Petrobras CEO Graça Foster ranked 4th among world’s most powerful businesswomen

Graça Foster, the president of Brazil’s oil giant Petrobras, was regarded by business magazine Fortune as the world’s fourth most powerful woman. Number one on the list of 50 women is General Motors CEO Mary Barra, followed by IBM’s Ginni Rommety and Pepsico’s Indira Nooyi.

According to Fortune, the list was compiled by editors according to such criteria as scale, importance, financial health and future of the enterprises run by women, alongside their professional background. This is the first global edition of the list, in which emphasis was given to the selected women’s international role and their place in the international community. Previous compilations had been dedicated to US and non-US female executives separately.

This is not the first time chemical engineer Graça Foster, 60, is included in Fortune’s rankings. The first female president of Petrobras, where she has worked for 32 years, Foster inaugurated as president in February 2012, and was placed 1st among the most powerful businesswomen outside the US in 2012 and 2013. Last year, Graça Foster was included in a list drawn up by Forbes as one of the world’s twenty most powerful women.

Translated by Fabrício Ferreira