When Julie Kim takes over as CEO of pharmaceutical giant Takeda in June, she says she will be proud to be known as the first woman and Korean American to ever lead the company.

“If you would have asked me 20-30 years ago, I would have said, ‘I want to be known as a good leader, or a good business woman, or a good strategist without those labels,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’re in a situation where there are still very, very few women of any ethnicity in these sorts of executive-level positions. And so today, I’m proud to own those labels.”

Kim discussed her career in a TIME100 Talk focused on women’s leadership at the 2026 TIME100 Summit in New York City. She was joined by Athina Kanioura, Chief Executive Officer, Latin America and Global Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer of PepsiCo (a sponsor of the Summit), and Clara Shih, founder of dear [CC] and senior advisor and founder of Business AI at Meta, on a panel moderated by Edward Felsenthal, executive chairman at TIME.

Read more at: https://time.com/collection/time100-summit-gala/2026/women-leading-era-of-transformation/