Women in business have come a long way in the last 50 years. Where it was once considered a rarity for women to work, let alone own a business, female entrepreneurs are relatively common today. Women are also outpacing men in higher education, with many of them graduating from college.
There’s no doubt that female business leaders are changing the world. So, in celebration of women’s history month, here is a list of some of the most successful and powerful businesswomen in the world:
Most Successful Women in Business
Lynsi Snyder
Lynsi Snyder is just 37, but she’s worth $3.6 billion! She’s the CEO of In-N-Out Burger. After inheriting the popular food chain, she has taken it to new heights. Apart from being a successful businesswoman, Lynsi invests a lot of her time and energy in her staff. She regularly arranges trips for them and pays them decent wages.
Lisa Su
Lisa Su is the CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). She was able to bring back the 50-year-old company from the brink of bankruptcy. AMD has managed to beat other big wigs like Intel at their own game. The company has become the sole chip provider for Microsoft’s Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 consoles. All of this happening under Su’s leadership. Those are the two largest-selling video game consoles in the world. Hence, AMD has become the world leader in game consoles. That is no mere feat, with video games generating more revenue than films, sports, and all other forms of entertainment.
Lisa has risen to the top over many decades of hard work. Starting at Texas Instruments Inc., she has had a multi-faceted career. Su began as a member of the technical staff at Texas Instruments. Then, she took on a leadership role within IBM, and later, she went on to work at Freescale and then AMD.
Jessica Catino
Jessica Catino has risen to the C-suite status at Digital Prospectors. Under her leadership, the firm has shown tremendous growth, with the annual revenue increasing from $4 million in 2003 to over $50 million in 2019.
Digital Prospectors is engaged in job recruitment. Catino firmly believes in the company’s values, like perseverance and integrity. The company, in business since 1999, has been on the trajectory of growth ever since.
Nora Su
Nora Su’s success story is essentially the American dream. She immigrated to the US at the age of 13 from Taiwan. She went on to graduate at the top of her class from the University of Washington in Economics. She joined Horizon Innovations Inc. soon after, which is a marketing firm that “embraces the entrepreneurial mindset.” It has been ranked as the best place to work by Florida Trends for five years straight.
Through the years, Nora Su began to take on more and more responsibilities and finally became the CEO of Horizon Innovations Inc. Her takeover as CEO has further improved the rating of the company.
Cathy Engelbert
Cathy Engelbert’s most prestigious position was as the CEO of Deloitte, one of the Big Four accounting firms in the world. She started at the bottom at the age of 17, working at Deloitte. While she faced a challenge in the form of having her first child at the age of 17, she got through with some help. Senior partners William Parrett and William Ehrhardt at Deloitte helped her to power through.
She spent a further 30 years at Deloitte and was appointed to CEO in 2015. She became the first female US CEO of a Big Four firm. In 2019, she stepped down to start a new chapter of her life. She became the first commissioner of the WNBA.
Isabelle Kocher
Isabelle Kocher has had a run of over three years as the CEO of Engie. She took up the helm of leadership when Engie was undergoing a trying time. Under her leadership, the company’s revenue has gone up to GBP 53.9 billion. The company has, thus, achieved substantial growth.
Isabelle has also been responsible for diverting Engie’s assets to renewable energy. Hence, it has put Engie on the path to becoming fossil fuel-free ultimately. Doing that to the world’s third-largest energy group is no easy task. Therefore, she has become a successful CEO and the only female CEO of a CAC40 company.
More than that, Isabelle has also worked hard to employ more women. She has set a 35% minimum target of high potential staff to be women.
Sarah Nahm
Sarah Nahm is the co-founder and CEO of Lever. The company provides an applicant tracking system for hiring. The system was founded by Sarah in 2012, along with Nate Smith and Randal Truong. Interestingly, Sarah began her career as a speechwriter for Marissa Mayer at Google. She was part of the product team that successfully launched Google Chrome.
Sarah founded Lever as a way to modernize recruitment software. Today, Lever has reached over 40 countries and assists about 2000 clients around the world. The company currently has $70 million in funding.
Anne Wojcicki
Anne Wojcicki is the co-founder and CEO of 23andMe. The company offers FDA-approved personal genetics tests. Anne graduated with a biology degree from Yale and developed the company with fellow co-founders while working in investment analysis.
With a personal wealth of $750 million, Anne is an undeniable success. She got the FDA’s stamp of approval when it became clear that their tech worked. The main objective of the 23andMe company was to inform customers of personal disease risk. Today, it provides all sorts of ancestry reports as well and continues to be the only genetic service that is FDA-approved.
Women are making their way through the world in all sorts of professions. It’s clearly no longer a boy’s club anymore. This Women’s History Month, let us raise our glasses to women in business, their progress and their continued success.
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