Women Leading the Industry – OZY

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

Nigerian-born Esimai is at the forefront of banking sector reform efforts. The Harvard-educated lawyer is Citigroup’s first anti-corruption and anti-corruption director, and one of the most powerful women of color in the white and male-dominated banking world. Earlier this month she released her first book, Radiance beyond borderstracing a series of immigrant women and their journeys to success.

The daughter of one of Turkey’s biggest press barons has broken with the family business to retire all alone. Today, the 48-year-old owns e-commerce businesses worth over $2 billion and is among the top female tech entrepreneurs in the world. The jewel in his crown is Hepsiburadaone of Turkey’s largest e-commerce platforms whose name translates to “everything is here.And it does – from laptops to jewelry. Often referred to as Turkish Amazon, the company became the first Turkish company to launch an IPO on the Nasdaq in July, attracting 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 his great success story without silver spoon. The former English teacher, with Korean rootslaunched his e-commerce site, Wildberries, from his apartment in Moscow during maternity leave in 2004. Now, 18 years later, she has fended off takeover attempts by Kremlin-backed companies and venture capitalists to make Wildberries Russia’s largest online marketplace. In the process, Bakalchuk rose above the country’s politically connected elite to become The richest woman in Russia. Amid sweeping Western sanctions on goods entering Russia, Bakalchuk leads talks to allow parallel importsimproving access for average consumers.

This 28 year old Amazon Alumnus with a warm laugh and dimples does what the tech giant won’t: integrate africa in global e-commerce delivery networks. Right now, Amazon does not ship anywhere on the continent. Anuna’s Lagos-based online fashion retail startup, Klashahas developed its own payment and delivery solutions, which it integrates into global brand systems so that African consumers can get goods shipped across the Atlantic faster than DHL.