As the industries and companies driving the American economy change, new generations of leaders are rotated in to take the helm. To understand the formative experiences and paths of American leaders, TIME and Statista analyzed the résumés of a diverse group of 4,800 of the most influential figures shaping U.S. society today—from policymakers and corporate executives to leading scientists, educators, and cultural innovators. The dataset is updated yearly to include younger leaders in emerging fields and industries. The resulting list of 175 companies shows where U.S. leaders were most likely to work on their way to the top.
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Many of the new leaders come from long established career pipelines. IBM, for example, has steadily held its top 10 position even as other traditional CEO factories like GE, have fallen off. GE was ranked on the 2024 list, but has been undergoing a dismantling that formally separated it into three separate companies: GE Healthcare, GE Aerospace, and GE Vernova. Only GE Healthcare was ranked on this year’s list at no. 64, a steep drop from its 2024 position. In its place, younger companies like Alphabet (parent of Google and YouTube) have slowly crept up as more company alums mature into leadership roles, allowing it to climb from no. 26 in 2024 to no. 13 last year, and no. 9 this year. For example, the CEO of AI powerhouse Anthropic, Dario Amodei, was previously a Google Brain researcher.
Other leadership launchpads have stayed the same. For corporate CEOs, experience in consulting firms remains the most popular stepping stone to leadership. McKinsey, along with the “big four” consulting firms Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG, continue to rank in the top 20, just like they did last year, and the year before. Bloomberg attributes this pattern to the fact that these firms have evolved beyond auditing into providing strategy and executing for companies across a range of industries they advise, which leads to field knowledge and hands-on experience related to finances and how businesses operate. In general, big companies that serve other big organizations tend to generate more CEOs. In turn, building such a reputation allows them to recruit new generations of ambitious young professionals from top schools. Large, active alumni networks associated with these firms also give new recruits a leg up on nurturing relationships with future clients and employers, putting them on a fast track to future leadership. However, Fortune points out that as AI disrupts consultancy as a field, company boards are starting to look less for a jack of all trades and more for leaders with deep technical knowledge and STEM backgrounds.
“Generative AI will change many things about business, but it won’t change the importance of great leadership. At McKinsey, we continue to focus on recruiting and developing leaders who are endlessly curious, humble and resilient—people who have the aptitude to learn new things, think critically and lift those around them,” says McKinsey Global Managing Partner Bob Sternfels. “The individuals who will thrive will be those who set bold aspirations, invest in relationships with teammates, and bring creativity and empathy to every challenge.”
This year, companies in life sciences and healthcare are the most represented in the rankings, with 26 organizations, illustrating the growing prominence of leadership development within these fields. Mass General Brigham—where the CEO of CRISPR treatment maker Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Reshma Kewalramani, completed her medical residency—is ranked at no. 3. Several other major healthcare systems have also risen in ranks compared to last year. The COVID pandemic and other public health challenges have brought more attention to the health care industry’s long-standing challenges, like staffing shortages, physician and nurse burnout, and the rising costs of care. However, these disruptions can often create space for innovations in treatment, while also empowering new leaders with fresh ideas on how to make the system work better.
See the full list of best companies for future leaders below.
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