Jean Liu is a disrupter, and not only through her ambitious effort to change the way people in China commute, travel and connect with one another. With Didi Chuxing, the ride-sharing, taxi-hailing startup she leads alongside Cheng Wei—its name means “Beep Beep Mobility” in Chinese—Jean has built a transportation platform that offers convenience and flexibility to tens of millions of commuters.
She and her team are succeeding with innovative, big-data algorithms that aim both to improve the efficiency of Didi’s service and to ease the congestion on roadways. By analyzing commuter patterns the way oceanographers track the tides, Didi may help traffic jams go the way of the flip phone.
TIME 100
In over 400 cities across China, Jean has also built a company that is dedicated to serving the community around it. Guiding Didi to this higher purpose, and giving back to the places where it does business, she shares my belief that companies can and should measure themselves by more than just the bottom line.
Cook is the CEO of Apple, which has a seat on Didi’s board