Phyllis Kao, The Most Watched Auctioneer In The World

Phyllis Kao did not enter the auction world quietly. She walked onto the rostrum and altered the expectations of what authority in that space can look and sound like. In an industry that has long coded power as British, masculine and emotionally neutral, Kao has built a different model of command: theatrical when it needs to be, scholarly when it should be and fully, unapologetically herself.

Her instinct for holding attention began long before she ever called bids. She grew up performing on the violin and understood early on what it means to sustain focus and tension over time. The discipline and the stagecraft translated seamlessly. "If you are going to ask people to listen to you for two or three hours, you have to keep them engaged," she told Observer. "I grew up performing, so that part was always natural to me." But Kao did not arrive to be ornamental or palatable. She arrived to run the room.

What separated Kao from her earliest years was not precocity, but fearlessness. She understood the room not as a static place where protocol is followed, but as a site of performance where psychology, pacing and charisma can determine the outcome. She has been at Sotheby's for close to a decade now, and today she is senior vice president of client strategy, navigating the high-stakes intersection of business, collectors and scholarship.

But the art world first began paying attention to her presence on the podium in November 2023, when she anchored the Now Evening Auction during the fall marquee week. The sale went white glove and launched her into a new tier of recognition within the industry. That night also introduced her visual language to a much broader audience. Kao wore a silver Armani jacket that belonged to her mother. On the podium, it read not as adornment but as continuity. She has family in Taiwan and grew up between cultural worlds, and clothing for her is a way of folding history into the professional stage.

Her visibility intensified again when she appeared in the viral Alexis Bittar campaign, playing an auctioneer in a satirical bidding scene. It was a crossover moment that signaled something new: the world outside the art industry understood the archetype of the auctioneer, and in that world, she already read as the face of it.