Latin America's
Top 100 Businesswomen

Latinvex selects the 100 top women in Latin American business.

BY JOACHIM BAMRUD

Thirty years ago – at a time when there were very few female CEOs in Latin America – Guatemalan native Gloria Elena Polanco decided to launch her own company aimed at exporting fruits from her Central American country.

"I started in this adventure when I was unemployed, had a master's degree in Business Administration and a shortage of dollars made me think," she told Guatemalan newspaper El Periodico. "Mangoes were starting to be sold on the street and when I saw that, I remembered that I spent years in London without seeing mangoes. So I bought mangoes in Guatemala and sold them in Europe.”

While Polanco was among the first pioneers, the ranks of female CEOs in Latin America has grown significantly the past three decades, especially helped by foreign multinationals operating in the region.

Polanco joins other prominent businesswomen selected by the editorial staff of Latinvex for our ranking of Latin America’s Top 100 Businesswomen – the most extensive such ranking ever made. The impressive group includes both foreign executives and natives from Latin America and spans 15 countries in the region.

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Keywords: Adobe, Cisneros Group, Companies, Countries, Ecopetrol, General Motors, Kellogg, Leo Burnett, Microsoft, Oracle, Pfizer, Pioneers, PepsiCo, Radison, SAP, Scotiabank, Siemens, UPS, Walmart

Country Keywords: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Venezuela