1. Michelle Phan

The Vietnamese founder of Ipsy, a subscription service for cosmetics, is Michelle Phan. Leveraging her rise to fame as a cosmetics and beauty expert from her YouTube videos, Phan personally chooses and uses the beauty care goods that Ipsy provides to its subscribers each month. Ipsy currently makes millions of dollars a year.

After being raised on food stamps and experiencing early father abandonment, Phan is now the owner of a business that collaborates with international cosmetic brands and has millions of YouTube subscribers, giving her immense power.

2. Huang Shao Ning

Co-founder of JobsCentral, a job-hunting website, Huang Shao Ning is a Singaporean who has helped several start-up businesses by offering crucial guidance gleaned from experience in the cutthroat business climate of Singapore. She is originally from Taiwan and didn’t know any English when she got to Singapore. CareerBuilder, a company based in the United States, reportedly paid one of the highest prices in Singaporean startup history for JobsCentral.

3. Hooi Ling Tan

Co-founder of GrabTaxi (now Grab), Malaysian Hooi Ling Tan, collaborated with fellow Harvard alumnus Anthony Tan to create the well-known taxi service. She was aware that safer and more dependable taxis were needed in South-east Asia. With a current valuation of $3 billion, Grab has partnered with businesses in China, India, and the US to provide the service.

4. Reese Fernandez-Ruiz

Reese Fernandez-Ruiz is from the Philippines, and is the co-founder of Rags2Riches—a social enterprise that helps women in Manila’s poor regions to directly access consumers and retailers with their unique “upcycled” products. Fernandez-Ruiz realized that the handcrafted recycled products produced by the women in the low-income community of Payatas had their earnings significantly reduced due to the middlemen. She founded Rags2Riches as a bridge between the women and the top retailers in the Philippines, raising the income for some 300 women in the area.