Leena nair hul biography books

Indian businesswoman (born 1969)

Leena Nair (née Menon; born 1969) is a British-Indian business executive who is the chief executive officer (CEO) of Chanel. Nair previously was the chief human resource officer of Unilever and member of the Unilever leadership executive. Nair was responsible for the human capital of Unilever, which operates across multiple regulatory and labour environments spread over 190 countries. Under her leadership, Unilever has been named the number one FMCG graduate employer of choice in 54 countries. Nair is an advocate for human-centred workplaces and compassionate leadership.

Early life and education

Nair was born on June 11, 1969, in Kolhapur, Maharashtra in a Hindu Malayali family. She studied at Holy Cross Convent High School Kolhapur, and The New College Kolhapur. After completing her bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunication (E&TC) Engineering at Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli (Maharashtra), she graduated from XLRI – Xavier School of Management as a gold medallist (1990–1992). Apart from working in Jamshedpur, she also worked at three different factories in Kolkata, Ambattur, Tamil Nadu and Taloja, Maharashtra.

Career

Unilever

Nair first joined Unilever as a summer intern and then became a management trainee of Hindustan Unilever in 1992.

After twenty years at Unilever, Nair took a position at global headquarters in London. In 2016, Nair became Unilever's "first female, first Asian, youngest ever" chief human-resources officer.

Chanel

Recruited to Chanel by Alain Wertheimer, Nair was appointed chief executive officer of Chanel in December 2021 and she started assuming the role in January 2022. In her first year she visited over 100 company retail locations as

Leena Nair is the newly appointed global chief executive officer (CEO) of the French luxury house Chanel. The London-based Indian was the chief human resource officer (CHRO) of Unilever before taking on this role.

Leena hails from Kolhapur in Maharashtra and studied at Holy Cross Convent School before moving to Sangli to pursue electronics engineering from Walchand College of Engineering. She then pursued management from XLRI, Jamshedpur where she graduated as a gold medallist.

With three decades of experience at Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL), where she started as a management trainee in 1992, Leena joined the company at a time when only two per cent of the employees were women. At 52, Leena is the first female and first Asian chief human resources officer of the company. She was also featured among Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women 2021.

In several interviews over the years, Leena has attributed her keen sense of numbers to the training she received while pursuing engineering.

She also jokes that her time at college also equipped her well enough to deal with men.

In an interview with Khaleej Times, she said, “There were 3,000 boys and 18 girls in engineering college and the four years there toughened me up, made me thick-skinned and I learnt how to claw my way through a largely male-dominated space.”

Known to follow her dreams, post her engineering degree, Leena joined the MBA programme at XLRI, and it was here that she decided to pursue a career in human resource management instead of engineering. Leena’s hands-on approach in solving problems and finding solutions to issues has been lauded by all at HUL. As an employee at the organisation, she also has several firsts to her credit — she was the first woman to work a night shift and the first woman on the management committee.

“I learnt so many lessons, about the factory and production, the shop-floor

(Miss this week’s Leadership Brief? This interview below was delivered to the inbox of Leadership Brief subscribers on Sunday morning, May 23. To receive weekly emails of conversations with the world’s top CEOs and business decisionmakers, click here.)

In early 2020, when the pandemic hit, companies around the world made a series of complex moves to enable their employees to work from home. Now, as cities and countries start to emerge from lockdowns and execute recovery plans, many companies, like Goldman Sachs, are equally focused on getting them back in the office. At Unilever, which has more than 150,000 employees—including 90,000 in factories—in 190 countries, Leena Nair, the company’s head of HR, is leading the consumer-product giant’s return-to-work strategy, planning for hybrid working and implementing safety protocols to ensure employees across all sectors of the company feel comfortable returning to their workplaces.

Nair started her career with Unilever 25 years ago as a management trainee at Hindustan Unilever, where she held a range of roles, including becoming the first woman to work on the factory floor. When she joined, only 2% of Hindustan Unilever’s employees were women: Last year, Unilever announced that it is gender balanced across its management globally. Nair, 51, is the first female and first Asian chief human resources officer of the company, which estimates that 2.5 billion people worldwide use products from its family of brands, from Axe to Dove to Knorr, every day. Nair recently joined TIME from her home office in London for a video conversation about the workplace in the post-pandemic era.

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(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.)

What do you think the future of work looks like, now that we’ve had this once-in-a-generati