The 48th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting will take place on 23-26 January in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, under the theme 'Creating a Shared Future in a Fractured World'. More than 3000 participants from 100 nations will participate in over 400 sessions of the annual event. For the first time in the 48-year history of WEF, the event will be co-chaired entirely by women. We look at the profiles of these seven women.
An Indian woman will make her presence felt in the World Economic Forum 2018. Chetna Sinha, founder of the rural cooperative Mann Deshi Bank for women, has been picked to join seven co-chairs for the four-day event.
International Monetary Fund director Christine Lagarde is another co-chair. After serving her first five-year term, she was re-appointed in July 2016 for a second term. The French national has served as Finance Minister from June 2007 to July 2011 of her nation, and also served as France's Minister of State for Foreign Trade for two years.
Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg who is Norway's second female PM appointed women to half of the Cabinet posts. She heads a right wing coalition government formed after elections in 2013.
Italian physicist and director general of the CERN particle physics research centre Fabiola Gianotti is another key woman chair at the event. She has served as former spokesperson for the ATLAS Experiment on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty started her career in with IBM in 1981 in Detroit. She has held a number of leadership positions, most recently as senior vice-president and group executive, IBM sales, marketing, and strategy.
French National Isabelle Kocher became CEO of Engie, the world's largest non-state-owned electricity company, in May 2016. Kocher was ranked fourth in Forbes' Most Powerful Women in the World list 2017 for diverting Engie away from fossil fuels and focusing on solar energy, wind power and electric-vehicle charging stations.
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Sharan Burrow was picked as General Secretary of the ITUC at its Second World Congress in Vancouver, June 2010. Burrow has also held the position of ITUC President since its Founding Congress in Vienna (November 2006) and the position of ICFTU President since its 18th World Congress in Miyazaki (November 2004). She is the first woman to have held any of these positions.