Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Two female anchors moderate the VP debate, an additional 120 sexual assault lawsuits will be filed against Sean "Diddy" Combs, and the 2024 MPW list is here. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
- MPW 2024. Today’s the day—the 2024 launch of the Fortune Most Powerful Women list. This is the 27th year that Fortune has ranked the most powerful women in business, an endeavor that was novel—and challenging—the first time Fortune tried it in 1998.
Just 16 of the original 50 U.S.-based women on the 1998 list were CEOs, and it was hard for Fortune editors to find that many. This year, of 100 women on our global list, well over half are CEOs—and there are even some Fortune 500 CEOs who don’t make the cut. Every year, the list gets more competitive as women rise to the top of global business.
This year’s list includes women from 14 industries—finance and tech are the top two, followed by energy—across 18 countries and territories. Fifty-four percent of listees work in North America, followed by Europe (21%) and Asia (18%). There are the Fortune 500 and Global 500 CEOs as well as women leading the generative AI boom and influential CFOs steering the financial health of the world’s most valuable companies.
The list has a new No. 1: GM CEO Mary Barra, who has returned the automaker to its strongest financial position in decades. Last year’s No. 1, CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch, slips to the No. 2 spot as CVS wades through business challenges, especially in its Aetna insurer unit. (The latest is that CVS is reportedly weighing a possible break-up.)
Overall, the list is a fascinating representation of where women are leading in business. There are newcomers to the list in gen AI like Fei-Fei Li, the influential academic who now has a unicorn startup of her own called World Labs, and Daniela Amodei, the cofounder and president of Anthropic. In CFO roles, there’s Nvidia CFO Colette Kress whose financial stewardship of that company has turned its employees into multi-millionaires, and Anat Ashkenazi, who just left Eli Lilly to become the CFO of Alphabet. In the entertainment industry, there’s Disney’s Dana Walden and NBCUniversal’s Donna Langley.
Some must-know names from around the globe include Luxshare chairwoman and CEO Grace Wang, Banco Santander chair Ana Botín, Inditex chair Marta Ortega, and Suntory Beverage and Food CEO Makiko Ono.
I hope you’ll peruse this year’s list to learn more about the women whose decisions influence global business—and our lives. See the full list here.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune's newsletter for and about the world's most powerful women. Today's edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
