Han Seong-Sook
Courtesy of Naver
- TitleCEO and President
- AffiliationNaver
- 2020 Rank36
- CountrySouth Korea
Since Han became Naver’s first female CEO in 2017, she has focused on diversifying the South Korean Internet giant’s portfolio beyond its flagship search engine by funneling more money toward R&D and new business segments. In the first half of 2021, for instance, Naver invested $673 million in R&D; the company spent $1 billion on R&D in all of 2020. Han’s diversification strategy has yielded results: Naver’s new business ventures in e-commerce, fintech, content, and the cloud accounted for over 50% of Naver’s $1.4 billion in revenue in the second quarter of 2021. Naver has committed to becoming carbon negative by 2040 via various initiatives such as using energy-efficient technologies at its cloud data centers. The company this year also issued $800 million of ESG bonds on the global debt market.
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