Peng Lei facts for kids

Peng Lei (born around 1972 or 1973), also known as Lucy Peng, is a very successful Chinese businesswoman. She is one of the people who helped start the huge online shopping company, Alibaba Group. By 2017, Peng was one of 21 women in China who became billionaires all by themselves.

Peng Lei's Amazing Career Journey

Starting Her Path in Business

Peng Lei studied business and earned her degree in 1994. Her university was called Hangzhou Institute of Commerce. It is now known as Zhejiang Gongshang University. After finishing her studies, she taught at a university for five years.

Helping to Create Alibaba

Peng Lei stopped teaching after she got married. In September 1999, she and her husband joined Jack Ma to start Alibaba Group. Alibaba is a giant company that helps people buy and sell things online. Many of Alibaba's first partners were husband and wife teams. About one-third of the founding partners were women. This was something Alibaba was later praised for.

Building Alibaba's Team

Early on, Peng Lei was in charge of Alibaba's HR department. She actually created this department herself! One cool thing she did was develop the "mom and pop" model. In this model, one "mom" focused on teamwork and making sure everyone felt good. A "pop" handled how well people were doing their jobs.

Leading Alipay to Success

From 2010 to 2013, Peng Lei was the CEO of Alipay. Alipay is a very popular way to pay for things online in China. Under her leadership, Alipay grew a lot. By 2014, it had more than 800 million users! By the end of 2014, Alipay was worth about $60 billion.

Innovating Mobile Payments

In March 2013, Peng Lei became the CEO of Alibaba Small and Micro Financial Services. Here, she worked hard to find new and better ways for people to pay using their mobile phones.

Founding Ant Financial

In 2014, Peng Lei started Ant Financial Services Group. This company became very successful. In 2015, Alibaba and Ant Financial bought a part of an Indian mobile payment company called Paytm. Peng Lei became a member of Paytm's board of directors. In 2016, Ant Financial set a record. It raised $4.5 billion from investors. This made it the biggest private fundraising for an internet company ever! The company was valued at about $60 billion.

Overseeing Alibaba's People

For over 10 years, Peng Lei also worked as the chief people officer for Alibaba Group. This means she was the main person in charge of human resources. She looked after about 35,000 employees at Alibaba.

Becoming a Billionaire

Peng Lei became a billionaire in 2014. This was before Alibaba's huge stock sale, called an IPO. Later, when Jack Ma stepped back from public appearances, Peng Lei sometimes took his place. For example, she appeared at the finale of Africa's Business Heroes in November 2019.

Peng Lei's Personal Life

Peng Lei married Sun Tongyu three years after she started teaching. They divorced for a short time but then got married again.

A filmmaker named Porter Erisman made a movie about Alibaba's early days. He described Peng Lei as a "funny and down-to-earth" leader. Erisman used to be a Vice President at Alibaba.

Peng Lei's Achievements and Recognition

Peng Lei has been recognized as one of the most powerful women in the world.

• In 2016, Forbes magazine listed her as the 35th most powerful woman globally.
• She was also #17 on their list of Asia Power Women for 2016.
• In 2015, Wealth-X ranked her as the third richest woman in the technology world.
• Fortune magazine named her the #11 Most Powerful Woman in Asia in 2015.