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Lindsey Hall: Hi. I'm Lindsey Hall, Head of Thought Leadership at S&P Global Sustainable1.

Esther Whieldon: And I'm Esther Whieldon, a Senior Writer on the Sustainable1 Thought Leadership team.

Lindsey Hall: Welcome to ESG Insider, an S&P Global podcast, where Esther and I take you inside the environmental, social and governance issues that are shaping the rapidly evolving sustainability landscape.

Back in March, we celebrated International Women's Day and Women's History Month. To mark the occasion, we relaunched our Women in Leadership series of this podcast. And throughout 2024, we'll be speaking to women CEOs and leaders from across industries and all around the world. Diversity in leadership has been a focus for many stakeholders in the corporate world in recent years, and gender diversity is where we see most companies' creating policies.

Esther Whieldon: But women still hold a relatively low share of corporate leadership roles. This is true for both management and Board positions. And we'll include a link in our show notes to recent research we published on this topic. We know from our data what the numbers show us, but we wanted to understand what's behind those figures. How do the few women who make it to the top of their companies get there? And what challenges do they face along the way?

Lindsey Hall: So far in our 2024 series, we've heard perspectives from the U.S. and Europe. Today, we're turning our focus to Asia. To learn more, let's bring in our colleague, Jennifer Laidlaw. Jennifer is a senior writer on the ESG Thought Leadership team here at S&P Global Sustainable1 and a frequent contributor to this podcast. So Jennifer, welcome back. Now tell us who did you speak to?

Jennifer Laidlaw: So I spoke to Piyajit Ruckariyapong, who is the CEO of a beverage company called Sappe that's based in Thailand. Sappe is a family company that Piyajit is working to transform into a global brand. The company produces a range of juice and health drinks sold in the Thai market and all around the world.

And as we'll hear today, she started her career as an investment banker before taking on the family business, something that comes with its own challenges being an only daughter, she told me. She's been building up the company and making a name for herself in business circles. She was named one of Forbes' Asia's Power Businesswomen in 2023. I start by asking her about her path to the CEO role.

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: When I graduated from U.K., my first part of career was in the banking, majority I spent like 17 years -- 15 to 17 years in investment banking before joining the family business. So I actually joined the company for, I think, around 12 years now. Then the first role I take on the job at Sappe was the CFO role, so Chief Financial Officer. And then 2 years after that, then I have take another step into taking on the CEO role from my brother who stepped up into the Chairman of the Executive Board. So that's roughly about my path.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. And what would you say maybe some of the challenges that you faced as you became CEO? What kind of things were difficult? And what was maybe the most helpful in advancing your career?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I think just to be honest, taking on the role for the family business is very tough, even with the CFO role itself, because being a professional half of your life and then taking on entrepreneurial field is totally different. First of all, when you're in the banking role, you know what you have to do. Your job is very specific. 

But when you're taking on into the family business role, where even though your job is the CFO of the company, but basically, you still have to foresee in every aspect of the business itself as well. Especially when you come to this family owned business where majority of the employee or the people who are working for us is Gen Y, which is different generation than myself, then it's become very difficult to understand them.

So in the beginning for me, the culture change is quite a shock to myself as well. But then working with all this Gen Y generation is actually giving me another aspect of how to manage the company better because with the Generation Y, they like to ask a lot of questions, it's actually giving me a learning curve, how to understand, how to be more empathy with the people who are working around us and how to align the goal of the company so that we have the same goal, and then we can just moving forward toward that goal. And once that's aligned, it's actually giving us a lot of power and energy within the team to drive the business to go forward as a stepping stone for us to drive the business into exponential format.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. Interesting. And then in terms of being a woman and being in the CEO role, do you find yourself in a position that you're actually helping younger women develop their careers as well?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Yes. I think being a woman CEO, you actually -- with myself and being a woman, I think we tend to have more empathy, and we tend to understand the diversity of the gender. So for me and myself, we're trying to encourage the gender equality within our organization. We look at the job as the job and who actually fit into that role. 

Whether they are women or they -- what gender they are, we can embrace them and empower them to be able to work forward into that career path and pushing forward for them to succeed in their role. And especially women, I think they have a lot of power, and they have a lot of tolerance to be able to bear all the challenging that they are facing. So I think it's a good mix between men, women and every gender in our organization.

Jennifer Laidlaw: And what is kind of the -- some of the specific things that you may be doing to help women in their careers? Do you have specific diversity policies that you're carrying out?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Yes. I think especially for women, we understand that they have a lot of responsibility in terms of their family part as well as their role in the organization. We normally will have a choice for them to be able to partly be able to take some break when they are pregnant. They will have their time in terms of for them to respite and some flexible hours for them to balance between the family and the working life. And we also have a path for them to train them to be able to equip them to success in their role.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. Great. And in terms of the ratio between women and men in the company, what is that?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: In our organization, the total women is actually half, but the senior management, the women is roughly about 60%.

Esther Whieldon: Wow, 60% of senior management, that's above average. The analysis we mentioned at the beginning of this episode shows that globally, women hold only about 1/4 of senior management roles. So Jennifer, what is Sappe doing differently here?

Jennifer Laidlaw: Well, Thailand itself is an interesting example for women leadership. According to a survey by audit, tax and advisory from Grant Thornton, Thailand ranks third in the world for top women executives. So why is Thailand so successful in producing women executives, I asked Piyajit?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: In Thailand, we are very open with the gender. We don't really look at what that gender is to be able to accomplish in their role of work. So I think in Thailand, we're very open for the women to be able to educate, to be able to pick the career choice that they're looking to do. And for us, ourselves as a woman, I think majority of the women in Thailand, they're also very career-oriented, so they seem to be quite successful in Thailand as well. So we're also seeing ourselves that we are empowered by the environment and by the family that we have been upbringing us as well. So I think that's the part that encourage us to be quite successful in Thailand.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. It's very interesting. Yes. You worked in investment banking. In terms of your experience as a woman as an investment banker and now running Sappe, what are the main differences that you've seen?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Working in the investment banking, majority of the people working there is majority unmarried, especially in the trading side. I think in the banking side as well, they're trying to promote the women management. For me, myself, I don't see any indifference between working in an investment banking and comparing to coming to run the family business. 

But the only thing that is advantage to me is that as a -- me as the CEO of the company, I can encourage more to empower other women to work successfully and have their own space to perform. And being the CEO of the company is also being a role model for them that with the woman who have the strong will, have high ambitious and willing to engage and accomplish, I think you can just put into that extreme or accomplished and be successful in your role.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Yes. And I was wondering as well, you said you studied in the U.K. What kind of cultural differences maybe do you see in terms of women leadership perhaps like in Europe compared with Thailand or in Asia?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I think there's not much different. I think the only difference that I would see is that with the opportunity and the role that women have to take in Europe, they may not have the luxury of the helper in the household compared to what we have in Thailand because let's say that for us in Thailand, we can hire a nanny and all that where we can afford it. So the woman can just leave their house or leave their children for a while and be able to pursue their career. I think that's the only difference I see within these 2 countries.

Jennifer Laidlaw: I was wondering as well just being part of a family business, do you think that has helped you in your position as a woman CEO or has it made maybe things a little bit difficult because there's the challenge of running the family business?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I think running a family business also have some other challenge with me being only daughter in the family as well, so I need to prove a lot to the family that I would be able to manage or run the company into the next level or to be able to achieve the global brand or the global company in the future. So I will probably need to work double harder than being the son. So yes. But since, after I prove myself, then I think I can be another role model who'll be able to empower other women or other daughters or other families to be able to achieve what I have achieved.

Jennifer Laidlaw: You have very ambitious targets, and I just wondered if you could tell me about your strategy because you're really trying to build up the Sappe brand and make it an international brand. So what are you bringing specifically to the company that maybe has changed from the past?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Yes. I think start off, we have transformed from just being a family business to be a publicly listed into the Stock Exchange of Thailand. That's the first step of transformation that we have. Then the second part is we have a very high ambitious that we want to build out our brand to become a global brand. That's the ambitious that we have to work on. And when I take on the role, I actually accelerate that brightline into expanding our distribution in the different countries, which at the moment, we expand our sales in 200 countries that's selling our products.

Jennifer Laidlaw: How would you describe your leadership style? And how has it maybe changed over the years from your experience as an investment banker to running the family business?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Yes. Well, actually, I changed a lot from being an investment banker where at that time, my leadership will probably be as like kind of dictator just being very focused on the yearly target and nothing else. While when I jump to lead the organization now, there's a lot more as a team work, not an individual person achievement, but I looked it as a team achievement.

My role as a leader, I think it's very important to be empathetic to every stakeholder as well as your team player. What are they looking at? What is their lacking? And what will be the good mix of the team? Because I think diversity in a team is very important because when people will be -- have certain kind of strength, when we'll have certain kind of weakness, but we, together, we can become a very strong team where we can complement each other.

Another thing is I always take success as a teamwork success where the mistake will be under myself as a leader of the organization. So I think that actually give the leeway for my team to be able to throw their own ideas and have them experiment their own idea for them to be able to fail, why they would not take the blame for that. Yes. So that creates the playground for our company to be able to play together, experiment it together, sell fast and sell forward and sell cheap.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. Excellent. We talked a little bit about the diversity in the company earlier on, but I just wondered what role does diversity equity and inclusion, like, play in the company and how does that impact your day-to-day rule.

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I think diversity in our company, and we are very diverse. In the gender aspect, we have a lot of women, men and LGBT, which, I think, is actually is a fun thing because the more diverse we are, the more ideas, the more playbook that we have. With diversity, we can have a lot more creativity in an organization as well as the generation diversity as well. Here, we have like baby boomer, Gen X, Gen Y, Gen Z working together as the same team. So we will have to keep learning, so -- well, within our organization itself. So we tell ourselves with this as a learning organization.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Based on your experience, what advice would you give to someone who's just starting out in their career path, whether it be an investment banking, in a beverage company like Sappe, or in general?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Well, that question is a very good question. I think, first of all, don't be afraid to dream big because I think we all have our own power to achieve anything. And don't let others to say otherwise. I think that's very important. Believe in yourself, take a chance, create opportunity for yourself, and grab opportunity if you can. 

And don't forget in the future, you also need to create the opportunity for other generation as well. This is very important. And all in all, we have to leave in this world things about the environment, think about the sustainability that we can generate for other generation to come as well.

Jennifer Laidlaw: I noticed that you were on the Forbes' Power Businesswomen list in Asia for 2023. How does that make you feel?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I would have to thanks for that as well. I never dreamed that I would be in that list, but it's just the things that telling us that we have probably done something right to be able to be acknowledge by Forbes. I'm very honored to be in that list.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Excellent. And do you think that's kind of like helped your profile get you noticed as a CEO and get the company noticed as well?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I'm sure that has helped. And we also in our fall under a billion company as well. That's actually put our company into the radar in the international stage. Yes, that really helped.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. Great. Is there anything else about your career or your position as CEO or your experience generally that you would like to share that you think is important that we maybe haven't touched upon?

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: I think as a CEO, I think it's very important -- and especially as a woman CEO as well, I think it's very important to empower people, especially empower other women as well in your country that is giving the chance or open up the opportunity for other women to try it out like what you have been. So I think that is very important.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Okay. Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us, and thank you very much for participating in the podcast.

Piyajit Ruckariyapong: Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Lindsey Hall: So we heard today some inspiring advice for aspiring women CEOs. This idea, don't be afraid to dream. I really like the fact that Piyajit spoke about the importance of encouraging other women and also creating opportunities for younger generations.

Jennifer Laidlaw: Yes, it was really interesting to hear her talk about her own personal path. It was quite funny actually to hear about her transition from a very target-focused investment banker or dictator, as she described it, to one of the leader-focused achieving goals through teamwork.

Esther Whieldon: And we'll continue hearing about the experiences of women CEOs and leaders around the world in our ongoing Women in Leadership series. So please stay tuned.

Lindsey Hall: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of ESG Insider. If you like what you heard today, please subscribe, share and leave us a review wherever you get your podcast.

Esther Whieldon: And a special thanks to our agency partner, The 199. See you next time.

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