Senior Vice President of BYD Company Limited & President of BYD Motors Inc., Stella Li has been honored with the Business Leadership Award at Project Sunshine’s annual benefit celebration. The gala, now in its 15th year, was held in New York to celebrate the supporters, volunteers, patients, and families of Project Sunshine.
Project Sunshine is a non-profit organization that provides free creative educational and recreational programs for children in hospitals in the US and overseas, including China.
Li has risen quickly through the corporate ranks at BYD since joining the Shenzhen-based company as a marketing manager in 1996. Under her leadership, BYD opened an electric bus factory in Lancaster, California four years ago. The facility is the largest electric bus factory in North America and currently employs 800 locals. To date, BYD has invested about 300 million USD in the United States.
BYD is planning growth in the east coast after successfully establishing a leading market share of 80 percent for electric buses in the country, supplying buses to over 40 organizations and academic institutions including Facebook and Stanford University. Besides electric buses, BYD is also promoting heavy-duty electric trucks in
U.S. To date, the company has provided trucks to LA port, Daylight Transport and SF Goodwill. Those trucks will help to reduce carbon emissions, especially in heavily polluted areas such as ports.
Li believes that her own story of moving up in the business world can provide a lesson in how women can shatter the glass ceiling in business. She added that values such as environmental protection and gender equality could be fostered through greater bilateral cooperation between US and Chinese businesses. “Just like Project Sunshine’s founder Joseph Weilgus, we too care about our children’s future. Through the development of clean energy sources, we hope to mitigate air pollution, thereby creating a better living environment for them,” she said.
Since its establishment as a renewable battery manufacturer, BYD has evolved into a producer of electric vehicles for private, public and industrial use. Its pure electric buses were first introduced in its home base of Shenzhen in 2010 as part of a citywide electrification program to reduce vehicle emissions, which contribute to global warming. Today BYD vehicles operate in over 200 cities including Los Angeles, London and Singapore.
