In most villages in India, men are tasked with prime responsibilities to run the family as they were considered as the sole breadwinners and you don’t often see many women going to offices as they are forced to sit at home and do household chores. On the contrary, men go to offices, stress a lot and work without seeing clock needles to earn wages either daily, weekly or on a monthly basis.
Women have very limited opportunities to study and were always inferior to men. They never really had the liberty to do what men were doing and hence they became homemakers. There is nothing in this world that can stop women from doing many many good things in life. They are bound to achieve at a very young age and also they are destined to get better and brighter when they become old.
To achieve phenomenal things in life, a strong vision with intensity, tenacity and will power is just enough to drive one forward. However, in the male-dominated society, some women are braving against all odds to become successful in life.
In this article, we will take a look at the top Women CEOs set a great example in the male-dominated corporate world:-
Sonia Syngal – CEO of Gap Inc
There is literally nothing that can stop a woman from touching great heights in life. Indian American Sonia Syngal has a rich example to women across the world that nothing is impossible. Sonia Syngal, the chief executive of Old Navy, which is owned by Gap is all set to take over at the parent company.
With the new post as the Chief Executive Officer, Sonia Syngal has set a great example as she has become the highest-ranked Indian American female CEO of a Fortune 500 company after Indira Nooyi resigned as the PepsiCo head in 2018.
Robert Fisher, son of Gap’s founder who has plied his trade as interim CEO while the company looked for a permanent replacement of the company is pretty much confident about Sonia Syngal. He believes that the Indian American woman will deliver the much-needed value from our portfolio of brands over the long term.”
The company also appointed Bobby Martin, a Gap board member and former CEO of Walmart Inc.’s international business, to take charge as executive chairman.
The India-born Sonia Syngal moved to Canada and later to the United States when she was a child. She worked in many Fortune 500 companies, including 10 years at Sun Microsystems and six years at Ford Motor Co. before she joined Gap Inc. in the year 2004 as reported by TOI.
For the unversed, GAP owned brands include Old Navy, Banana Republic, Athleta and Hill City.
“It’s an honour to build on this company’s rich heritage and lead our nearly 130,000 employees in transforming our business and operations to successfully compete in the future,” The Indian Express quoted Syngal as saying.
“I’m committed to fully realising the potential of our portfolio and the advantage of our scale, with a focus on strengthening the love that our millions of customers have for our brands. To do that, we must better prioritise initiatives and capabilities that will improve execution and drive value creation,” she added.
Inspirational story of Radhika Gupta the “girl with a broken neck”, Now, CEO of $4 billion Indian asset manager
So many stories never cease to touch our hearts and you need just one good moment to bring a change to your life and that is either learning from others’ experience or from your personal experience.
This is the story of a woman with a broken neck, who was born with a disability. We are talking about Radhika Gupta who is now a CEO of $4 billion Indian asset manager. When Radhika was born, she was found with a broken neck which left her neck with a permanent tilt, due to which she had to go through a lot of struggles, but now many women get inspired by her story.
It is worth mentioning here that despite all such difficulties and challenges, she touched the pinnacle of success. Let’s congratulate Namrata on her success. At 36, she has already set up India’s first domestic hedge fund and become the country’s only female head of a major asset manager.
When asked about her life’s ups and downs, Gupta said, “It gives you something, it gives you a good story to tell.”
Radhika was born in Pakistan where her Indian diplomat father was posted. Gupta spent her childhood with her father. She did her schooling from an international school in Nigeria. Radhika had to face several problems because of her broken neck but over time she learned to accept it as part of what makes her unique. She completed her graduation from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Despite completing graduation with excellent marks, she was rejected in interviews many times. At one point, she thought of committing suicide.
Gupta became CEO of Edelweiss Asset Management in February 2017. “Celebrate all your perfection. Celebrate all your imperfections,” she said. “Celebrate everything in the middle. Because when this comes together, this is your own story.”. Gupta said.
All you need to know about Arundhati Bhattacharya
Arundhati Bhattacharya is a retired Indian banker and former Chairperson of SBI. In fact, she is the first woman to be the Chairperson of State Bank of India. In the year 2016, she was featured as the 25th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
Interestingly, she is the only Indian corporate leader featured on Fortune’s world’s greatest leaders list ranked at 26. As of now, she is plying her trade as Non-Executive Director with Reliance Industries Limited.
In 2018, Arundhati Bhattacharya was named Business Leader of the Year at The Asian Awards. She has joined as additional director, ‘independent director’ of Reliance Industries for a period of five years starting from October 17, 2018.
In 2020, she was recruited as the chairperson and chief executive for the India division of Salesforce, the global giant in CRM. She is also the chairperson of SWIFT India, which is part of a global payments network.