(Top L-R) Komal Shah, Ritu Narayan, Asha Motwani/ (Bottom L-R) Maya Ajmera, Yamini Rangan, Subhi Rao, Savita Subramanian / (Top L-R) Instagram (Komal Shah)/ Forbes/File Photo (Bottom L-R) mayaajmera.com/ HubSpot/ LinkedIn (Subhi Rao)/ LinkedIn (Savita Subramanian)

Seven Indian American women were named to Forbes’ 2026 50 Over 50 list, which recognizes women over 50 making significant contributions in their fields.

The sixth annual list features 200 women across four categories – Lifestyle, Impact, Innovation and Investment. Produced in partnership with Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski’s Know Your Value initiative, the list includes entrepreneurs, executives, investors, philanthropists and other leaders.

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The Indian American honorees are art collector and philanthropist Komal Shah, venture capitalist Asha Jadeja Motwani, Society for Science President and CEO Maya Ajmera, Zum co-founder and CEO Ritu Narayan, HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan, Uplevyl founder and CEO Shubhi Rao, and Bank of America executive Savita Subramanian.

Lifestyle

Komal Shah, 56, was recognized for her work as a philanthropist and art collector.

An engineer by training, Shah immigrated to the U.S. from India to study computer science at Stanford University. After a career as a Silicon Valley technology executive, she turned her focus to philanthropy and championing women artists.

Shah and her husband, technology investor Gaurav Garg, began building the Shah Garg Collection nearly two decades ago. The collection focuses on modern and contemporary art by women and artists of color, with the goal of addressing historical gender inequities in museums.

Earlier this year, Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, a traveling exhibition featuring works from the collection, opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Impact

Asha Jadeja Motwani, 63, was recognized for her work as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and philanthropist focused on entrepreneurship and the U.S.-India innovation ecosystem.

Motwani has invested in more than 200 technology startups, including early investments in Google, PayPal, Pinterest and AppDynamics.

Following the 2009 death of her husband, Stanford computer scientist and early Google mentor Rajeev Motwani, she founded the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation to support entrepreneurs and strengthen the U.S.-India innovation ecosystem.

In 2025, Motwani established the Motwani Jadeja Institute for American Studies at O.P. Jindal Global University with a $5 million endowment, described as one of the largest private investments in American Studies in India.

As founder of the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, Motwani sets the foundation’s direction and priorities, including its work supporting young entrepreneurs and innovation.

Innovation

Maya Ajmera, 59, was recognized for her leadership at Society for Science, where she serves as president and CEO. She is also executive publisher of Science News.

Ajmera was recognized through the Science Talent Search as a teenager. Today, she leads the nonprofit behind the competition as well as several major pre-college STEM programs.

Since becoming president and CEO of Society for Science in 2014, Ajmera has secured a $100 million, 10-year sponsorship for the Science Talent Search and launched an $11 million STEM outreach initiative aimed at expanding opportunities for underserved students. She has also helped grow Science News into a media enterprise reaching more than 23 million readers.

Raised in North Carolina by Indian immigrants, Ajmera holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Bryn Mawr College and a master’s degree in public policy from Duke University.

She is also the founder of the Global Fund for Children, a nonprofit that supports community-based organizations working with vulnerable children and young people.

Ritu Narayan, 53, was recognized for co-founding and leading Zum, a school transportation company valued at $1.7 billion.

Narayan founded the company with her brothers in 2015 after facing difficulties finding reliable transportation for her children. Zum uses technology, including GPS and tablets, to connect school buses and student shuttle vans to an app that allows parents and teachers to track vehicles on their routes.

The company generated $333 million in revenue in 2025, a 35 percent increase from the previous year, with 5,000 schools nationwide using its services.

Narayan told Forbes that her experience reminded her of her mother, an educator in India who had left her job for the same reason.

“And I'm here sitting in Silicon Valley at the center of innovation and I'm also thinking: Would I have to leave my job, my career?” Narayan said.

Yamini Rangan, 53, was recognized for her leadership as CEO of HubSpot, the New York Stock Exchange-listed marketing software company.

Rangan, who was born in India, moved to the U.S. to pursue a master’s degree in computer engineering and later an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

She became HubSpot’s CEO in 2021, succeeding co-founder Brian Halligan. Since then, the company has doubled its revenue to $3.1 billion and became profitable for the first time on an annual basis, reporting $45.9 million in net income in 2025.

Before becoming CEO of HubSpot, Rangan held executive roles at Dropbox and Workday.

Shubhi Rao, 59, was recognized for founding and leading Uplevyl, an AI-powered platform designed to help organizations navigate complex workplace and life-related decisions.

Rao’s career has included leadership roles at Ford Motor, Tesco, Alphabet/Google and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In 2020, she identified gaps in the way data concerning women’s workplace and life circumstances was collected and used.

She subsequently founded Uplevyl, which launched in 2021. The platform brings together fragmented data, statutes, eligibility rules, benefits, provider information and institutional knowledge to create jurisdiction-specific intelligence.

Its services are used by organizations including Evercore, Ancestry.com and Equal Rights Advocates.

Rao has said she spent three decades seeing systems treat women as an “edge case.” Uplevyl uses AI and structured knowledge systems to address gaps in areas including workplace rights, financial life events, health and caregiving.

Investment

Savita Subramanian, 54, was recognized for her work as managing director and head of U.S. Equity and Quantitative Strategy at Bank of America.

Subramanian is responsible for the bank’s forecasts for major U.S. stock indexes and has become a prominent voice on the direction of financial markets.

She joined the bank in 2001 as a strategist at Merrill Lynch, which later merged with Bank of America.

In June 2026, Subramanian attracted national attention after publishing an investment note warning of risks in the stock market. “Too many red flags. Take profits,” she wrote, cautioning investors about signs of a potential bear market.

Forbes said the selection process involved thousands of online nominations, along with research, reporting and fact-checking by Forbes and Know Your Value journalists.

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