Leena Nair flourishes as the second Indian-origin woman CEO after former PepsiCo Chief Indra Nooyi. On December 14th, Leena was appointed as Global CEO of French luxury group ‘Chanel’.
Leena Nair is not an alien name to the world as she is “The youngest, First Asian-Woman ” Chief Human Resource Officer of Unilever as well. Leena is also a well-recognised part of the Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE).
“Leena’s Made in India Background”
- Unlike other internationally succeeding, Indian-origin CEOs, Nair’s educational and professional qualifications are, for the most part, ‘Made in India’.
- Her schooling is from Maharashtra’s Kolhapur, and she has a degree from Walchand College of Engineering, Maharashtra’s Sangli, in electrical electronics.
- Leena got her MBA Degree from Jamshedpur’s Xavier School of Management. She was a gold medallist there.
It must have been not easy to stand out in the crowd without a fancy degree from abroad for Leena. Everyone is well aware of the fact that most of the company leads do possess management or some other kind of certification from abroad, but Leena did it without it; she has got to be the smartest one.
She worked hard and was a proven asset to respective companies as well. She didn’t think of the societal paradigm back then; when women working outside used to be a big deal, she chose to pick up with on-site work.
She didn’t stop by when she got it, and I guess she has a lot more on her list! She has proven that nothing is difficult when you have a strong and consistent will to achieve.
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LEENA’S WORK TIMELINE:
- The 52 years old Leena Nair’s career has been 30 years long. She joined the Hindustan Unilever Ltd (HUL) in 1992 as a management trainee. She is a gold medalist from India’s one of the top B-school Xavier school of management.
- She opted for factory roles which were rare back then for females. Later in 1993, she was appointed as Factory Personal Manager of Lipton India. The company placed her as Employee Relations Manager(1996), and elevated in 2000, as HR manager of Hindustan Lever India.
- Leena stepped as general manager HR of ‘home and personal care India’ in 2004 and was further promoted to General Manager HR of HUL IN 2006.
- She assumed the charge of executive director HR of HUL a year later. And 2013 was her year, and she took charge of Unilever’s senior vice president, HR, responsible for the organisation’s development and leadership. Later that year, she took over as the global head of diversity.
- In 2016, she moved to London for better opportunities And joined the Unilever Leadership Executive(London) and became the youngest, first woman, and first Asian to be appointed as the Chief Human Resource Officer.
Recently, Anand Mahindra also Congratulated Leena Nair for her Achievement in his Twitter Handle:
With this new attainment, Nair joins the list of Indians who, in the past few years, have taken up challenging roles in the leadership of a global company, including Sundar Pichai(Alphabet), Satya Nadela (Microsoft), and recently, Parag Agrawal for Twitter.
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