Marjorie Yang

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of shirt manufacturing giant Esquel Group, Marjorie Yang is one of the world's most successful businesswomen, named in the FORTUNE top 50 Most Powerful Women in Business 2004.

She was born in 1952 in Hong Kong, daughter of a prominent textile manufacturer, and studied in the U.S., gaining a BSc in mathematics from M.I.T., followed by an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

From 1976-1978 she worked in New York for First Boston Corporation (now Credit Suisse First Boston) before returning to Hong Kong to help her father set up Esquel.

From small beginnings the company rapidly expanded into one of the world's leading high-quality men's cotton shirt manufacturers, supplying such household-name brands as Polo, Hugo Boss, Tommy Hilfiger, Nordstrom and Abercrombie & Fitch.

It now produces over 60 million shirts a year - more than any other company in the world - with 47,000 employees in nine countries and an annual revenue of $500 million. Yang became C.E.O. in 1995 (her sister Teresa is C.O.O., while her father, now 81, is still a regular in the company's Hong Kong head office).

Under Yang's leadership the company has adopted progressive management techniques and a dynamic, vertically integrated operations structure, controlling everything from the growing of the raw cotton used in its shirts - it owns 12,000 acres of cotton-farming land in Xinjiang province, north-west China - to the packaging, export and retailing of the finished product.

Equally important, Yang has placed huge emphasis on ethical business practices, social and environmental responsibility and worker welfare, introducing air-conditioned factories, employee-friendly shift-systems and educational programs for workers and their children.

"It is very important for us to set an example in Asia as a company that can be both viable and socially conscious," she says. "If we can continue to set that standard, others will follow in our path."

In addition to her work with Esquel she holds a number of other positions, including being a board member of Gilette and the M.I.T. Corporation. She is divorced with one daughter.