About the 2024 list of the Most Powerful Women in business

When Fortune launched its Most Powerful Women list in 1998, women were just starting to trickle into the C-suite in significant numbers. “[Now] is the right time to bring you Fortune’s first-ever list of the 50 Most Powerful Women … because women, at last, are achieving profound power in the most important and influential industries,” Fortune wrote at the time. Women in business have certainly come a long way since then. No stat proves that better than the share of CEOs on the list. That first year, 15 CEOs made the inaugural ranking of 50. This year, women with that title represent well over half of the larger list of 100. Fifteen of the CEOs on this year’s list are brand-new to the ranking, while others are stalwarts who have retained power far beyond the average tenure of Fortune 500 male CEOs (7.2 years) and female CEOs (4.5 years). Our new No. 1, General Motors chair and CEO Mary Barra, is one of those mainstays; she’s led the automaker for 10 years and landed on our MPW list 13 times.

Using the format that we introduced last year, the 2024 MPW list ranks the 100 Most Powerful Women globally, reflecting corporations’ global scope and the nature of executives’ work, which spans the planet. The list features women from six continents, 18 countries and territories, and 14 different industries, proving there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reaching the pinnacle of business.

The 2024 ranking includes 26 newcomers in total, several of whom amassed their power somewhat recently amid the generative AI frenzy. Fei-Fei Li (No. 93), for instance, has long been among the most influential figures in artificial intelligence—she’s known as the “godmother” of the technology—largely from her seat as a researcher and academic. But this year the Stanford professor monetized that influence, raising $230 million from Andreessen Horowitz, AMD, and Nvidia for her own startup, reportedly valued at over $1 billion. Her new unicorn, World Labs, seeks to endow AI with “spatial intelligence,” or an understanding of the 3D world. Li is surely among the most respected founders to ever launch a startup, and she’s doing so with the kind of established influence most early-stage founders could only dream of.

Also part of the AI contingent are Anthropic president and cofounder Daniela Amodei (No. 94), whose Amazon-backed startup is valued at $18 billion; OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati (No. 57); and CFOs at tech giants that are dominant players in the AI race, including Nvidia’s Colette Kress (No. 16) and Microsoft’s Amy Hood (No. 20).

These leaders stand out in a male-dominated industry. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 global gender gap report, the share of professional men with skills in AI engineering is twice as large (at 0.41%) as the share of professional women (0.2%) with the same skills—although both have doubled since 2016.

AI leaders’ inclusion reflects how the MPW list doesn’t just consider who leads the corporate giants of today, but who may lead the world’s biggest businesses in the decades to come.

Alongside the newcomers are some of the women who have appeared on the MPW list the most times. Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson, a third-generation CEO who oversees $28.2 billion in revenue at a privately held company, has appeared on this list 24 times—more than any other executive in the 27-year history of the list. Johnson (No. 13) took over the company in 2014, but was on track for the job for more than a decade before it became official. She’s followed by No. 7, Oracle CEO Safra Catz (19 times); and No. 15, Spanish banking leader Ana Botín of Santander (17 times).