Introducing AI25: 25 Women Setting the Standard for Leadership in AI
A global editorial initiative by Empressa.ai, in partnership with the American Institute of Artificial Intelligence, honoring women who are shaping how AI is built, deployed, governed, funded, and taught.
Empressa is proud to introduce AI25, a new kind of list for a new kind of AI era. A global editorial initiative by Empressa.ai, in partnership with American AI, AI25 names 25 women whose work is quietly, decisively shaping how artificial intelligence is built, deployed, governed, funded, and taught around the world.
Why a New Kind of AI List Was Needed
Unlike traditional lists that celebrate outcomes once they are obvious, AI25 focuses on women who are still in the build phase of their impact. These honorees sit at the center of real systems: they design and ship AI products, architect governance frameworks, direct capital, and translate complex technology into tools that entire teams can actually use. Together, they form a living index of where women are already leading in AI, and a blueprint for the kind of leadership this moment demands.
AI25 is grounded in Empressa’s core belief that the issue in AI is not women’s capability, but our access to the rooms, systems, and resources that convert expertise into influence. Today, women make up roughly a quarter of the AI workforce and a fraction of its senior decision‑makers, even as AI reshapes hiring, credit, healthcare, safety, and culture at scale.
AI25 is Empressa’s answer: an annual, global signal that surfaces the women rewriting those numbers from the inside.
Inside AI25: Governors, Operators, and Cultural Translators
The 2026 cohort spans three categories introduced during this year’s Women’s Month launch:
- The Governors are policy shapers, ethicists, standards leaders, and governance strategists who are turning responsible AI from a slide in a deck into real oversight, safety, and accountability.
- The Operators are the women who take AI from idea to implementation, rebuilding workflows, shipping agents and tools into production, and proving that measurable, responsible AI can work at enterprise scale.
- The Cultural Translators are educators, community builders, and narrative leaders who make AI feel understandable and usable for the people whose jobs and lives are changing the most. They design learning programs, lead internal transformations, and carry the emotional labor of helping colleagues move from fear to informed confidence.
Together, these three lenses capture a simple truth at the heart of AI25: technology does not change the world on its own; it takes operators, governors, and translators to turn code into culture.
AI25 also reflects Empressa’s broader mission as an AI hub built by and for women. Empressa’s attribution‑aware platform is trained on verified insights from women leaders and designed to turn expert knowledge into mentorship, income, and legacy at scale. The same philosophy sits inside AI25. Every honoree’s story is treated not as a marketing asset but as an owned narrative, grounded in her lived experience, her consent, and her ongoing agency in how her work is portrayed.
This year’s list arrives at an inflection point. The AI boom is accelerating wealth creation, productivity, and innovation, yet women remain underrepresented in the roles that set the direction of these systems. AI25 argues that this is not a side issue. It is central to whether AI becomes another amplifier of existing inequities or a tool that actively redistributes access to opportunity. The women recognized here are already using AI to move money, power, and visibility in new directions.
For Empressa, AI25 is the beginning of a long‑horizon project: to create a definitive, recurring index of women in AI that investors, employers, policymakers, and media can look to when they ask, “Where are the women leading in this field?”
Each year, the list will expand in depth and reach, supported by Empressa’s Women in AI Index research, programming like AI Foundations for Women, and partnerships with organizations committed to closing the gender gap in technology.
An Invitation to Reimagine Who Leads in AI
The AI25 honorees are not presented as outliers or exceptions. They are evidence of a broader reality:
When women have access to AI knowledge, capital, and community, they do what they have always done in every era of transformation. They build systems that work better for more people.
A global editorial initiative by Empressa.ai, in partnership with American AI, AI25 invites you to meet these 25 women, learn how they lead, and consider what becomes possible when the future of AI is shaped in our image.
To explore the full AI25 list and read each honoree’s profile, click below.