Gail Kelly

Gail Kelly (née: Currer) (born 25 April 1956) is a South African-born Australian businesswoman. She is the current chief executive officer (CEO) of Westpac but has announced that she will step down from the role on February 1, 2015. She will be replaced by Brian Hartzer, Westpac's financial services chief executive. In 2002, she became the first female CEO of a major Australian bank or top 15 company and, as of 2005, was the highest paid woman in an Australian corporation. She assumed the position of CEO at Westpac in 2008. As of 2014, she is listed as the 56th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

Biography
Early life and education
Gail Currer was born in Pretoria, South Africa. Currer attended the University of Cape Town

Her performance at the Commonwealth Bank led her to be recruited as CEO of St. George Bank (after the death of the incumbent CEO from a heart attack). She commenced in January 2002 – at the time, St. George was seen as a possible takeover target (especially after the purchase of Colonial State Bank by the Commonwealth Bank) but Kelly increased the bank's profitability and achieved much higher levels on return on assets. She started work as Westpac CEO on 1 February 2008.

In October 2010, Kelly announced a target to have women occupy 40% of the top 4000 managerial positions at Westpac, a task reported by The Australian newspaper to have been almost achieved by March 2012.

On 13 November 2014, Gail announced that she would retire as CEO of the Westpac Group on 1 February 2015. Brian Hartzer, the head of Westpac's Australian financial services group, has been appointed as her replacement.
she was ranked 18th in 2009;
and ranked 11th in 2008. As of 2014, she is listed as the 56th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.
Internationally, Gail sits on the Global Board of Advisers at the US Council on Foreign Relations and is a member of the Group of Thirty.
According to the latest rankings of Fortune list of powerful Asia-Pacific women Australian banking major Westpac’s chief Gail Kelly has topped in the list.