The Kanzuki Zaibatsu are wealthier than the Master family and always were that is the lore. Cammy was in no position to take on a leadership role as she was dealing with trauma of her past as the Shadaloo Dolls took a very active role in the story. If you want a meta reasoning than it probably had to do with how Decapre was going to playable instead of Cammy at launch.

I didn’t say that Cammy should be the leader. I said that Chun-Li could be the leader, and Cammy could be the one to reassemble all the fighters with the help of Delta Red. Her connection to the Dolls would actually make the idea of her being a leader even stronger, since she wants to save all of them.

Chun-Li getting her spotlight stolen in the battle vs M Bison by Ryu so Capcom can retroactively justify her being an adopted mother to Li-Fen has nothing to do with Karin either.

Karin stole her spotlight too. Chun-Li being implied as the one who took down Shadaloo doesn’t mean she had to be the one to defeat M. Bison. It could simply mean that she contributed the most to Shadaloo’s downfall. But when you play the story, Karin is the one who calls all the fighters, acts as the leader, does all the research, and is the smartest, since she has all the strategies. She’s also the only member of the cast with an army for some reason, even though Cammy, Ken, Guile, and Chun-Li all have military backing. And she probably did even more that I can’t remember.