasury activities, tax planning, accounting and reporting. Under her expertise Microsoft has financially grow by leaps and bounds as stocks have surged nearly300% since she became the CFO.
27) Stacey Cunningham- The lady made history when she became the first female President of the New York Stock Exchange in its 226-year history in 2018. Before that, she served as COO, overseeing NYSE’s equities, and its functioning. She has played a key role in updating the NYSE’s trading operations.

28) Jessica Uhl– The lady started her career at Citibank in San Francisco as a financial analyst. Now, she is serving as the CFO of Royal Dutch Shell, a $338 billion-revenue business.

29) Sheikh Hasina Wajed- She is currently serving her fourth term as the prime minister in the history of Bangladesh ( the longest in the history). Her main focus reigns on food security and access to health and education.

30) Adena Friedman- She became the first woman CEO to lead a global stock exchange in 2017. Determined to diversify Nasdaq into a tech company, the lady has drastically impacted the revenue generating income which formerly came from trades and IPOs.