Women to Watch 2022: Elayne Gan, Dow Jones

Elayne Gan

General manager, APAC and head of B2B sales, APAC
Dow Jones 
Singapore

In little over a decade, Elayne Gan went from being a strategic account manager at Dow Jones to general manager, APAC and head of B2B sales, APAC, leading a team of 50 salespeople and eight directors.

Her successful career trajectory was marked by quick promotions and several awards and recognitions such as an internal top sales award in Southeast Asia in 2009, being the only APAC employee in the top 25 women in Dow Jones’ leadership development initiative ‘Ignite Programme’ in 2018, and more recently, getting the top sales director award in APAC.

A driven, goal-oriented, and successful people manager, Gan is responsible for identifying regional growth opportunities across businesses and representing Dow Jones externally in the market. Recording incredible growth in the pandemic is no mean feat, and Gan boasts a massive 60% revenue growth since taking over the head of sales role in 2019. A key success factor that contributed to this was the reversal of the Great Resignation and a retention rate of over 90%, the company’s best-ever. This is evidence of Gan’s collaborative leadership style.

As Gan continues to exponentially grow the APAC business, her team’s stellar commercial success contributed 15% to global B2B revenue and a quarter of Dow Jones’ overall risk and compliance business. Her CEO and publisher of WSJ, Almar Latour, describes her as “pivotal in sparking growth throughout APAC” and her role as “critical in our global organisation, helping the leadership team identify opportunities in the region; representing the voice of APAC colleagues, ensuring they are aligned with our global vision and set up for success; representing Dow Jones at major events and in the media; chairing the APAC leadership meeting; and working closely with other regional News Corp businesses.”

In addition to exceeding her work KPIs, Gan secures a spot on this list with her robust extracurriculars. Inclusion and diversity are not only business imperatives for her, but also the right and smart thing to do. She established and co-chairs Dow Jones’ APAC DEI Council and works toward fulfilling her commitment of valuing and empowering every employee to help them further their careers.