Fortune Most Powerful Women

“The best time to solve a problem is the minute you know you have one.” Since she was named GM’s CEO in 2014, Mary Barra has demonstrated an ability to navigate turmoil—from an unprecedented autoworker strike to Trump’s tariff regime—and massive influence as chief of one of the world’s biggest companies. GM’s future success may hinge on Barra’s ability to run a tight ship during a volatile political moment, while staying innovative. Barra ranked No. 10 on this year’s #Fortune100MostPowerful People list. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eyd5kDBD

Over the past few weeks, some of the names that defined 2010s female-founded startups have been back in the headlines. Audrey Gelman, known for founding the Wing, opened her new hotel the Six Bells in upstate New York. Ty Haney came back to revitalize the struggling, now private equity-owned athleisure brand she founded, Outdoor Voices. Yael Aflalo, who founded the still-popular fashion brand Reformation, has a new label. All of these women not only built companies in the 2010s—about five years ago, they were part of a wave of female founders who were forced out or lost control of their businesses. But the solution isn’t for these women to disappear from public life forever. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/euMbD3N6

We have a fantastic slate of events coming up this fall. I'm really looking forward to connecting with incredible women in global leadership roles at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit this October in D.C. Among the confirmed attendees so far: Best Buy CEO Corie Barry, Nubank Brazil CEO Livia Chanes, Palantir Technologies' Shannon Clark, Canada’s Chrystia Freeland, Prudential Financial CFO Yanela Frias, Land O'Lakes, Inc. CEO Beth Ford, Rare Beauty Founder Selena Gomez, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. CEO Fran Horowitz, BDT & MSD Partners Vice Chairman Dina Powell McCormick, Ulta Beauty CEO Kecia Steelman, DBS Bank CEO Tan Su Shan, SAIC CEO Toni Townes-Whitley, J.Crew Group CEO Libby Wadle, GSK CEO Emma Walmsley, and special guest JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon.

This year's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit is coming up fast... October 13-15 in our nation's capital. I'm super excited to be (a small) part of the stellar team behind this event, and to get to participate, moderate, and learn from the conversations. Check out some of our speakers below, and you can find the full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/ghDAr3am If you're interested in attending, you can register here (FYI registrations are subject to approval): https://lnkd.in/grpbJXuP See you there!

Female founders of the 2010s who lost control of their companies in the 2020 wave have slowly started to reemerge. Audrey Gelman opened her hotel upstate, Ty Haney is back at Outdoor Voices, and more. Here's my take: That's a good thing! It's been five years, and these women deserve another shot. Culture has changed so much. Gen Z doesn't carry millennials' startup baggage quite as heavily. TikTok allows founders to build in public in a more authentic way than the glossy Instagram era—a more honest version from the start, rather than something picture-perfect that gets torn down. Meanwhile, men who have done much, much worse than need some management training are only getting more powerful + influential in the manosphere era. Startups have changed, too, and the end of the growth-at-all-costs mentality is good for these founders. As Audrey told me for Fortune: "The wave of women founders who resigned in 2020—I think it satisfied a cultural appetite, but it sort of left a vacuum." Read my take & tell me your thoughts! https://lnkd.in/d2-zT8VX #femalefounders

For the second year in a row, Fortune has ranked the 100 Most Powerful People in Business. This list runs alongside our longstanding Most Powerful Women franchise—and once again shows why it’s still important to cover business’s Most Powerful Women on their own. Of 105 people on the #Fortune100MostPowerful list (there are some ties), 19 are women. They’re woven into the ranking in the same order they appear on our 2025 Fortune Most Powerful Women list, published in May. The top woman on the MPW list, GM chief Mary Barra, comes in at No. 10 on the Most Powerful People list. She’s preceded by today’s business titans—Jamie Dimon, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, and, at No. 1 this year, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. While Silicon Valley founders like Zuckerberg and Altman appear high on the ranking, the top women in business are mostly career executives. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eyd5kDBD

In the traditional playbook of corporate ascension, general counsel isn’t typically seen as a springboard to the CEO suite, especially not at a global technology consultancy. And yet, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has not only defied that assumption, she’s redefined what modern CEO readiness looks like in an era when domain expertise is being eclipsed by intellectual agility. Her ability to connect the dots across legal, strategic, and operational domains has proven an asset, especially as the company scales up partnerships with firms like Nvidia and Palantir to embed AI across both commercial and government clients. In interviews with Fortune, analysts credited her with positioning Accenture for the next wave of enterprise transformation. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/efBMSTCC

Thrilled to be moderating at this year's Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington DC on October 13-15th! My fabulous colleague Ellie Austin has put together an incredible lineup: ✨ Selena Gomez, Founder, Rare Beauty ✨ Corie Barry, Chief Executive Office, Best Buy ✨ Beth Ford, President and CEO, Land O'Lakes, Inc. ✨ Chrystia Freeland, Minister of Transport and Internal Trade, Government of Canada ✨ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO, JPMorganChase ...and many more to come! More speakers to be announced in the coming weeks and you can find the full agenda here: https://lnkd.in/eeaUG5wd. The summit is invite-only. If you're interested in attending, you can register your interest here: https://lnkd.in/eAR63NJ8. And if you can't join us in person, we'll be live streaming on Fortune.com.

Most people would jump at the idea of working on hit TV shows like Friends, Jackass, and The Shield, but Eventbrite CEO Julia Hartz left it all behind to pursue her passion of bringing people together. Just five years into her rising TV career—where she’d climbed the ranks to junior executive at FX—Hartz tossed the towel in on her 9-to-5 to launch Eventbrite in 2006, bootstrapping the company entirely with her husband and fellow cofounder Renaud Visage. The pitch was: “Come work on something that doesn’t exist. We’ll use our own money to fund it, and if it’s a disaster, we’ll just be broke,’” Hartz tells Fortune. Eventbrite is now estimated to be worth $225 million, and offers events ranging from wrestling classes, to comedy shows, to cheese raves with Queer Eye star Antoni Porowski. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eHaRa3r2

In 2019, when Revathi Advaithi took the CEO role at Singapore-based Flex (No. 10 on the Fortune Southeast Asia 500), the company’s stock was trading at just under $7, its longtime CEO had recently been ousted, and the broader contract manufacturing industry lacked financial discipline. Advaithi, who had only interacted with Flex as a supplier, wasn’t stepping into familiar terrain, but she didn’t overthink it. “It was a quant problem,” she says. “I thought I could double the stock. And if it doesn’t work in two years, I’ll go do something else.” That kind of grounded pragmatism has defined her leadership philosophy for decades. No matter the role, she starts with a deceptively simple framework: Define the portfolio, clarify the value to customers, and understand why they’re willing to pay for it. “Strategy doesn’t need to be flashy,” she says. “Every job I’ve had, I’ve just focused on those two things.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gTfx8P6Y