1 Mary Barra
Title: CEO
Company: General Motors
Country: USA
The first woman to run a global automaker, Barra oversees more than 212,000 employees in 396 GM facilities on six continents. An electrical engineer who has spent her entire career at GM (GM), the new CEO faces big challenges in the U.S., where market share is at a historical low and profit margins are below Ford's, and Europe, where GM's Opel brand has lost billions. But companywide, profits are back, and Barra has the board's approval to invest to make GM prosper again.
2 Ginni Rometty
Virginia (Ginni) Rometty
IBM is a company known for long-term vision and long-term employees. Rometty is no exception: She came to Big Blue as a systems engineer in 1981 after graduating from Northwestern with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering at Northwestern and doing a two year stint at the General Motors Institute (a condition of her college scholarship). Though Rometty excelled at engineering, her rise to the managerial ranks was swift, and she is best known for her work transforming IBM from a technology company to a broader business solutions firm. She led IBM's skillful integration of PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting, a $3.5 billion acquisition. But as long as Rometty has been at Big Blue, she's not afraid to change it. In fact she's afraid not to: "Never love something so much that you can't let go of it," she said at Fortune's Most Powerful Woman Summit last year. "And you have to reinvent."Title: Chairman, President and CEO
Company: IBM
Country: USA
Despite a recent earnings miss that prompted Rometty to give up her bonus, IBM (IBM) remains formidable on the global stage, with customers and employees in 170 countries. She sees big opportunity especially in Africa; she'll visit several countries there this year. With a market capitalization of almost $200 billion, IBM is the world's most valuable woman-helmed company.
3 Indra Nooyi
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: PepsiCo.
Country: USA
Nooyi has more than doubled sales from outside the U.S. in her seven years running PepsiCo (PEP). International markets now make up about half of the company's $65.5 billion in revenue. Indian-born Nooyi has made sure her product pipeline reflects her consumer base: Since 2012, "innovation centers" have popped up in Shanghai, Hamburg, and Monterrey, Mexico.
4 Maria das Graças Silva Foster
Title: CEO
Company: Petrobras
Country: Brazil
At no. 25, Petrobras, with annual revenues of $144 billion, is the highest-ranking woman-led company on the Fortune Global 500. Foster faces Many challenges: She is selling off assets to shore up the energy company's balance sheet even as she plans to spend $237 billion on production and exploration projects.
5 Ellen Kullman
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: DuPont
Country: USA
Kullman's reinvention of DuPont has a distinctly international flavor to it: Her 2011 acquisition of Danish food enzyme maker Danisco was key to an effort to push the company deeper into agriculture and nutrition (along with biotech and advanced materials). A third of the company's sales, $15.5 billion in the past six months, come from developing markets.
6 Irene Rosenfeld
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: Mondelez
Country: USA
After Rosenfeld split Kraft (KRFT)in two, she took the reins of the more international entity (and gave it an exotic-sounding name): Mondelez (MDLZ), a snack maker, gets 83% of its revenue from outside the U.S., and Rosenfeld has invested accordingly. Last year the company said it would spend $190 million to build the largest chocolate manufacturing plant in India.
7 Marillyn Hewson
Title: President and CEO
Company: Lockheed Martin
Country: USA
Hewson is making a big push to increase international sales, which make up 17% of revenue. (Pretty much everything else is sold to the U.S. government.) The defense contractor has 10 international buyers for its F-35 fighter jet. But even when Lockheed Martin (LMT) doesn't sell to foreign clients, its products have a huge indirect impact on global diplomacy.
8 Meg Whitman
Title: CEO
Company: Hewlett Packard
Country: USA
Some of Whitman's biggest battles are playing out on the global stage, with HP (HPQ) rival Lenovo (LNVGF), a China-based company, now bulking up in servers. (Lenovo has already unseated HP as the world's No. 1 PC maker.) And indeed, the whole world is watching to see if Whitman can deliver a long-awaited turnaround of the iconic company.
9 Patricia Woertz
Title: Chairman, President and CEO
Company: Archer Daniels Midland
Country: USA
The Australian government stymied Woertz's global expansion plans when it blocked ADM's (ADM) $3 billion bid to buy the country's largest grain company. Despite the setback, Woertz has serious international credibility: The $89-billion-a-year-in-revenue company not only produces food nearly everywhere but also moves freight around the world through its logistics division.
10 Gail Kelly
Gail Kelly
Age: 57Managing director and CEO, Westpac
Australia (2)
Title: Managing Director and CEO
Company: Westpac Group
Country: Australia
Kelly is just about as global as they come: Born in South Africa to British parents, she taught Latin in Zimbabwe before becoming a banker and moving to Australia. Her Westpac, with $43.6 billion in revenue, is the country's second-largest bank by market value, and with about a 70% return during Kelly's six-year tenure, it is also one of the country's top performers.
11 Sheryl Sandberg
Sheryl K. Sandberg
Title: COO
Company: Facebook
Country: USA
As the No. 2 of Facebook (FB), which is available in some 70 languages and generates more than half its revenue from outside the U.S.,Sandberg plays a critical role in fostering global conversations. She's also trying to spread her personal message of career empowerment: Her career book, Lean In, has been translated into more than 20 languages.
12 Phebe Novakovic
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: General Dynamics
Country: USA
General Dynamics (GD) is slowly but steadily increasing its international operations, which now make up 20% of revenue—up from 18% in 2010. The defense company may be benefiting from new wealth in emerging markets. Sixty-five percent of the backlog in her aerospace unit, which produces Gulfstream jets, comes from international orders.
13 Safra Catz
Safra A. Catz
Catz's responsibilities at the software giant are far-reaching. She has been the company's president since 2004, a title she now shares with ex-HP chief Mark Hurd. In 2011, she also took on the CFO job -- a position she held before, in the mid-2000s. As if that weren't enough, Catz also heads up the company's prolific mergers and acquisitions machine. She can take credit for close to 100 deals representing tens of billions of dollars. It's little wonder, then, that Catz regularly tops the ranks of highest paid women. According to Oracle's latest proxy, her compensation for the last fiscal year exceeded $50 million.Title: Co-President and CEO
Company: Oracle
Country: USA
Most big decisions at Oracle (ORCL), whose software is part of the essential fabric of a huge swath of the Global 500, have Catz's seal of approval— a degree of control that makes her one of the most powerful figures in technology. The Israeli-born Catz is also a key figure in Oracle's acquisition strategy; this past year she completed seven acquisitions worth nearly $5 billion.
14 Marissa Mayer
Title: President and CEO
Company: Yahoo
Country: USA
A celebrity in her home country, Mayer is starting to step onto the world stage. She was co-chair of the recent World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. And while Mayer's turnaround of Yahoo's (YHOO) domestic operations is a work in progress, its international play, a 24% stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, remains a bright spot.
15 Alison Cooper
Alison Cooper
Age: 47CEO, Imperial Tobacco Group
Britain (7)
Title: CEO
Company: Imperial Tobacco
Country: Britain
Cooper has offset falling volumes at the $23-billion-in-revenue tobacco giant (brands include Davidoff and Gauloises) by investing in growth markets such as Kazakhstan and revamping her offerings in the U.S. and Russia. Later this year she'll launch an e-cigarette.
16 Güler Sabanci
Title: Chairman and Managing Director
Company: Sabanci Holding
Country: Turkey
Under Sabanci's leadership, the family's business has forged partnerships with the likes of Aviva, Citigroup, and E.ON. (One of Sabanci's companies supplies the buses used by Google and Facebook employees to travel to work.) Sabanci is on the Siemens supervisory board, and she's lobbying for Turkey's inclusion in the European Union.
17 Deb Henretta
Title: Group President, Global Beauty
Company: Procter & Gamble
Country: USA
Henretta is trying to enliven a portfolio of brands (Pantene, Cover Girl, and others) responsible for nearly a quarter of company revenue despite flat sales. P&G (PG) continues to court customers in emerging markets, territory Henretta knows well: She lived in Singapore for seven years while heading P&G's Asia business.
18 Chanda Kochhar
Title: Managing Director and CEO
Company: ICICI Bank
Country: India
Kochhar leads India's second-largest bank, a sprawling organization with $124 billion in assets, $1.5 billion in profit, and 3,588 branches. Though the bulk of ICICI's business is done in India and with companies operating there, the bank is in 19 countries and does brisk business transferring money from expats to families back in India.
19 Sheri McCoy
Title: CEO
Company: Avon
Country: USA
McCoy joined Avon (AVP) in April 2012 from Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) to turn around the direct seller of beauty products. McCoy has exited underperforming countries like South Korea and Vietnam but remains committed to other parts of Asia and to Latin America, where door-to-door selling resonates and represents a moneymaking opportunity for everyday women.
20 Susan Wojcicki
Title: SVP, Ads & E-Commerce
Company: Google
Country: USA
Google's (GOOG) highest-ranking woman, Wojcicki spends the majority of her time at company headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. (Not surprisingly, she uses technology and videoconferencing to connect with product managers and engineers in 10 countries.) A particular focus: serving small advertisers in countries that are just gaining access to the Internet. On Feb. 5, Google announced that Wojcicki is replacing Salar Kamangar (Google employee No. 9) as head of YouTube. The move allows Wojcicki to manage her own Google division, after years overseeing Google's massive advertising and commerce platforms, and continue to boost YouTube's ad revenue: eMarketer estimates it grew 61% in 2013, netting $1.96 billion.
21 Ornella Barra
Ornella Barra
Age: 59Chief executive, pharmaceutical wholesale division, Alliance Boots
Britain (12)
Title: Chief Executive, Wholesale and Brands
Company: Alliance Boots
Country: Britain
Barra recently added the pharmaceutical group's international health and beauty business to her busy list of assignments. The expanded role means Barra is responsible for $27 billion—some 75% of the group's total. She's the ultimate world citizen: She was born in Italy, speaks four languages, works for a Swiss company, and lives in Monaco.
22 Chua Sock Koong
Title: Group CEO
Company: Singapore Telecommunications (SingTel)
Country: Singapore
Chua is swiftly reshaping the $14-billion-in-revenue telecom with unexpected acquisitions, such as U.S.-based mobile advertising company Amobee for $321 million in 2012. Expect more such deals. The CFO-turned-CEO says she has earmarked about $1.6 billion for strategic digital acquisitions in the next three years.
23 Annika Falkengren
Title: President and Group Chief Executive
Company: Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB)
Country: Sweden
Falkengren, an SEB lifer, successfully navigated the storied bank (it was founded and is controlled by Sweden's Wallenberg family) through the worldwide banking crisis. The stock is up 45% in the past 12 months, vs. 16% for the broader market. Falkengren sits on the supervisory board of Volkswagen.
24 Ursula Burns
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: Xerox
Country: USA
Although Xerox's (XRX) share price climbed 69% in 2013, revenue growth remains elusive. As Burns continues to search for her company's sweet spot, she's been snapping up corporations abroad, including Germany-based Invoco Holding, a customer-care services provider, and Toronto's CPAS Systems, a pension administration software firm with a global clientele.
25 Carol Meyrowitz
Carol Meyrowitz
Meyrowitz has continued the $26-billion-in-revenue retailer's hot streak: five consecutive years of customer traffic gains, and 17 consecutive years of EPS growth. In September the company launched a new T.J. Maxx e-commerce site.Title: President, CEO and Director
Company: TJX Companies
Country: USA
While her retailer does most of its business in North America, Meyrowitz is disproving the notion that American store operators can't thrive in Europe. After a tough year across the pond in 2010, Meyrowitz slowed European store growth and reaped the rewards: TJX's European profits more than tripled in fiscal 2013 over the previous year.
26 Ho Ching
Title: CEO
Company: Temasek Holdings
Country: Singapore
The sovereign wealth fund she manages has more than tripled its portfolio to $173 billion since she took over as CEO a decade ago. The Stanford-educated Ho is married to Singapore's Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, but hers is not a political appointment. Temasek lately has been investing in Chinese banks and Western oil and gas companies such as Chesapeake Energy.
27 Anne Sweeney
Title: Co-chair, Disney Media Networks; President, Disney/ABC Television Group
Company: Disney
Country: USA
The networks Sweeney oversees—including ABC and Disney Channels Worldwide—span 166 countries and reach over 431 million homes a month. One notable success story: Disney on demand viewership in France rose 62% between July 2012 and July 2013.
28 Patricia Barbizet
Patricia Barbizet
Barbizet manages the Pinault family's holding company, which includes businesses like Christie's auction house, Groupe FNAC (retail distribution), and Kering (ex-PPR), the worlds third largest luxury group (think Gucci, Bottega Veneta and YSL). Profits shot up 214% to of $614 million in 2012, on revenues of $14 billion, up 19%. Heavyweight board seats like Total, Air France-KLM, and most recently PSA Peugeot Citroen (the French car maker), are a testament to her business savvy. She jumps to No. 13, up seven spots.Title: CEO
Company: Artémis Holding
Country: France
Barbizet heads the wealthy Pinault family's holding company, with $41 billion in assets, overseeing businesses ranging from Christie's auction house to Kering (formerly PPR), home to Gucci, Bottega Veneta, and Puma. Powerful board seats like Air France--KLM, Total, and PSA Peugeot Citroën validate her global clout.
29 Abigail Johnson
Title: President
Company: Fidelity Investments
Country: USA
Fidelity's 23 million investors are mostly in the U.S., but the $4.6 trillion mutual fund behemoth has ramped up its international investments by 69% in the past five years, boosting its total overseas equities assets to $124.4 billion. The famously private Johnson has also joined the board of affiliate company Fidelity International, which serves 24 countries.
30 Denise Morrison
Title: President and CEO
Company: Campbell Soup
Country: USA
Morrison is buying her way into the kitchens of Asia: In August the company acquired cookiemaker Kelsen Group, which gets about a third of its $180 million in revenue from China and Hong Kong. Morrison hopes to leverage Kelsen's distribution to peddle other Campbell brands, such as Pepperidge Farm, in the region.
31 Mary Callahan Erdoes
Mary C. Erdoes
Title: CEO, Asset Management
Company: J.P. Morgan
Country: USA
Erdoes is in charge of a massive $1.6 trillion at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, the seventh-largest fund of its kind in the world, with investment managers in 33 countries. She has increased assets for 19 straight quarters and boosted profits 18% in the last quarter of 2013, even as J.P. Morgan's overall profit fell by 7.3%.
32 Elizabeth Corley
Title: CEO and Managing Director
Company: Allianz Global Investors
Country: Germany
Corley's asset-management firm, a unit of financial services giant Allianz, has $436 billion in assets under management. Corley shuttles among corporate offices in Germany and France and customer strongholds such as the U.S. and the Asia Pacific region. In her free time Corley writes crime novels. So far, she's published five.
33 Karen Agustiawan
Karen Agustiawan
Indonesia's $70-billion-in-revenue state oil and gas conglomerate recently renewed Agustiawan's contract, validating her leadership and earning her a spot at No. 6 on this year's list, but from 19 a year ago. She is also the first female CEO to run this Fortune Global 500 company, which beat its 2012 earnings target, with net profits up 15% to $2.7 billion—the highest profits in the company's 45-year history. A $5 billion global bond issued by Agustiawan in May was oversubscribed four times.Title: President and CEO
Company: Pertamina
Country: Indonesia
Agustiawan has steered Indonesia's $70-billion-in-revenue national energy company to record earnings of $2.7 billion in 2012. She caught Big Oil's attention last year with bold acquisitions overseas, including ConocoPhillips (COP) assets in Algeria and a stake in Exxon Mobil's (XOM) oil block in Iraq.
34 Renée James
Title: President
Company: Intel
Country: USA
The computing power at James's fingertips reaches far: A majority of data centers worldwide run on Intel products, and 75% of the chipmaker's revenue comes from outside the U.S. Since becoming president last year, James is driving Intel's strategy and especially its move into mobile, an area where it has lagged.
35 Harriet Green
Harriet Green
Newcomer Green (No. 18), 51, cold-called the group's chairman, Frank Meysman, and convinced him to hire her to run the 172-year-old travel firm, after the previous CEO left under a cloud of losses and debt. The company is bouncing back just 14 months into her stint, after she undertook a complex $2.6 billion refinancing deal (which was oversubscribed), and a digital overhaul of the $15-billion-in-revenue business. Since Green, a medieval history major, took over, shares have soared tenfold and market capitalization has jumped from $243 million to $3.7 billion.Title: CEO
Company: ThomasCook
Country: Britain
Since Green took over the iconic but ailing British travel company in July 2012, the company's stock is up more than 100-fold. Some 68% of its revenue comes from outside Britain, thanks to a bold restructuring. She's continuing to reinvent Thomas Cook, with plans to shed businesses and focus on tour operations, airlines, and concept hotels.
36 Pam Nicholson
Title: President and CEO
Company: Enterprise
Country: USA
With a mature U.S. market for car rentals, Nicholson is pushing for overseas growth, planning to expand to 70 countries and territories, from 50 today. The world's largest car-rental company, with 1.4 million vehicles, has grown from a fleet of just 6,000 when Nicholson started at the company as a management trainee in 1981.
37 Bridget Van Kralingen
Title: SVP, IBM Global Business Services
Company: IBM
Country: USA
Touted as CEO Rometty's protégé, Van Kralingen oversees one of IBM's most important units. Global Business Services, key to growth areas such as big data, hit $18.4 billion in revenue in 2013. Despite IBM's disappointing Q4 earnings, GBS pretax profits were up 12%, fueled by North America, Europe, and Japan.
38 Nancy McKinstry
Title: CEO and Chairman
Company: Wolters Kluwer
Country: Netherlands
American McKinstry, the Netherlands' first female CEO of a public company, is successfully moving the publisher of professional journals into the digital realm. Her company helps others go global with services that educate accountants, lawyers, and others on global business practices.
39 Rosalind Brewer
Rosalind G. Brewer
Title: CEO and President, Sam's Club
Company: Wal-Mart Stores
Country: USA
Brewer has responsibility for all of Sam's Club's U.S. locations (Sam's operations in Brazil, China, and Mexico are part of the international division), but her purview isn't just domestic. With oversight of $56.4 billion in revenue, she has massive purchasing power. Her merchandise team sources products from 103 countries.
40 Sandra E. Peterson
Title: Group Worldwide Chairman
Company: Johnson & Johnson
Country: USA
The former Bayer and McKinsey executive made history in 2012 as J&J's most senior outside hire ever. Peterson now oversees 65% of J&J's global workforce, including the $14.7 billion consumer business and supply chain—two areas she's been charged with revamping following product recalls in recent years.
41 Ana Patricia Botín
Title: CEO
Company: Santander U.K.
Country: Britain
The Spanish-born, U.S.-educated executive runs Santander U.K., the country's largest bank by retail deposits. Most of the bank's business is local (97% of customer assets come from the U.K.), but Botín could be in line for a huge global job. She's widely believed to be a top candidate for the CEO spot at parent company Santander, the eurozone's largest bank.
42 Dong Mingzu
Dong Mingzhu
Age: 59Chairperson, Zhuhai Gree Group
China (30)
Title: Chairman and President
Company: Gree Electric Appliances
Country: China
Dong, who joined Gree as a salesperson in 1990, has helped make the air-conditioning maker, with $16 billion in revenue, a worldwide player. It exports to almost every country and manufactures in Brazil, China, Pakistan, and Vietnam. Plans for an American factory are under way.
43 Lubna Olayan
Title: CEO and President
Company: Olayan Financing
Country: Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia's most prominent businesswoman (she runs the Middle Eastern businesses and investments of the Olayan Group, founded by her father), Olayan has been a champion for gender equality in the Middle East, calling for Arab CEOs to hire and mentor women.
44 Heather Bresch
Title: CEO
Company: Mylan
Country: USA
Less than two years into her tenure as CEO, Bresch in December closed a $1.75 billion deal to buy Agila, a division of India's Strides Arcolab, making Mylan (MYL) a top contender in the global injectables market. She also just hired a top executive from rival Pfizer to help Mylan grow in Latin America and expand branded products such as EpiPen, Mylan's biggest specialty item.
45 Ilene Gordon
Title: Chairman, President and CEO
Company: Ingredion
Country: USA
Ingredion is no longer just in the business of corn products and sweeteners (though it remains one of the world's leading makers of dextrose), and it isn't only serving traditional manufacturers anymore. Gordon sees big opportunity in the Middle East and Africa, now 8% of revenue, and Asia (13% of revenue).
46 Carolyn McCall
Title: CEO
Company: EasyJet
Country: Britain
McCall's three-year effort to turn around the no-frills European airline is paying off: By adding reserved seating and other features, the former publishing executive produced record profits last year and rewarded shareholders with about a half-billion-dollar one-time dividend—and an almost $11 billion market cap.
47 Kwon Seon-joo
Title: Chairman and CEO
Company: Industrial Bank of Korea
Country: Korea
In December, Kwon became the first female to head a bank in Korea. With assets of about $200 billion, the state-owned entity is reportedly the 105th-largest bank in the world. Kwon, who was an English literature major in college, wants to expand to serve small and medium-size firms in emerging markets.
48 Isabelle Ealet
Isabelle Ealet
Age: 50Global co-head Securities Division, Goldman Sachs
Britain (22)
Title: Global Co-Head, Securities Division
Company: Goldman Sachs
Country: Britain
French-born, London-based Ealet leads Goldman's largest division by revenue, with $15.7 billion last year. (Her portfolio includes fixed income, commodities, currency, and stock trading for clients.) Her revenue took a big hit in 2013, falling 13% from a year earlier, and going forward, analysts say, regulation could further hem profits.
49 Zhang Xin
Zhang Xin
Age: 48CEO, SOHO
China (return)
Title: CEO
Company: SOHO China
Country: China
Though her real estate company is relatively small (about $2.5 billion in revenue), Zhang may be China's most internationally renowned businesswoman, thanks to her high-profile development projects with architect Zaha Hadid and her co-ownership of Manhattan's GM Building. (Oh, and she had a cameo role in Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel.)
50 Angela Ahrendts
Title: CEO
Company: Burberry
Country: Britain
Ahrendts is a bit of a lame duck as she hands the reins at the British fashion house to successor Christopher Bailey. But expect her to skyrocket up the ranking after she takes on her next role as Apple's (AAPL) head of retail and online stores, a portfolio with 20 billion in sales (about $17 billion more than at Burberry).
