100 MOST POWERFUL WOMEN ASIA 2025- MALINA NGAI

THE CEO OF THE HONG KONG-BASED HEALTH AND BEAUTY GIANT WANTS TO BRING MORE SCIENCE TO THE ART OF RETAIL.

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LONG BEFORE she became CEO of the world's largest health and beauty chain, Malina Ngai was a competitive athlete, rowing for the then British colony of Hong Kong, and even winning a bronze medal at the 1994 Asian Games in Japan.

Former athletes who make the jump to business often say their time in sports gave them leadership skills and the discipline needed to run global companies. Ngai points to something else that sports gave her: an appreciation for what she calls the "science" of self-improvement.

"Elite athletes do so much science just to improve by one second in a swimming race or in a 100-meter sprint," she says. Ngai says she's carried that focus on metrics to her role running a retail operation of almost 17,000 outlets across 30 markets. "Traditionally, retail doesn't use a lot of science, instead relying on experience. I've really tried to put a lot of science into the business, so we know what actions lead to what results."

Ngai took over AS Watson, the retail division of Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison, in May 2024. After her first full year as group CEO, Ngai sits at No. 6 in Fortune's ranking of the Most Powerful Women in Asia. The job reinforced for her that science goes only so far. "For the past year, I've been reminding myself that I don't have all the answers," Ngai says.

Indeed, certainty is less useful today, when new technologies, changing consumer trends, and macroeconomic headwinds are changing the rules of retail. "There's nothing that you learned in university that now really applies on a day-to-day basis," she says. "Every day, we have to learn: We have to learn gen AI, we have to learn how a customer shops. Suddenly there's Korean beauty, Japanese beauty, Chinese beauty."