Nearly half the women on our
list run huge companies—a record. And all are working hard to transform their
businesses.
By Caroline
Fairchild, Beth Kowitt, Colleen Leahey, and Anne VanderMey, with additional reporting by Michal
Lev-Ram and Patricia Sellers
More CEOs, more industries,
more power, more challenges. That’s the story of Fortune’s 2014 ranking of the
50 Most Powerful Women in Business, which features an all-time record of 24
large-company CEOs in its pages. Our women are leading—and in many cases
pushing through difficult transformations—in heavy industries such as tech,
energy, defense, and autos. Ginni Rometty, No. 1 for the third time running,
continues to retool IBM. No. 2, Mary Barra, must fix General Motors from the
inside out. And Marillyn Hewson, the CEO of Lockheed Martin and our
fourth-ranked woman, is looking beyond defense for growth. Today eight of our
top 10 MPW lead large industrial, tech, and consumer products companies.
It’s a long way from our original
1998 list, on which, we noted at the time, most members “came from industries
with a premium on creativity,” such as advertising, media, and publishing, with
“no top women at blue-chip firms.” Creativity is still a requirement for
success, of course, but you no longer have to work in a “creative” industry to
advance as a woman. Another common denominator is change: Seven of our top 50
were named to their jobs in the past year, and nine are newcomers to the list.
That suggests more turnover at the upper echelons of business—which, it’s fair
to say, is a very good thing for a whole lot of powerful women. —Jennifer
Reingold
See our Methodology
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Cashing in on power: Fortune's
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Mary Barra's (unexpected) opportunity
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IBM CEO Ginni Rometty gets past the
Big Blues
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Why it takes a crisis to get women in
leadership
1-Ginni Rometty
Rank
|
1
|
Previous Rank
|
1
|
Age
|
57
|
Title
|
Chairman, CEO, and President
|
Company
|
IBM
|
Industry
|
Tech
|
Rometty
three-peats as No. 1, even though IBM’s revenue declined for the second
consecutive year, falling 5% to $99.8 billion in fiscal 2013. But her strategy
of investing in new technologies is showing results : In nonlegacy areas like
mobile and cloud services, revenue rose 69% for each division last year.
Rometty has also signed strategic partnerships, such as a deal with Apple to
provide IBM’s services on the iOS platform. And in October, IBM will move its
newly formed Watson business group to a new building in downtown Manhattan.
Rometty has also pledged to invest $1 billion in the development and
commercialization of the cognitive computing system, another future growth area
for the company.
