Two Indian Women Make It To 'Top Global Thinkers' List In 2014


BANGALORE: Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers list 2014 is out and 2 Indian women CEOs, Arundhati Bhattacharya, SBI's Chairperson and biopharmaceutical company Biocon's chief Kiran Mazumdar Shaw have made it to the list of 'The Leading Global Thinkers of 2014'.

FP Top 100 Global Thinkers list is conducted by Foreign Policy magazine on the basis of responding readers' ballot. The objective behind the formation of such a list is to determine the 100 most important public intellectuals who are still alive and active in public life.

Arundhati Bhattacharya is the first women to be Chairperson of State Bank of India. In 2014, she was listed as the 36th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. She is the first woman to lead an India based Fortune 500 company.

She has held several positions during her 36-year career with the bank including working in foreign exchange, treasury, retail operations, human resources and investment banking. This included positions like chief executive of the bank's merchant banking arm-State Bank of India Capital Markets; chief general manager in charge of new projects. She has also served at the bank's New York office.

On the other hand, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw is the chairman and managing director of Biocon Limited and the current chairperson of IIM-Bangalore. As of 2014, she is listed as the 92nd most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.  Mazumdar Shaw is an active philanthropist; in 2009, she established a 1,400-bed cancer care center, the Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Center, at the Narayana Health City campus in Bangalore.

Mazumdar-Shaw speaks openly about the importance of improving India's infrastructure, emphasizing the need to address issues such as efficient governance, job creation, and food, water, and health insecurity.

Other business leaders who made through the list include the likes of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Russian oil tycoon Gennady Timchenko, and Xiaomi co-founder Lei Jun.

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