Top 10 Female CEOs To Watch
There are currently 29 female CEOs of S&P 500 companies — a mere 5.8% of the top spots, according to Catalyst. And while women are continuing to break glass ceilings, it’s clear they have a long way to go for full equity at the executive level.
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In the meantime, it’s worth celebrating the women leaders who have made it to these coveted chief executive positions. Here are 10 female CEOs who are making big moves at top companies.
Last updated: March 3, 2021
Mary Barra
The CEO of General Motors since 2014, Mary Barra is the first woman to lead one of the big three American automakers, Forbes reported. Barra started her career with GM in 1980 as a General Motors Institute (Kettering University) co-op student and worked her way up the corporate ladder. Her current focus is on advancing personal mobility technologies like connectivity, electrification and autonomous driving.
In January, Barra and GM announced that the company plans to be carbon neutral by 2040.
“General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world,” Barra said in a news release. “We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole.”
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Corie Barry
Corie Barry joined Best Buy in 1999, became CFO in 2016 and became CEO in 2019. The company boasts nearly $44 billion in annual revenue and Barry is on a mission to grow annual revenue to $50 billion by fiscal 2025, according to her official bio.
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Gail Boudreaux
A healthcare industry veteran, Gail Boudreaux is the CEO of Anthem, Inc. and the former CEO of United Healthcare. During her first two years as chief executive of Anthem, the company’s stock rose 20%, Forbes reported. The publication ranked Boudreaux as No. 10 on its Power Women 2020 ranking.
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Michele Buck
Michele Buck is the first woman to hold the CEO spot at Hershey, and she is currently the only female CEO at a major food or beverage company, Food Dive reported. According to the publication, “Buck set out to create a ‘snacking powerhouse’ by accelerating growth in the company’s hugely profitable confectionery business and expanding its portfolio into new snack offerings.”
Under her leadership, Hershey’s has acquired Amplify, the parent company of popcorn brand SkinnyPop, Pirate’s Booty cheese puffs and protein bar maker One Brands. The $1.6 billion Amplify acquisition was the largest in the company’s history, Food Dive reported.
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Safra Catz
Safra Catz joined Oracle in 1999 and became CEO in 2014. She is credited with leading the company’s aggressive acquisition strategy, helping close more than 130 acquisitions, Forbes reported.
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Jane Fraser
Jane Fraser became the first woman to lead a major U.S. bank on March 1 when she started her new role as CEO of Citigroup. She will have to hit the ground running to meet the bank’s current challenges and upcoming deadlines, and the former partner at McKinsey & Co. plans to do that by simplifying the company’s strategy.
According to Barron’s, “Citigroup is broken — but the U.S. banking giant finally might have found the woman to fix it.”
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Lynn Good
Lynn Good has served as CEO of Duke Energy, one of America’s largest energy holding companies, since 2013. Under her leadership, the company has made a commitment to “build a smarter, more resilient energy grid, generate cleaner energy and expand the company’s natural gas infrastructure,” according to her official company bio.
In January, she received the Edison Electric Institute’s Distinguished Leadership Award, which recognizes the commitments, contributions and individual achievements of investor-owned electric company leaders.
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Tricia Griffith
Tricia Griffith joined Progressive as a claims representative in 1988 before working her way up to the top spot in 2016. Under her leadership, Progressive was ranked by The Wall Street Journal as the top-rated corporation for diversity and inclusion. And she told Time that she is committed to ensuring that diversity exists at the top as well.
“I’ve had the opportunity to hire several members from my board of directors in the last several years. And I think having a board that is diverse is as important because they’re guiding me,” she told the publication. “And I think we’re the only Fortune 500 company that has a female CEO and a female chairwoman. And I have 12 board members: half men, half women — and one of the women is a person of color.”
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Lisa Su
Lisa Su joined the semiconductor firm Advanced Micro Devices in 2012 and became CEO two years later. According to Forbes, she has led one the greatest recent turnarounds in the technology sector — AMD’s stock has increased in value more than 20-fold since Su took the top spot at the company.
In 2020, Fortune rated Su the No. 2 Businessperson of the Year for her “strategic vision to lift Advanced Micro Devices from near-bankruptcy to the pinnacle of PC processors.”
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Whitney Wolfe Herd
Although Whitney Wolfe Herd is not the CEO of a Fortune 500 company — yet — she is definitely one to watch. The 31-year-old founder and chief executive of the dating app Bumble became the youngest female CEO to take her company public in February, Business Insider reported. She launched Bumble in 2014, and it now has 75 million users in 150 countries.
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