FUTURE-PROOFED SOLUTIONS

From allowances for women who want to freeze their eggs to accommodating measures for new mothers, CEO Jane Sun’s policies at Trip.com are progressive and pioneering and reflect her mission to not only run a company that cares but that puts gender equity at its core

- Rachel Duffell

For almost two decades, Jane Sun has been part of Trip.com Group’s C-suite. And since 2016, she has served as CEO of the Nasdaq-listed company, which is one of the world’s largest online travel agencies, counting more than 400 million users and 45,000 employees.

Yet for all her experience and success, Sun experienced her fair share of bias as she worked her way up in the male-dominated tech industry, first in Silicon Valley, where she worked for more than a decade after graduating from the University of Florida, and then in China.

Sun recalls an early business trip when she was CFO at Trip.com to meet with partners in another Asian country and describes how her then (male) CEO entered the room and was met with bowing and great politeness. The number two (also male) executive in the company then entered the room and was received with similar degree of respect. Ranked third, Sun then entered, but wasn’t even greeted with so much as a handshake. “I don’t think they intentionally tried to hurt anyone, but they couldn’t imagine a female could take such an important position in the organisation,” says Sun.

Since then, she has also faced similar experiences when travelling in the US, where, having moved into the role of COO and then her current role as CEO at Trip.com, she was visiting Silicon Valley and everyone kept asking where her husband was. “Even in Silicon Valley, people had a difficult time imagining a major internet company CEO could be female. There’s still a perception that CEOs, particularly in the high-tech industry, cannot be female. So, we have to work very hard to put in measures to really encourage female leadership within our organisation and within the industry.”