Chanel’s new Indian-origin CEO, Leena Nair
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Leena Nair will join Chanel at the end of January and be located in London, according to a statement made by the brand. It went on to say that the new hires would safeguard the company’s long-term success as a private enterprise.
Chanel has named Leena Nair as its new global CEO. She previously worked at Unilever as the company’s top HR executive. Nair joins a growing list of Indian-origin CEOs who have risen to the top of some of the world’s most prestigious corporations in recent years.
The news comes as the designer label undergoes a quick internal transition in order to deal with a pandemic-related decline. The consumer goods veteran worked for Unilever for nearly 30 years and most recently he worked as the company’s chief of human resources and also a member of the executive committee.
Chanel’s unique move to appoint a fashion industry outsider as its new CEO is considered part of the company’s expanding efforts to demonstrate a more inclusive approach.
Nair, 52, began her career at Unilever in 1992 as a management trainee. She steadily advanced through the ranks of Unilever, eventually becoming the company’s first female, first Asian, and youngest ever Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO) in 2016. She also served on the Unilever Leadership Executive Committee (ULE).
She previously worked for the British government’s Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy as a non-executive director.
Throughout her career at Unilever, Leena has been a trailblazer, but none more so than in her role as CHRO, where she has been a driving force behind our equity, diversity, and inclusion agenda, as well as the transformation of our leadership development and our readiness for the future of work, says the CEO of Unilever.
Nair was born in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, and attended Walchand College in Sangli to study electronics and telecommunications engineering. She received a gold medal for her MBA in Human Resources from XLRI, Jamshedpur, in 1992. Shortly after her graduation, she worked in three separate factories in Kolkata, Ambattur, Tamil Nadu, and Taloja, Maharashtra.
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