Fortune’s 2026 Most Powerful Women: Eight Indian-origin women among global business leaders

(Jun 5, 2026) Across continents and industries, Indian-origin women are helping define the future of global business. Fortune’s 2026 Most Powerful Women list features Dr. Reshma Kewalramani, Gunjan Kedia, Jayshree Ullal, Bela Bajaria, Meena Lakdawala Flynn, Revathi Advaithi, Leena Nair and Roshni Nadar Malhotra. These eight women of Indian descent are leading some of the world’s most consequential organisations across biotech, banking, technology, entertainment, luxury fashion and financial services.

They have spent decades building expertise, taking on larger roles and delivering results in industries that do not easily hand power to outsiders. Few of them are the first women ever to hold their positions. Others have grown their companies into significantly larger businesses since taking charge. The Global Indian puts the spotlight on these eight women and the remarkable journeys that brought them to the top.

Reshma Kewalramani 

Pesident and CEO, Vertex Pharmaceuticals

Indian-American | Based in Boston, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 9

Reshma Kewalramani runs one of the world’s leading biotech companies. Vertex earned $12 billion in revenue in 2025, a 9% rise from the year before. She focuses on a small number of serious diseases and goes deep rather than spreading thin. Her biggest recent win is Journavx, a new kind of painkiller that works differently from opioids and is the first new class of pain medicine to be approved in over 20 years. Vertex’s strong financial results reflect her disciplined approach to drug development. She has built the company into a globally respected business known for the quality and focus of its pipeline, and Journavx is widely seen as one of the most significant medical breakthroughs of the decade.

A graduate of Boston University where she earned her BA and MD through the seven-year accelerated programme, Reshma Kewalramani also completed the General Management Programme at Harvard Business School. She trained in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and completed her fellowship in nephrology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital combined programme. She is a Fellow of the American Society of Nephrology and serves on the board of trustees of Massachusetts General Hospital.

Gunjan Kedia

Chairman and CEO, U.S. Bancorp

Indian-American | Based in Minneapolis, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 14

Gunjan Kedia became the first woman to lead U.S. Bancorp in April 2025, taking charge of a bank with over 150 years of history. She grew up in India and studied engineering at a time when very few women enrolled. In her first full year running the bank, U.S. Bancorp posted record net revenue of $28.7 billion, up 4.4% from 2024. Kedia has built a reputation for steady, clear-headed leadership. Her appointment marked a historic moment for one of America’s oldest financial institutions, and her results in year one have reinforced confidence in the direction she is taking the bank.

Kedia earned her bachelor’s degree in engineering with distinction from Delhi Technological University and her MBA with distinction from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University, where she later received both the alumni achievement award and the professional excellence award. A seven-time honoree on the American Banker Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance list and a two-time honoree on Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance, Kedia sits on the boards of PBS, the American Red Cross and Carnegie Mellon Business School.

Jayshree Ullal

CEO and Chairperson, Arista Networks

Indian-American | Based in Santa Clara, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 31

Jayshree Ullal joined Arista Networks in 2008 when it was a small startup making networking equipment. She led the company through its IPO in 2014 and has since grown it into a business expected to reach $11.5 billion in revenue this year. Major technology companies including Meta and Microsoft use Arista’s networking gear. As founding CEO, Ullal has shaped every stage of the company’s growth. Her personal stake in Arista places her among the wealthiest self-made women in the world. She has spent nearly two decades building Arista from an early-stage startup into one of the most valuable names in the global networking industry.

Born in London and raised in New Delhi, where she attended the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Jayshree Ullal earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from San Francisco State University and her master’s in engineering management from Santa Clara University, which honoured her with a distinguished engineering alumni award in 2013 and an honorary Doctor of Engineering degree in 2025.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra

Chairperson, HCL Technologies

Indian | Based in New Delhi, India | Fortune 2026 Rank 33

Roshni Nadar Malhotra took over as chairperson of HCL Technologies from her father Shiv Nadar in July 2020. Under her leadership the company has grown to $14.7 billion in revenue. She is pushing HCLTech firmly into artificial intelligence, with AI-related revenue already running at $620 million on an annualised basis. The 2025 Hurun India Rich List names her India’s richest woman and the fifth richest woman globally. Nadar Malhotra is positioning HCLTech not just as a traditional IT services company but as an AI-native enterprise built for the next decade. Her leadership has brought both financial growth and a sharper sense of strategic direction to one of India’s most storied technology companies.

Roshni Nadar Malhotra studied at Northwestern University, earning her undergraduate degree in communication and later her MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. She made history as the first woman to chair a listed IT company in India. Before joining HCL Technologies, she worked as a news producer at Sky News in the UK, a background that shaped her communication-driven approach to leadership. A classically trained musician, she also founded The Habitats Trust in 2018, a conservation organisation focused on protecting India’s natural ecosystems and indigenous wildlife.

Bela Bajaria

Chief Content Officer, Netflix

Indian-American | Based in Los Angeles, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 35

Bela Bajaria oversees everything Netflix puts in front of its subscribers, including films, series, live events, stand-up specials and video podcasts, across 190 countries and in more than 50 languages. She manages a $20 billion annual content budget. In 2025, Netflix had its strongest awards season on record under her leadership, receiving 35 Golden Globe nominations and 18 Oscar nominations across six titles, with Frankenstein and Train Dreams both in contention for Best Picture. Bajaria has made Netflix’s content more globally ambitious and more awards-relevant at the same time, strengthening the platform’s reputation among both audiences and the wider creative industry.

Bela Bajaria studied at California State University, Long Beach. She began her career at CBS in 1996 and spent 15 years there, rising to senior vice president of cable programming, before moving to NBCUniversal where she served as president of Universal Television. She joined Netflix in 2016 and was appointed chief content officer in 2023. Born in London to Gujarati parents, she moved to Los Angeles at the age of nine and has spoken openly about growing up between cultures, an experience that informs her commitment to local-language storytelling and international content at Netflix.

Leena Nair

Global CEO, Chanel

British-Indian | Based in London, UK | Fortune 2026 Rank 37

Leena Nair took charge of Chanel in January 2022 after three decades at Unilever, where she became the youngest person and the first woman to serve as chief human resources officer. Since joining Chanel, she has overseen significant growth in the brand’s global standing. Chanel’s brand value rose 45% to $37.9 billion in 2025, making it the fastest-growing luxury fashion brand in the world according to Brand Finance. Nair brought a people-first leadership philosophy from her Unilever years and has applied it to one of the most iconic names in luxury fashion, with results that have drawn wide attention across the industry.

Leena Nair graduated in electronics and telecommunication engineering from Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli and earned her MBA as a gold medallist from XLRI Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur. At Chanel, she has prioritised long-term growth in emerging markets including India and Mexico, increased annual funding to Fondation Chanel to $100 million in support of global gender equality initiatives, and appointed Matthieu Blazy as artistic director in 2025, marking a significant creative chapter for the house. In 2025, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by HRH Prince William for her contributions to the retail and consumer sector. She also serves as a trustee of the British Museum.

Meena Lakdawala Flynn

Chair, Global Private Wealth Management and Co-head, One Goldman Sachs, Goldman Sachs

Indian-American | Based in New York, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 74

Meena Lakdawala Flynn joined Goldman Sachs in 2000 after beginning her career at J.P. Morgan. She rose steadily through the firm over more than two decades. In January 2026, she became sole chair of Goldman’s global Private Wealth Management business while also serving as co-head of One Goldman Sachs, the firm’s enterprise-wide client strategy. Her private wealth business serves 18,000 clients. Across Goldman’s full wealth management platform, client assets total $1.8 trillion. Flynn’s dual role places her at the centre of how Goldman builds and manages its most important client relationships, and her elevation in 2026 marked one of the most significant appointments at the firm in recent years.

Flynn studied at The George Washington University, where she was also a competitive gymnast. She became a Goldman Sachs partner in 2014 and has co-chaired the firm’s global inclusion, diversity and equity committee. She grew up in Texas and has described a summer internship during her college years, stepping onto a trading floor for the first time, as the moment she knew finance was where she belonged. She has been a consistent presence on Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance list.

Revathi Advaithi

CEO, Flex

Indian-American | Based in Austin, USA | Fortune 2026 Rank 75

Advaithi has led Flex for seven years, building it into a global contract manufacturing powerhouse. In May 2026 the company announced plans to spin off its cloud and power infrastructure segment into a new, independent, publicly listed company. That segment grew 38% year over year to reach $6.6 billion in revenue, supplying power and thermal management technologies for AI data centres. Advaithi will lead the new business once the transaction is complete. The move takes her from running a $27.9 billion manufacturer to leading a smaller but strategically important company at the heart of the global AI infrastructure build-out, a transition that reflects how central her work has become to the technology economy.

Advaithi holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. She sits on the board of Uber, is a member of the MIT Presidential CEO Advisory Board and was co-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Advanced Manufacturing CEO Community from 2022 to 2025.

Fortune’s 2026 list is not just a ranking. It is a record of sustained work at the top of the most demanding organisations in the world. These eight women have spent decades earning the rooms they now own. Their names are a reminder of how wide the diaspora’s reach has grown and how deep its roots now run.

Also Read: Three Indian-origin leaders among 16 on TIME’s 2026 Women of the Year list