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Reaching a leadership position and building a career in a company that supports one’s growth can be very difficult. Women often find this much harder than men. According to the Institute for Women’s Leadership only 24% senior level leadership positions worldwide were held by women. Here are some of the female CEOs, managers and leaders who have refused to be held back.
Studies in the past ten years have also shown that many women in senior management positions don’t stay in their positions long enough to become board members but choose to become entrepreneurs instead. A more flexible work option is interim management, which may show why more women are now being referred by top-level interim recruiters for high-level projects.
Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi is one of the most influential leaders in business and often mentioned when discussing the most powerful women in the corporate world. She used to be the CEO of PepsiCo and is now on the board of Directors at Amazon and the International Cricket Council. This makes her one of very few women who hold board seats. She says looking for positivity instead of “assuming negative intent” has helped her in her journey. However, it has been far from an easy path for Indra. In an episode of The David Rubenstein Show she once mentioned that “To be successful you need to go through a lot of collateral damages and have the strength to power through all of that”. Her resilience and talent have led her to become one of the most influential business leaders in the world.
Joanne Crevoiserat
An interim management position is usually meant to only be temporary, but Joanne Crevoiserat was so valuable to the fashion holding company Tapestry, inc. that she was appointed as CEO only a few months after she replaced her predecessor. Interim manager jobs are carried out by highly skilled individuals who help companies transition through change or lend their expertise to important short-term projects. It took her only about a year to advance from her position as Chief Financial Officer at the company. Clearly defining the brand’s priorities and “creating a culture of trust and empowerment” are a few of the things that are important to her. Not only did her career progress incredibly fast but she also stood out as one of the top female interim CEOs. Her previous roles as Chief Operating Officer for Abercrombie & Fitch, board member of At Home Group Inc. and other high-level positions clearly demonstrate her leadership skills and talent.
Lisa Su
As if working for Texas Instruments and IBM isn’t prestigious enough, Lisa Su was made CEO of semiconductor firm AMD just two years after joining. But her success story didn’t stop there. She managed to increase the value of AMD’s stock by more than twenty times to $100 billion. No wonder she made it onto the Forbes list of America’s Self-Made Women 2020 and was also featured in America’s Top 50 Women in Tech 2018.
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Carolyn McCall
Dame Carolyn McCall’s started out in the advertising sales department at the Guardian Media Group and made it all the way to the top. She became CEO and went on to carry out many other executive leadership roles. Her achievements include becoming the first female Chief Executive of ITV. When she was Chief Executive of easyJet the shares of the company increased by almost four times. She also worked for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy as well as for Burberry Group, Lloyds TSB, and Tesco.
While there are not many women in executive positions, the women who do take these roles are usually highly talented and very inspirational.
