Bonnie Y Chan doesn’t believe a woman must be as aggressive and overbearing as some men to succeed in a male-dominated world. As co-COO of the Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing (HKEX) during the pandemic, when restaurants shut down at 6 p.m., she prepared simple meal kits for colleagues who didn’t know how to cook and risked going hungry while working late. It’s a people-centric approach that led to Chan’s promotion last March, as the first female CEO of the HKEX.
It was a troubled time for the exchange, which had been the world’s top IPO market seven times between 2009 and 2019 but slipped to 10th place in the first half of 2024. Still, Chan stayed true to her values, pushing to eradicate all-male boards from its listed companies, becoming the first major exchange to do so. By the year’s end, HKEX ranked fourth for IPOs worldwide. Meanwhile, single-gender boards plummeted from 800 in 2022 to just 85 in early 2025, or 3% of listed companies.
Campbell is a TIME editor-at-large