Power Rising: These Are The Women To Watch In 2026

From the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire Luana Lopes-Lara to Temasek CFO Png Chin Yee and Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, these are the founders and executives we’ll be watching in 2026.

By Maggie McGrath, Forbes Staff.
Originally Published by Forbes | December 10, 2025

Unlike the Forbes 30 Under 30 list or 50 Over 50 list, the ranking of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women does not solicit nominations from the public. After all, we can see who is leading the world’s largest GDPs; which tech companies are striking the most influential deals to build out the AI ecosystem; which founders have built the most valuable companies and which self-made billionaires have agreed to pass their wealth on to worthy causes.

The trickier part about measuring power, however, is timing. Some years, elections take place well ahead of the deadline to complete our ranking—as they did in Japan this year, propelling newly-elected prime minister Sanae Takaichi to the No. 3 spot on the 2025 list. Other times, elections and CEO appointments happen at the end of one year but don’t take effect until the following—which is why, for instance, EY chief Janet Truncale didn’t make the top 100 in 2023 but did in 2024 (and again in 2025).

To that end, here are ten women who are going into 2026 with their eyes on a promotion, potential election to power or surging consumer interest in the brand they’re building:

Natascha Viljoen: South African mining executive Viljoen has been the chief operating officer for the $97 billion (market cap) Newmont Corporation since 2023. In September, the company announced she will become its next CEO starting in January, putting Viljoen at the helm of the world’s largest producer of gold, copper, zinc, silver and lead. “Growing up in a South African mining family—my father was a winding engine driver—my passion for this industry was shaped from an early age,” Viljoen said, going on to note that navigating the “complex” mining environment in 2026 and beyond will require discipline, innovation and focus.

Png Chin Yee: Chin Yee is currently the chief financial officer of Temasek, Singapore’s state-owned investment company with a $324 billion portfolio. In August, the company announced that in spring 2026, Chin Yee will add “president” to her title. The firm has credited Chin Yee with “reshaping” its financial services portfolio “from a predominantly bank-focused one to include non-bank financial services such as digital payments, wealth management, market infrastructure, and financial software.”

Aicha Evans and Tekedra Mawakana: As CEO of Zoox and co-CEO of Waymo, Evans and Mawakana (respectively) are spearheading competing robotaxi companies that will shape the future of transportation in the U.S. and beyond. Zoox launched its service to the public in Las Vegas this September, offering free rides on the Vegas Strip and plans to do the same in San Francisco by the end of the year. If the two companies are in a race for autonomous driving dominance, though, Waymo currently has the lead: its robotaxis already log some 300,000 paid rides (worth at least $6 million) every week in the five cities where Waymo operates, and some investors estimate that Waymo’s financial potential sits in the trillions.

Lucy Guo and Luana Lopes Lara: In April, Scale AI cofounder Guo became the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire, snapping up the title from music titan Taylor Swift and becoming one of just six female billionaires under the age of 40 (Guo is 31). Today she runs a different startup, Passes, and as of early December was still a billionaire but no longer the world’s youngest female billionaire. That title now sits with Lopes Lara, a onetime Bolshoi-trained ballerina who is the cofounder of…[MORE]

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