Isabelle Kocher

Kocher’s appointment in May as CEO of the world’s biggest non-state owned electricity company catapulted her into the history books. She is the first Frenchwoman to lead a company in Paris’s CAC 40 stock market index. Kocher, who previously served as Engie’s deputy chief executive and its CFO, took over after the company’s revenue dropped 21.8% (6.4% in local currency) to $77.5 billion and posted a net loss of $5.1 billion after it wrote down $9.7 billion in assets last year. As it grapples with low energy prices and sluggish energy demand in Western Europe, Kocher has promised to sell assets worth $16.7 billion, including coal-fired and gas power plants, and invest $24.5 billion in renewable energy in the next three years.