We are told that the world is equitable now. That the doors are open. That women in business have never had it better.
And yet, the anecdotes that quietly contradict this narrative still pile up — a woman mistaken for a secretary when she’s actually running the room, a girl told she’s “bossy” for wanting to lead, a founder asked how she dares build an agri-tech company without an agriculture degree.
Three female MBA grads of INSEAD — one of the world’s most famed (and globally diverse) business school — offer something more than a triumphant headline. They offer proof that exceptional women are thriving in spite of a system still imbalanced, not because those imbalances don’t exist.
Linn Tonsberg is directing aviation operations across the Middle East and Africa for Air bp. Helen Wang is shaping AI governance at an Abu Dhabi-based financial services giant. Almaha Almuhairi is building a patented agri-tech business while holding her own at Amazon Web Services.
Speaking with them, you might think it’s a woman’s world after all.
But look closer, and the picture is more complicated.
Helen Wang is often invited to speak at symposiums given her industry expertise. Source: Helen Wang
The credential is not the destination. It’s the ammunition.
None of these women went to INSEAD to “find” a career — they already had one. What they wanted was armour.
Wang had investors question her qualifications out loud. Almuhairi wanted the vocabulary and the credibility to quiet doubters. Tonsberg wanted a framework to articulate instincts she had long developed on her own.
Their stories reveal something uncomfortable: women who are already exceptional still feel they must go further for their expertise to be taken seriously. For them, the MBA was another layer of protection, a way to make competence legible to people who failed to see it. And there are still many.
Linn Tonsberg graduated with her MBA in 2012. Source: Linn Tonsberg
Taking what’s offered without apologising for it
What unites Tonsberg, Wang, and Almuhairi the most is not their industries or their accolades. It is their relationship with friction. They tolerate discomfort and even actively engineer it into the way they work and lead, like how Tonsberg encourages healthy disagreements in her teams.
But, paradoxically, these women also report that at various points they have benefited from structural initiatives designed to level the playing field.
Almuhairi admits she was sometimes chosen for competitions partly because organisers wanted female representation. She doesn’t want her gender to define her, she also refuses to apologise for opportunities that exist for a reason — government initiatives, STEM funding, visibility programmes.
Wang, working in a field pushing hard for diversity in AI governance, sees being a woman as an advantage. In a world revolting against the old “hard-nosed, pointy-elbowed, win-at-all-costs” type of leadership, women’s empathy is seen as a solution. Tonsberg feels the same.
Are these advantages patronising or pragmatic? Each woman has clearly wrestled with this question. And the answer is nuanced. Yes, they might get more structural support now, but that is not the same as a free pass.
It is simply a foot in a door. The rest is still up to merit.
Almaha Almuhairi is the founder of her own agritech startup. Source: Mahaya’s Farm
So, is it truly a woman’s world already?
Not quite. And perhaps it shouldn’t be – because greatness shouldn’t depend on gender at all.
What these three women represent is not the new normal, but evidence that when women are given access to the right tools, networks, and institutional backing, the results are extraordinary.
But the operative phrase is when they are given access. The exceptionalism required to reach that access remains, by any honest measure, higher for women than for men.
The absence of complaints from women like Wang, Almuhairi, and Tonsberg does not mean the absence of obstacles. It means they have learned, with considerable discipline, to convert obstacles into strategy.
That, ultimately, is what links them. Not INSEAD, not MBAs, and not even their gender. It is a particular intelligence sharpened by years of being underestimated.
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