If you still wonder whether a dinner table can sit next to a board table, look at the women carving highways through both worlds. Julie Sweet, Mary Barra, Leena Nair, and Revathi Advaithi head companies whose yearly revenues could bankroll small nations—yet each still answers to “Mom,” plans date nights, and keeps emergency snacks in a well-worn tote. Their stories aren’t fairy tales; they’re field guides for anyone who wants a life that’s as full outside the office as it is inside. ✨

Julie Sweet

📸 Photo credit: @youthneck

Julie Sweet grew up in sunny Tustin, California, cracked open law books at Columbia, and walked away from a coveted partner track at Cravath to join Accenture—an in-house move her relatives could hardly pronounce. Today she chairs the consulting giant, steering 700,000+ professionals through cloud pivots and AI experiments while protecting gadget-free family dinners.

Mary Barra

📸 Photo credit: @makeupamericaus

A thousand miles away in Motor City, Mary Barra began tightening bolts on a Pontiac line. An electrical-engineering degree, a Stanford MBA, and a white-hot ignition-switch recall later, she became the first woman to lead a global automaker. Now she’s betting GM’s future on electric cars ⚡ and autonomous taxis—and still manages an occasional school run when the boardroom clock cooperates.

Leena Nair

📸 Photo credit: @financialtimesfashion

From Kolhapur to the rue Cambon, Leena Nair shattered luxury fashion’s monoculture by stepping in as Chanel’s global CEO. The former Unilever HR chief (with an engineering degree few fashion editors can pronounce) now balances haute couture calendars with family WhatsApp calls. Her superpower? Translating supply-chain spreadsheets into stories about craft and culture that even Paris ateliers appreciate.

Revathi Advaithi

📸 Photo credit: @elleindia

Revathi Advaithi was raised in Rourkela’s industrial corridors, studied mechanical engineering at BITS-Pilani, and finished an MBA in Arizona—then spent two decades running factories across continents. As CEO of Flex since 2019, she turns raw components into everything from ventilators to fitness trackers, all while championing equal pay and mentoring Indian girls in STEM. Weekends still involve homemade dosa batter and fiercely negotiated screen-time limits for her two teenagers.

Women at the Helm: The Road Ahead

What threads their stories together? Fierce curiosity, partners who share the load, and a refusal to choose between quarterly earnings and birthday cupcakes. They prove the question isn’t whether women can sit in the corner office; it’s how many more seats we’re ready to pull up. So if you’re mapping your own rise—whether that’s a promotion, a side hustle, or finally saying yes to that executive course—let their trajectories be the wind at your back. After all, every glass ceiling looks thinner once someone else has walked across it in heels, sneakers, or safety boots. 🚀