Women Inc grows globally; Stacey Cunningham, Dhivya Suryadevara, Sudha Balakrishnan up the game
Women have come a long way and have been able to carve a niche for themselves in various domains.
By ET Bureau | Updated:
Agencies
From left, Stacey Cunningham, Dhivya Suryadevara and Sudha Balakrishnan.
By Shannon Tellis
Reviewing the league of extraordinary ladies who stepped into key positions in the first half of 2018.
From the #MeToo movement to Saudi Arabia’s women taking the wheel, women have broken many barriers in the early half of this year. A look at some who are leading the charge:
For the first time in history, Wall Street has not one but two prominent women leading the country’s largest stock exchanges. Months after Adena Friedman became the first woman CEO of Nasdaq, Stacey Cunningham was appointed as the NYSE’s first female President. She began her journey as a summer intern at the NYSE in 1994 before temporarily leaving the trading floor to pursue her culinary passions and join rival exchange Nasdaq. In 2012, she returned to the fold and quickly made her way up the ladder to COO. Outgoing NYSE President Thomas Farley celebrated the landmark moment tweeting, “The NYSE is in great hands.”
Sudha Balakrishnan, CFO, RBI Last month, Sudha Balakrishnan was appointed as the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) first chief financial officer. The newly-minted position is a three-year contractual experiment that will see all eyes on the former NSDL vicepresident. She will oversee the central bank’s balance sheet, foreign investments, the dividend RBI pays to the government and most importantly, the department that processes government payments and taxes.
Last month, the island nation of Barbados elected its first woman Prime Minister. But Mia Mottley is no stranger to breaking down barriers. In 1994, the now 52-year old lawyer was one of the youngest Barbadians ever to receive a ministerial portfolio when she was appointed to the Ministry of Education, Youth Affairs and Culture. Less than a decade later, she became the first female in Barbados to be appointed as Attorney General and minister of Home Affairs in 2001.
Trump nominee Gina Haspel may have been sworn in last month as the CIA’s first female director, but her appointment wasn’t without its fair share of scandal or media attention. Haspel’s impressive 33-year stint with the agency came under fire when it was discovered that she had supervised a secret CIA prison in Thailand that used torture tactics like waterboarding and sleep deprivation to question suspects following the 2001 terror attacks. Haspel was further condemned for ordering the destruction of tapes from that prison through a 2005 memo. Despite the media uproar, her nomination was approved by the Senate and she now takes her place in Langley’s hall of fame.
In an industry where men dominate, Chennai-born Dhivya Suryadevara is certainly charting her own path to become the first female CFO in the company’s 110 years. Joining General Motors in 2005, the 39-yearold quickly rose through the ranks to become the CEO of GM Asset Management and subsequently the vice-president of corporate finance. Her stint at GM Asset Management earned her a spot on Fortune’s 40 under 40 list in 2015. However, what makes this latest appointment so significant is that with Suryadevara’s entry into the C-suite, GM will now be one of only two Fortune 500 companies (the other being Hershey Co.) that have both a female CEO and CFO.
