New star leader emerges in Mukesh Ambani's team: Meet Ira Bindra, Reliance top executive named only Indian in world's top...

Ira Bindra, the head of human resources of Reliance Industries Ltd., has been named one of the top CHROs in the world, making Reliance the only Indian business on the list. Late on Friday, N2Growth, a world leader in executive search and leadership consulting, revealed the 2025 Leaders40 Top Chief Human Resources Officers (CHRO) Award.

Leading CHROs from some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world, including Lisa Buckingham (Vialto Partners), Matthew Breitfelder (Apollo Global Management), Robin Leopold (JPMorganChase), Christy Pambianchi (Caterpillar Inc.), Trisha Conley (LyondellBasell), Maral Kazanjian (Moody's), and Donna Morris (Walmart), are on this year's list.

Bindra is the first Indian woman executive of an Indian company to be listed, and Reliance is the only Indian company on the list.

She has been ranked 28th on the list. "Ira is a global Human Resources and business transformation leader with over two decades of experience driving growth, innovation, and organizational excellence across Fortune 100 companies and high-growth enterprises.

"Her career spans multiple industries, geographies, and business lifecycles, where she has led integrated business, people, and culture strategies that enable high performance and sustainable transformation," her citation read.

Ira partners with the Chairman, Executive Committee, and business leadership to develop the company's people and culture agenda in his role as President-People & Talent at Reliance Industries Limited, the biggest private company in India and a Fortune Global 500 (number 88) company with revenues over USD 119 billion.

"She is leading enterprise-wide talent and culture transformation for Reliance's 360,000-strong workforce spanning energy, retail, telecommunications, media, and green technologies," it added.

Bindra held a number of senior global HR leadership positions at Medtronic, the biggest medical device firm in the world, before joining Reliance.  She previously worked for General Electric for 19 years, holding a variety of HR leadership positions in both established and developing markets in the fields of healthcare, oil and gas, technology infrastructure, corporate, and GE Capital.

She has a BA (Hons.) in History from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, and an MBA from the Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands.

Mike Myatt, the founder of N2Growth, first introduced the Top CHRO List on Forbes in 2015, and it soon rose to prominence as one of the most reputable and eagerly awaited rankings in the human resources industry.

The list was officially recognized as the Leaders40 Award in 2020 thanks to a collaboration between N2Growth and the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  Since then, N2Growth has been happy to award the top industry accolade to the world's top CHROs.

"We've seen the CHRO role transform over the last ten years," stated Tony Morales, the leader of the Leaders40 Selection Committee and co-chairman of N2Growth.  "The CHROs of today are no longer only people leaders, but have become strategic partners to CEOs and boards, driving performance, culture, and transformation at the highest level."
 
The Leaders40 Selection Committee selects the top 40 CHROs who set the bar for excellence in human capital management after reviewing hundreds of nominations and conducting more than a hundred in-depth interviews.