Women at the Helm of Industry

The Brazilian entrepreneur was signing agreements with investors from a hospital bed as she was about to go into labor. And she has nurtured Nubank like her own child — one that’s shot up to become a $30 billion giant, making it the world’s largest digital bank by number of customers and upon its December 2021 IPO, earning Junqueira recognition as only the second Brazilian woman to become a self-made billionaire. Nubank’s now expanding beyond Brazil. But Junqueira is also proud of how she’s building this powerhouse: 40 percent of the staff are women and 30 percent identify as LGBTQ.

The daughter of a Xerox warehouse worker and an educator whose house was burned down twice by the Ku Klux Klan, the 48-year-old CEO of TIAA is one of only two black women leading Fortune 500 companies. Duckett identifies her purpose in life as inspiring others, and the opportunity to leave Chase as head of consumer banking was a personal one – TIAA is an organization founded with the goal of helping teachers save enough to retire – a challenge her own parents faced while she was growing up. As she says, she is her “ancestors’ wildest dreams.”

Nigeria-born Esimai is at the forefront of the banking sector’s reform efforts. The Harvard-trained lawyer is Citigroup’s first chief anti-bribery and corruption officer, and among the most powerful women of color in the white- and male-dominated world of banking. Earlier this month, she published her first book, Brilliance Beyond Borders, chronicling a series of female immigrants and their journeys to success.

The daughter of one of Turkey’s biggest newspaper barons broke with the family business to strike out on her own. Today, the 48-year-old owns e-commerce businesses worth more than $2 billion and is among the world’s top female tech entrepreneurs. The jewel in her crown is Hepsiburada, one of Turkey’s largest e-commerce platforms whose name translates to “everything is here.” And it is — from laptops to jewelry. Often called Turkey’s Amazon, the firm became the first from Turkey to launch an IPO on the Nasdaq exchange in July, drawing a valuation of nearly $4 billion.

What Doğan Boyner is to Turkey, Bakalchuk is to an even bigger market: Russia. Except that Bakalchuk has built her stunning success story without a silver spoon. The former English teacher, with Korean roots, started her e-commerce site, Wildberries, from her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave in 2004. Today, 18 years later, she has fended off takeover attempts from Kremlin-backed firms and venture capitalists to turn Wildberries into Russia’s biggest online marketplace. In the process, Bakalchuk has leapfrogged the country’s politically connected elite to become Russia’s richest woman. Amidst sweeping western sanctions on goods flowing in to Russia, Bakalchuk is leading discussions to allow parallel imports, improving access for average consumers.

This 28-year-old Amazon alumnus with a hearty laugh and dimples is doing what the tech giant won’t: integrating Africa into global e-commerce delivery networks. At the moment, Amazon doesn’t deliver anywhere on the continent. Anuna’s Lagos-based online fashion retail startup, Klasha, has developed its own payment and delivery solutions, which it’s integrating into the systems of global brands so African consumers can have goods shipped from across the Atlantic faster than DHL.

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She’s a thorn in the side of American Big Tech. The 53-year-old Danish politician is Europe’s antitrust commissioner. She has probed Google’s acquisition of Fitbit, fined Google and Facebook billions of dollars and accused Amazon of violating European Union regulations. And she’s after a larger goal: reducing Europe’s dependence on American and Chinese tech. Read More on Ozy

A globally respected economics professor, Joh was the first Korean woman to get a Ph.D. in the subject at Harvard. But when South Korea’s first female antitrust chief was nominated for the position in 2019, she was accused by a lawmaker of “not fulfilling her duty to the nation” ... because she didn’t have a child. Now three years later, Joh is showing obnoxious lawmakers and the rest of her country what “duty” toward the nation truly means, crossing swords with global giants like Google and South Korea’s biggest family-owned firms like Samsung that control the market in sectors ranging from electronics and tech to food.

Now working with Brattle Group’s Global Antitrust and Competition practice, Mexico’s former antitrust boss gained significant notoriety for taking on two of the country’s most powerful establishments: the soccer world and populist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's government. Under her, Mexico’s competition commission — known as COFECE — launched a probe last May into monopolistic practices in the way big clubs sign soccer players in the country. And her investigations into the country’s public sector giants like oil behemoth PEMEX have earned her the ire of Obrador, who pointedly referred to Palacios as “the lady.” Too bad, Mr. President. “The lady” isn’t backing off.

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