Businesswomen in Asia-Pacific are stepping up and taking the helm in industries with no shortage of challenges. As economic uncertainties continue to loom over businesses everywhere, these 20 women have been entrusted to lead enterprises, investment firms and family businesses to continuous growth and stability.
This list features a number of industry veterans who set precedent by becoming the first women to step into these roles at their companies. Some have taken on booming industries including EVs and server hardware production to meet growing demand, while others are running property developers and steering them through tough market conditions. The entrants this year represent a new generation of businesswomen with bold strategies, who are ready to face any difficulties head-on. They were chosen for their accomplishments and proven success as leaders in the business world.
Edited by Rana Wehbe Watson
Research and reporting: Jonathan Burgos, Gloria Haraito, John Kang, Naazneen Karmali, Zinnia Lee, Anuradha Raghunathan, Ian Sayson, James Simms, Cat Thomas, Catherine Wang, Yue Wang, Jennifer Wells and Ardian Wibisono.
Vicki Brady
CEO and Managing Director, Telstra
Age: 53 • Australia
In two years at the helm of Telstra, Vicki Brady has refocused Australia’s largest telecom by market share on its core business of connecting people while championing its AI ambitions. Under her guidance, Telstra has said it will invest up to A$1.6 billion ($1 billion) over the five years to 2027, partly to expand its national fiber network, which U.S. tech giant Microsoft has agreed to use to extend its AI infrastructure in Australia.
Brady is also working to improve earnings and customer service, and digitalize operations. In May she cut 2,800 jobs, more than 10% of total staff, a move expected to result in cost reductions of A$350 million by end-2025. Also by next year, she plans to transfer 90% of Telstra’s applications to the public cloud and use AI to enhance all its key business processes. The company’s net profit slumped 13% to A$1.8 billion in the year to June 30, partly on layoff-related charges.
Brady joined Telstra in 2016 as a group managing director, rising to chief financial officer in 2019. Previously she worked at rival telecom Optus and its parent, Singapore Telecommunications, and accounting firm KPMG.
Bonnie Chan
CEO, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
Age: 54 • Hong Kong
Bonnie Chan is the first female CEO of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), operator of Hong Kong’s stock exchange, where she is helping rejuvenate a moribund bourse. In the first quarter of this year, IPOs in Hong Kong raised $610 million, the lowest level since 2009.
Now under this Harvard Law School graduate and Morgan Stanley alum, things are looking up. In the second quarter, 18 companies went public compared with 12 in the previous quarter, raising 79% more in funds. In September, Chinese home appliance maker Midea raised $4 billion, the largest Hong Kong listing in almost four years and the world’s second-biggest this year after logistics giant Lineage’s $5.1 billion IPO in New York in July. “I believe today’s listing is a great prelude for more mega deals to come,” Chan said in a LinkedIn post.She also championed a new rule called Chapter 18C, which allows specialist tech companies to list with a lower profit level. The first was QuantumPharm, an AI-powered drug discovery company also known as XtalPi, which raised $127 million in June.
Chan was previously head of IPO transactions at HKEX from 2007 to 2010, and rejoined the exchange in 2020 as head of listings. She became co-chief operating officer in February 2023 (with Wilfred Yiu) and took over as CEO in March.
Clara Chan
CEO, Hong Kong Investment Corporation
Age: 44 • Hong Kong
Hong Kong Investment Corp.’s first CEO, Clara Chan, is charged with promoting and investing in industries that will keep Hong Kong competitive over the long term while generating returns. One major part of that mandate is to position Hong Kong as a global hub for high tech industries, such as AI and green technologies. HKIC was launched in 2022 with HK$62 billion ($8 billion) and Chan took up her new role in late 2023. Its first tie-ups include homegrown smart manufacturer SmartMore, which plans to launch a school to develop AI skills in the city, and Beijing-based robot maker Galbot, which will set up a R&D lab in Hong Kong. “We not only play the role of a connector of funds, gathering technology, talents and industries to catalyze the birth of startups, but we also occupy a position close to industry, to accompany and help startups grow,” Chan said in September.
Prior to HKIC, Chan, a qualified barrister, joined the Hong Kong Monetary Authority as a manager of direct investments in 2010. She climbed through the ranks there to become executive director of monetary management in 2020, where she negotiated the HK$39 billion deal to bail out Cathay Pacific, Hong Kong’s flag carrier, during the pandemic.
Maggi Chen
Cofounder and Chairman, Chenbro Micom
Age: 68 • Taiwan
Maggi Chen cofounded the Taiwan-listed company in 1983 with her husband, Leon Chen, and younger brother Frank. Over the next 30 years, she guided Chenbro Micom from designing computer chassis—the housing for a computer’s main parts—to manufacturing them, often taking on smaller, custom orders, and extending its manufacturing operations into China.
Chen recognized the growing demand for server chassis as the AI, 5G and cloud industries developed, and later redirected the company to focus on server chassis production. Today the company, which counts leading chipmaker Nvidia among its clients, is one of the world’s largest producers of chassis for servers. First-half revenue in 2024 jumped 53% to NT$6.4 billion ($198 million) year-on-year while net profit surged 176% to NT$833 million.
In 2020, Chen reshored some of its manufacturing to Taiwan. The company’s new NT$2.5 billion plant is in Chiayi County, next to Chen’s native Yunlin County, and is designed to resemble stacked servers. Chen, who came from a modest background in central Taiwan, served as the company’s president until 2013 and was named chairman in 2009. She graduated in 1977 from National Chengchi University’s Department of Money and Banking.
Shina Chung
CEO, Kakao
Age: 49 • South Korea
In March, Shina Chung took the helm of Kakao, the tech giant behind the popular South Korean instant messaging app, becoming the company’s first female CEO. She takes on the role after a ten-year stint at the group’s venture investing arm. Chung was settling into the task of pursuing new growth when Kakao’s billionaire founder and chairman Kim Beom-su was arrested in July on charges of stock price manipulation connected with the group’s takeover of K-pop powerhouse SM Entertainment the previous year. Kim and three company executives previously indicted for securities violations related to the acquisition have denied wrongdoing; Chung, an outside director at the time of the deal, has not been charged in the case. Kakao did not respond to a request for comment.
Following her appointment, Kakao’s second-quarter net profit jumped 59% to 87 billion won from a year earlier on 2 trillion won in revenue, up 4%, thanks to a boost from its ride hailing and digital finance services. The former management consultant plans to sell non-core assets to help streamline the internet giant’s businesses, even as she leads an AI push to further bolster earnings. That includes a move away from capital-intensive AI model research to focus instead on market-ready offerings like a new business-to-consumer interactive app.
Miwako Date
President and CEO, Mori Trust
Age: 53 • Japan
Miwako Date is looking to future-proof Tokyo-based Mori Trust Holdings by expanding its portfolio of luxury hotels. Her strategy is to build this business until it’s on equal footing with the company’s two mainstays of office leasing and property sales. In doing so, she envisions that this third pillar will give the company more sustainable revenue and profit, and be a counterbalance to the cyclical nature of the existing pillars.
At the same time, she is not neglecting the core and adding 379,000 square feet of new office space and 800 high-end condos, scheduled to be finished by 2030. Date, 53, joined the property developer founded by her father in 1998. After her two older brothers left the company, she became president and CEO in 2016—a rare move in a country which has few women as top corporate leaders.
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Lourdes Gutierrez-Alfonso
President, Megaworld
Age: 61 • Philippines
Lourdes Gutierrez-Alfonso became Megaworld’s president in June, succeeding Andrew Tan, who founded the company in 1989 and built it into one of the Philippines’ biggest call-center landlords and hotel operators. She has been given the task of handling a major expansion of the company—Megaworld plans to spend 350 billion pesos ($6.1 billion) in the five years to 2027 to develop and expand its townships to 35 by end-2024 from 31 in May. It also aims to beef up its hotel portfolio to 12,000 rooms across 27 properties, up from 8,000 rooms in 19 properties as of September.
Gutierrez-Alfonso’s new role will be a challenge: Although the central bank has started to ease interest rates, borrowing costs remain high while rival builders are aggressively constructing hotels in anticipation tourism will rally as the government and private sector invest heavily in infrastructure, including airports. Megaworld, which is majority-owned by Tan’s Alliance Global Group, posted an 11% gain in first-half net income to 9.8 billion pesos from a year earlier as group revenue jumped 22% to 39.1 billion pesos.
Since joining the builder in 1990, Gutierrez-Alfonso, a certified public accountant, has held various positions, including senior executive vice president for finance and administration and, most recently, chief operating officer. Tan, 72, who remains chairman, has an estimated net worth of $1.9 billion.
Nyrika Holkar
Executive Director, Godrej Enterprises Group
Age: 42 • India
Nyrika Holkar is widely seen as the likely successor of her uncle Jamshyd Godrej, 75, to lead the 161 billion rupee ($1.9 billion) by revenue Godrej Enterprises Group (GEG), which spans everything from aerospace and appliances to real estate and security locks. The great-granddaughter of Pirojsha Godrej, cofounder of the 127-year-old group, is already playing a major role in leading its branding, legal and M&A operations. She is also spearheading the integration of sales, service and marketing data relating to its consumer businesses onto a single platform. Most significantly, in April, Holkar led negotiations that resulted in an agreement dividing business assets between two separate groups of the Godrej family.
“The really exciting challenge ahead is to engage the digital-first, younger set of customers,” says Holkar, a trained lawyer. Holkar started at legal firm AZB & Partners in 2009 where she specialized in mergers and acquisitions. In 2015, she joined Godrej & Boyce Manufacturing, the unlisted flagship of GEG, as a senior vice president for corporate affairs. She became an executive director in 2017.
Carrie Hurihanganui
Chief Executive, Auckland Airport
Age: 53 • New Zealand
Auckland Airport’s first female chief executive is making history again by overseeing the airport’s most wide-ranging expansion since it opened in 1966. In September, the company announced a NZ$1.4 billion ($869 million) equity raise as part of ongoing NZ$6.6 billion plans to modernize New Zealand’s main travel hub and add capacity—the largest amount ever raised on the market in New Zealand. The proceeds will help pay for a new NZ$2.2 billion domestic terminal building expected to open by 2029 and reduce net debt. “Auckland Airport is getting on with building [a] resilient, fit for purpose gateway,” Carrie Hurihanganui said in February, two years after taking the reins of one of New Zealand’s biggest companies by market cap. In fiscal 2024 (ended June 30), Auckland Airport saw revenue soar 43% to NZ$896 million led by a 17% increase in passenger numbers to 18.5 million, though the total still lags pre-pandemic levels.
Hurihanganui, who grew up outside Chicago, made New Zealand her home after a holiday to the North Island at the age of 18. She worked in sales and marketing, then took a job as an Air New Zealand flight attendant while studying for a bachelor’s degree in business. That was the start of over two decades spent at the national carrier in various operational and strategic roles. In May 2020 she was appointed chief operating officer as the airline cut capacity and costs to manage fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Michelle Jablko
CEO, Transurban
Australia
In October 2023, Michelle Jablko became the first woman to head Melbourne-based Transurban, one of the world’s largest toll-road operators with a market cap of A$40 billion ($26 billion). Jablko is guiding the company as it works to complete three major projects, all by 2026: the A$6.1 billion West Gate Tunnel in Melbourne, the A$589 million M7-M12 Integration highway project in Sydney and the $333 million extension of the Interstate 495 highway near Washington D.C. Transurban posted a 312% rise year-on-year in net profit for the year ended in June to A$376 million on A$4.1 billion in sales.
Jablko joined Transurban as chief financial officer in 2021 from Australian bank ANZ, where she had been its finance head. A former UBS banker and a trained lawyer, Jablko sits on the Australian government’s Takeovers Panel, which resolves corporate takeover disputes. She was the first in her family to go to college—Monash University in Melbourne—where she graduated with honors in law and economics.
Rishma Kaur
Chairman, Berger Paints India
Age: 52 • India
In August, Rishma Kaur became chairman of Berger Paints India, which had $1.3 billion in revenue in the latest fiscal year and is the country’s second-largest paints company by market share and revenue, after Asian Paints. A director for over a decade, she replaced her billionaire father Kuldip Singh Dhingra, who became chairman emeritus. Her uncle, Gurcharan Singh Dhingra, also a billionaire, simultaneously became vice chairman emeritus, succeeded as vice chairman by his son Kanwardip Singh Dhingra.
“My responsibilities have increased but I haven’t given up doing what I’ve always been passionate about,” says Kaur, the eldest of three sisters, by phone. Since joining Berger Paints as an intern three decades ago, after business studies in the U.K., Kaur, who took a seven-year break to raise three children, found her niche in product and business development. “I love experimenting,” she says, citing the company’s high-end finishes and heavy-duty water proofing chemical coatings. She envisages an AI-driven future and using robots, “to take the pain out of painting.”
Century-old Berger Paints was a small industrial paints outfit when the Dhingra brothers acquired it in 1991 from former billionaire Vijay Mallya. It has 29 factories and a presence in Nepal, Poland and Russia. At home, it faces competition from deep-pocketed new entrants such as Birla Opus Paints, part of billionaire Kumar Birla’s Aditya Birla Group. Says Kaur: “This market is big enough. We have room to grow.”
Stella Li
Executive Vice President, BYD
Age: 55 • China
Stella Li is playing a key role in the global ambitions of BYD, China’s electric vehicle giant, where she oversees its operations in the Americas and Europe. She is tasked to help fulfill BYD’s goal of generating nearly half of its sales abroad, a jump from 30% of 301 billion yuan ($43 billion) in revenue generated in the first half of 2024. So far she has opened BYD’s first factory in the U.S., located in Lancaster, California. Launched in 2013, it is now one of the largest battery-electric bus makers in North America, according to the company. Next up is BYD’s first factory for the European market, under construction in Hungary. And in Mexico, the company is planning a major facility that will reportedly create about 10,000 jobs.
“We are a publicly traded, private [sector] company, and carry very high standards for transparency and integrity,” Li said at a Forbes China event in 2019. “That’s the way you build the culture to a global culture and a global company. Then, it doesn’t matter what will happen. This kind of company can survive.” Li started at BYD as a marketing manager in the mid-1990s and served as the CEO of BYD Electronics before being promoted to her current position.
Stephanie Lo
Vice Chairman, Shui On Land
Age: 42 • Hong Kong
Stephanie Lo in May assumed the role of vice chairman of mainland China-focused Shui On Land, the flag-ship unit of Shui On group, founded in 1971 by her billionaire father, Vincent Lo. She will have plenty on her plate as she is tasked with steering the developer through a property market crisis that began in 2020 when the Chinese government kicked off a crackdown on excessive borrowing by builders.
Shui On Land posted an 88% plunge in net profit to 72 million yuan ($10 million) in the first half of 2024 on a 68% drop in revenue to 2.1 billion yuan, attributed to fewer residential completions, which in turn reduced property sales. But the company has “a very good foundation to weather the storm,” Lo says, partly because its portfolio is mainly in Shanghai, one of the few mainland Chinese cities still attracting buyers for high-end homes. She also points to Shui On Land’s focus on creating big developments that preserve historic neighborhoods and transform them into retail and entertainment destinations.
Lo joined Shui On Land in 2012 after working at architect and design firms in New York. She became vice chairman of subsidiary Shui On Xintiandi in 2017 and executive director of Shui On Land a year later.
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Vishakha Mulye
CEO, Aditya Birla Capital
Age: 55 • India
Since veteran banker Vishakha Mulye took charge in 2022 of one of India’s largest financial services firms by assets under management, Aditya Birla Capital (part of the Aditya Birla Group), she has significantly boosted growth in its lending, insurance and mutual fund businesses and successfully expanded in areas such as digital services. For the half year ended Sept. 30, net profit rose 17% year-on-year to 15.8 billion rupees ($189 million) on revenue that grew 29% to 188 billion rupees.
Last year the company raised 30 billion rupees through a private placement of equity to institutional investors such as Capital Group and SBI Life Insurance to fund digital expansion. In April, she launched Aditya Birla Capital Digital, a platform that provides digital financial services for retail customers that includes a mobile app. Since then, more than 2.5 million customers have registered, and Mulye is targeting to add 30 million new users over the next three years. Other new digital services include Udyog Plus, offering loans to small and medium businesses, and Payments Lounge, a collection platform for merchants.
Mulye, a qualified chartered accountant, spent nearly three decades with the ICICI Group, where she started in 1993 as a trainee. She held leadership positions in banking, insurance and venture capital before becoming an executive director on ICICI Bank’s board in 2016.
Shania Manoj Punjabi
President Commissioner, MD Entertainment
Age: 50 • Indonesia
Shania Manoj Punjabi helms MD Entertainment, Indonesia’s largest film studio company by market cap, which stood at 30.3 trillion rupiah ($1.9 billion) in mid-October. She cofounded the company in 2002 with her husband, billionaire Manoj Punjabi, and his parents Dhamoo and Sunita.
Punjabi has overseen major growth of the company in recent years, which includes inking a deal to acquire Indonesian television company Net TV for 1.65 trillion rupiah. MD released KKN Di Desa Penari (KKN, Curse Of The Dancing Village), a horror movie that broke Indonesian records with 10 million theater viewers and $25 million in revenue. In the first half of 2024, the company booked 77.2 billion rupiah in net profit, up 24% year-on-year, contributed mainly by two movies: drama Ipar Adalah Maut and Badarawuhi: Di Desa Penari (Dancing Village: The Curse Begin), a prequel to the 2022 record-breaking movie.
Punjabi, who focuses on finance and is involved in affiliated companies and subsidiaries, became president commissioner in 2021. Before MD, she was a partner at A.T. Kearney Management Consultants in Jakarta. Punjabi holds a bachelor’s degree in economics, majoring in marketing and strategic management, from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Feny Djoko Susanto
President Commissioner, Sumber Alfaria Trijaya
Age: 47 • Indonesia
Feny Djoko Susanto took over a decade ago as president commissioner of the minimart empire founded by her father Djoko Susanto, No. 12 on the list of Indonesia’s 50 Richest. Feny has held key roles in the company’s growth, such as overseeing its public listing in 2009 and managing its expansion to the Philippines in 2014 in a joint venture with local retail giant SM Investments, resulting in over 1,600 Alfamart outlets in the Philippines today. The group recorded 107 trillion rupiah ($6.9 billion) in revenue last year, up 12% on a compound annual basis since 2020, and 3.4 trillion rupiah in net profit, a CAGR of 39% over the same period.
Despite the rise of online shopping and other major shifts in Indonesia’s retail sector, the group—which operates the Alfamart, Alfamidi, Lawson and Dan+Dan chains—has grown from 141 stores nationwide in 2002, when Feny first joined Sumber Alfaria Trijaya as president director, to 22,000 by the end of last year. To achieve this growth, it uses a franchise model and is expanding into other areas such as selling beauty products and managing co-working spaces. Feny holds an M.B.A. from Cleveland State University.
Tan Su Shan
Deputy CEO and CEO-Designate, DBS Group
Age: 57 • Singapore
Veteran banker Tan Su Shan will soon set a new benchmark for women leadership in the city-state when she becomes the first woman to lead Singapore-listed DBS Group—Southeast Asia’s biggest lender by assets—when she succeeds Piyush Gupta in March 2025. Gupta, the ex-Citibanker whose tenure atop DBS began in 2009, brought Tan in from Morgan Stanley the following year. She ran DBS’ consumer banking and wealth management businesses for nearly a decade before moving into her current role as deputy CEO and head of institutional banking. Tan told Forbes Asia by email that given game-changing technology, geopolitical tensions and economic uncertainties, managing a bank “is no longer about having contingency plans; it’s about agility, the ability to pivot, and being prepared to adapt swiftly. That’s what keeps us resilient and future ready.”
One challenge for Tan will be sustaining growth at DBS, which reported a record S$10.3 billion ($7.9 billion) net profit in 2023, up 26% from the previous year. That’s likely to continue rising in the next two years, supported by wealth management and credit card fees, Glenn Thum, an analyst at PhillipCapital in Singapore, wrote in a recent note.
DBS has been delivering outsized returns to state investment firm Temasek and other shareholders. So far this year, its shares have risen about 30%, more than those of domestic rivals Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp and United Overseas Bank.
Serena Teo Joo Ling
CEO, CapitaLand Ascott Trust
Age: 50 • Singapore
Serena Teo Joo Ling took the helm as CEO of Singapore-listed CapitaLand Ascott Trust (CLAS) in July 2022 after serving a year as deputy CEO. The REIT, which is the largest lodging trust in Asia Pacific by asset value, manages S$8.5 billion ($6.6 billion) in assets, mostly serviced residences, student accommodations and hotels—including the Ascott, Citadines and Somerset chains—distributed across 102 properties in 16 countries globally. Under Teo’s leadership, CLAS has been recording steady growth.
In 2023, revenue rose 20% to S$745 million from the previous year and was up 89% from the 2021 level, boosting the dividend payout by 25% to S$237 million last year. The company revamped its portfolio in October by divesting assets in China and Japan. It has also agreed to buy service apartment property lyf Funan Singapore for S$263 million, with the deal expected to completed this quarter.
Teo transitioned into real estate during her more than ten years at the Singapore Economic Development Board. In 2008, she joined Ascendas-Singbridge Group, which was eventually acquired by CapitaLand, and was appointed head of portfolio management of Ascendas Funds Management in 2019.
Mitsuko Tottori
CEO, Japan Airlines
Age: 59 • Japan
Mitsuko Tottori is the first woman to run Japan Airlines (JAL), having started as a flight attendant for Japan’s flag carrier. When she took over as president in April, she was the first CEO that hadn’t been a pilot, maintenance engineer, finance officer or government bureaucrat—and one of the few who hadn’t graduated from elite Tokyo University.
JAL has seen traffic rebound to near pre-pandemic levels and net profit rose 178% in the year ended March to ¥95.5 billion ($624 million). But it recently experienced a series of safety issues that led to a May regulatory reprimand. In June, JAL submitted a report to the transport ministry describing steps it would take to improve safety. “Though really worried about taking on such a heavy responsibility, I trusted my experience and decided to accept the job,” Tottori said when JAL named her as CEO. “My career has been in the two most fundamental aspects of an airline: safety and customer service.” Immediately after graduating in 1985 from Nagasaki’s Kwassui Women’s Junior College with a major in English, Tottori started flying for a small airline acquired by JAL in 2004. She was promoted to senior director of cabin attendants in 2015, then vice president for cabin safety in 2019, senior vice president for customer experience in 2023, and representative board member and chief customer officer later that year.
Jo Townsend
CEO, Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation
Age: 57 • New Zealand
In April, Jo Townsend was named CEO of the Guardians of New Zealand Superannuation, which manages the country’s sovereign wealth fund, NZ Super Fund, that in late October totaled more than NZ$80 billion ($48.3 billion). The annual returns of the fund since its inception in 2001 have averaged 10.1%, outperforming its reference or benchmark portfolio (8.7%) over the same period. NZ Super Fund was named the best-performing sovereign investor in the world between 2013 and 2022 by Global SWF, which tracks public fund data.
When Townsend was appointed as fund chief, Guardians chair John Williamson noted “she is a highly experienced CEO with a 30-year career in the Australian investment sector,” adding that Townsend “led the transformation of Funds SA—an A$40 billion [$27 billion] institutional investor of public sector funds—where she oversaw a significant growth in that organization’s capabilities.” Before leading Funds SA, Townsend worked for Rest Super, one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds by assets, for more than seven years, including as acting chief operating officer and general manager of investments.