Comparably Reveals Its Top CEOs for Diversity and Women and Best Leadership Teams

Workplace culture and compensation monitoring site Comparably released its lists this week of top CEOs for diversity and women, as well as best leadership teams overall. Comparably’s diversity rankings were derived from ratings provided by non-Caucasian employees who anonymously rated their CEOs between June 7, 2018, and June 7, 2019, with a minimum of 75 participants from companies with over 500 employees. As was the case with all of Comparably’s rankings, there were no fees or costs associated with participating, nor was nomination required. Sasan Goodarzi of Intuit topped the 2019 list after his predecessor, Brad Smith placed second in 2018. In the tech sector, Sundar Pichai of Google and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook were the only CEOs to see slight gains in the rankings. Pichai went from No. 6 in 2018 to No. 5 this year, while Zuckerberg moved up four spots, to No. 17 from No. 21. Tech CEOs who dropped in Comparably’s diversity rankings included T-Mobile’s John Legere (No. 4 in 2019, No. 1 in 2018), HubSpot’s Brian Halligan (6, 3), Salesforce’s Marc Benioff and Keith Block (11, Benioff was No. 9 last year), Microsoft’s Satya Nadella (15, 7), Apple’s Tim Cook (18, 15), Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (29, 20), LinkedIn’s Jeff Weiner (36, 5) and Uber’s Dara Khosrowshahi (46, 28). Newcomers to the 2019 list included Comcast’s Brian Roberts (No. 34), Dell’s Michael Dell (35) and Cisco’s Chuck Robbins (37). Comparably tallied its rankings for best CEOs for women from ratings provided by female employees during the same time period as that for diversity, and with the same limits mentioned above. Legere soared to the top of the list, dethroning 2018 leader Craig Jelinek of Costco. Legere placed sixth last year. Halligan was the only other tech CEO to finish better than in 2018, moving up one spot to third from fourth. Those who saw declines included Nadella (No. 19 in 2019, No. 2 in 2018), Pichai (20, 13). Zuckerberg (29, 19), Cook (32, 20), Weiner (36, 14) and Bezos (47, 24). And newcomers included Goodarzi (No. 14), Blizzard Entertainment’s J. Allen Brack (25), GoDaddy’s Scott Wagner (28) and Khosrowshahi (37). Finally, Comparably used anonymous ratings from employees during the same time period as the first two lists to arrive at its rankings of best leadership teams. Software intelligence company Dynatrace dethroned 2018 winner HubSpot and claimed the top spot, with HubSpot placing second. Tech companies that moved up included Microsoft (No. 4 in 2019, No. 13 in 2018) and LinkedIn (9, 11), while those that dropped in the rankings (aside from HubSpot) included Google (3, 2), T-Mobile (8, 7), Salesforce (13, 8), Intuit (16, 6) and Facebook (36, 3). Blizzard, at No. 41, was the most notable tech newcomer.