Why Revathi Advaithi of Flex is Modern CEO of the Year

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.

Last December, Modern CEO named the inaugural Modern CEO of the Year. The goal was to recognize a business leader who embodied the traits frequently covered in this newsletter: inclusion, accessibility, humility, and innovation amid unprecedented uncertainty. We looked for a person with vision and grit, someone who is growing a company sustainably. The methodology isn’t scientific, but this year, one name stood out: Flex’s Revathi Advaithi.

Meet the Modern CEO of the Year

Advaithi didn’t set out to ride the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. After becoming CEO of Flex (formerly known as Flextronics) in 2019, she zeroed in on the contract manufacturing company’s power-focused business, which makes components that manage, regulate, and distribute power for advanced semiconductors and systems. Advaithi understood that business segment well from her years working at Eaton, the power management company. She bet that technology companies would continue to need more power and compute—the processing power and other resources needed to run applications—plus systems to cool equipment to keep it from overheating.

She quietly began to build a portfolio of products and services to design, manage, and deploy power, compute, and cooling infrastructure. Today, that business is growing 35% year-over-year, and Advaithi expects it to generate about $6.5 billion of Flex’s fiscal 2026 annual revenue, projected to reach $26.7 billion to $27.3 billion. As Modern CEO went to press, Flex stock was up 65%, outperforming the broader market and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index.

“Either we were very smart, or we got lucky,” Advaithi says. “But when [generative] AI emerges and people start talking about power-hungry compute, the strategy we put together looks like it’s a winning strategy.”

Strategic leadership, personal adversity

Advaithi is quick to point out that her remaking of the power portfolio was part of a strategic approach she applied to all parts of Flex’s business, which includes supply-chain management and manufacturing of components for electronics and automobile makers and the healthcare industry.

Indeed, Flex did more than simply capitalize on AI in 2025. This year, the company also helped its clients figure out strategies for dealing with new tariffs. And Advaithi led the company while undergoing treatment for breast cancer for part of the year. She’s currently in remission.

Advaithi says her board of directors supported her decision to keep working after she was diagnosed with cancer in August 2024 even though intense chemotherapy would mean missing travel and interactions with employees and customers. But Advaithi says she’s never been a “24/7” CEO and has always made time for family, friends, and activities, so she felt confident that the company could thrive without her being constantly on call.

For Advaithi, the decision was affirming. “Having that purpose, keeping myself grounded, having something to push myself out of bed, kept me going in a pretty significant way,” she says. She also says she wanted to show the business world and other patients that those undergoing treatment, especially women, were capable of reliance and strength. “I felt like I had a duty and obligation to show that it could be done,” she says, acknowledging the support of her family and the ability to access high-quality care.

A guide for uncertain times

With manufacturing facilities in 30 countries, Flex this year found itself consulting with clients on how best to navigate the new tariffs announced by the Trump administration at the start of the year. Using sophisticated software that analyzed everything from labor costs to rare-earth mining risks, Flex offered customers different options to make and deliver goods as well as develop longer-term manufacturing and supply chain strategies.

That dispassionate, disciplined approach is not unlike the way Advaithi is thinking about the AI growth opportunity, which many now feel is approaching bubble territory. Rather than building her business around speculation about investment needed to support AI hyper-scalers, Advaithi says she’s focused on the power needs of data centers that have already been announced for 2026.

“The constant decision that CEOs have to make today is looking at growth, risk-taking, and discipline,” she says. “I’ve only worked with industrial companies, so I feel like you have to [ask]: Where are you five years from now? Where are you 10 years from now? And have you built a business that’s viable and sustainable?”

More Modern CEOs

Who would have been your pick for Modern CEO of the Year, and why? Send your submissions to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and we’ll highlight readers’ choices in an upcoming newsletter.

Read more: top CEOs