Eight women of Indian descent, including six Indian Americans, figure in Fortune’s 2026 Most Powerful Women list with Citigroup chair and CEO Jane Fraser ascending to the top spot, five years after she got Citi’s corner office.
Besides Indian Americans Reshma Kewalramani, Gunjan Kedia, Jayshree Ullal, Bela Bajaria, Revathi Advaithi and Meena Lakdawala Flynn, India-based Roshni Nadar Malhotra and UK-based Leena Nair figure among the women at the top of the global business world.
The women on the list are leaders at 94 companies in 20 countries with a combined 11.8 million employees and $7.3 trillion in annual revenue. Behind the U.S., the countries with the highest number of Most Powerful Women listees are mainland China, with nine, and France and the UK, with six each.
Ranked 9, Dr. Reshma Kewalramani, President and CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, has made it one of the world’s most formidable biotech companies: Vertex posted $12.0 billion in 2025 revenue, up 9% year over year.
She is known for a disciplined strategy, focused on going deep into a small number of diseases. One of her newest bets is Journavx, the first new class of pain medicine approved in more than two decades and a direct challenge to opioid-based treatments, according to Fortune.
Ranked 14, Gunjan Kedia took the helm of U.S. Bancorp as Chairman and CEO in April 2025, becoming the first woman to run the Minneapolis-based bank in its more than 150-year history.
Kedia is no stranger to breaking barriers: Born and raised in India, she studied at the Delhi College of Engineering at a time when few women enrolled. Under her leadership, U.S. Bancorp posted record 2025 net revenue of $28.7 billion, up 4.4% from 2024.
Jayshree Ullal, CEO and Chairperson of Arista Networks follows at rank 31. Ullal has been at Arista since 2008, when it was a scrappy networking startup, guiding it to an expected $11.5 billion in revenue this year, with customers for its networking gear including Meta and Microsoft. Ullal, as founding CEO, led Arista through its IPO in 2014. Her stake in Arista makes her one of the world’s wealthiest self-made women.
Ranked 35, Bela Bajaria as Netflix’s chief content officer, holds one of the most influential creative roles in global entertainment. She manages a $20 billion annual budget and oversees every film, series, live event, stand-up special, and video podcast the platform produces across 190 countries and in 50-plus languages. Under her leadership, 2025 became Netflix’s most culturally dominant year on record. The company received 35 Golden Globe nominations and 18 Oscar nominations across six titles, including Best Picture contenders Frankenstein and Train Dreams.
Read: Two Indian Americans get key posts in California (May 18, 2026)
Ranked 74, Meena Flynn joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 as a markets professional after starting her career at J.P. Morgan. In January 2026 she was elevated to sole chair of Goldman’s global Private Wealth Management business while simultaneously serving as cohead of One Goldman Sachs, the firm’s enterprise-wide client strategy. The business she oversees is formidable, serving 18,000 clients; across all of Goldman wealth management (beyond Flynn’s portfolio), that’s $1.8 trillion in client assets.
Ranked 75, Revathi Advaithi has been leading the contractor manufacturer Flex as CEO for seven years. In early May, Flex announced that it will spin off its cloud and power infrastructure segment into a new, independent, publicly traded company. That segment had grown 38% year over year to $6.6 billion, delivering power and thermal management technologies for AI data centers. Advaithi will be the CEO of the new business upon completion of the transaction, taking her role from a $27.9 billion manufacturer to a smaller, but critical, business at the center of the AI economy.
Ranked 33, India-based Roshni Nadar Malhotra succeeded her father, Shiv Nadar, as chairperson of HCL Technologies in July 2020, inheriting one of India’s most storied tech companies. HCLTech has now grown into a business with $14.7 billion in revenue. Nadar Malhotra is positioning her company as an AI-native enterprise; advanced AI revenue is $620 million on an annualized basis. According to the 2025 Hurun India Rich List, she’s now India’s richest woman, and the fifth richest woman globally.
Ranked 37 UK-based Leena Nair took the helm at Chanel in January 2022, arriving after three decades at Unilever where she was the youngest-ever and first female chief human resources officer. Under her leadership Chanel’s brand value surged 45% to $37.9 billion in 2025, making it the fastest-growing luxury fashion brand globally, according to Brand Finance.