Güler Sabancı

It was a tough year for Sabancı, whose $13 billion-in-revenue financial and industrial conglomerate, Sabancı Holding, posted modest gains in 2014, because of a weakening Eurozone and the Middle East crisis. But Sabancı’s power in the region is undeniable: A member of Siemens’ supervisory board, she began acting as co-chair of the Business 20 (B20) Trade Task Force—an outreach group for the G20 economies—earlier this year. She is also a formidable voice for women’s empowerment in Turkey, a nation with one of the worst gender gaps in the workplace; the university founded and chaired by Sabancı made headlines last year when it published a report on the impact of domestic violence against white-collar working women in Turkey. It is the first study of its kind in the country. —Rupali Arora