Asking companies from across Asia-Pacific to tell you all about their best and brightest is a fundamentally humbling experience. The drive and the achievements you end up reading about are truly awesome to behold. That holds true for Women to Watch and for our annual 40 Under 40 feature, of which this is the eighth edition.

Once again this year, when we issued the call for entries, the region’s media and marcomms industry brought it. We received more than 200 nominations before the entry period closed for the 2020 40 Under 40. Nearly without exception, each nominee was impressive, usually in many ways.

But this list isn’t about the ‘merely’ impressive. It’s the about the standouts among the standouts. So Campaign Asia-Pacific’s senior editors got down to the painstaking business of winnowing down to the one-fifth of nominees who rose above the rest.

As the call for entries stated, we were looking for undeniable business achievements and passion for driving the industry forward. We especially wanted to see proven successes from the past 12 months, a strong career trajectory, an ability to inspire others to perform and contributions above and beyond the job description.

We found all of the above in well more than 40 people. (Turns out we needed to find the standouts among the standouts among the standouts.) So after further weighing and re-weighing, after several more rounds of serious discussion, after some truly painful final choices, we are proud to present the members of the 40 Under 40 for 2020, listed below.

This year’s members are a diverse lot in a great many respects—their genders, their locations, their origins, their areas of expertise, their pathways into the industry, the scale of their achievements. But they’re united in their excellence.

We offer our sincere thanks to all who put themselves or their colleagues forward for consideration. Thank you for sharing your amazing stories and your irrepressible drive.

Without further ado, please join us in congratulating this year’s class, and take some time to read their stories. We’re confident you’ll find them as inspiring as we have.

View the complete list here