The CEO of the Rosewood Hotel Group, Sonia Cheng runs a company that manages more than 50 properties across four continents. With a portfolio of brands that includes Rosewood Hotels & Resorts, New World Hotels & Resorts, and Khos, its line-up of hotels features icons such as New York’s The Carlyle and Paris’s Hôtel de Crillon, joined in 2019 by the Rosewood brand’s first Hong Kong property.

Cheng promotes environmentally friendly and sustainable policies across the company, and last year partnered with Hong Kong NGO ImpactHK in a year-long engagement to address three key areas of need for homeless people: finances, food and job training. The initiative includes meal donations, skill-building for future employment and a donation programme. At the start of the pandemic, the company launched Rosewood Raise, a relief initiative for workers across its global operation and the communities in which its properties operate.

A member of the family behind the New World Development empire—of which she is an executive director, as well as vice-chairman of its jewellery retailer Chow Tai Fook—she started her career working for investment banks Morgan Stanley and Warburg Pincus, joining the family business in 2008. A non-executive director of HSBC and a member of the Hong Kong Tourism Board, she is also the chairman of the advisory committee of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a former member of the advisory committee of the School of Hotel & Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

The sister of Adrian, daughter of Henry, and granddaughter of Yu-tung, she has three daughters and a son with her husband Paulo Pong.