For seventy years, Fortune has championed the world’s biggest businesses, through lists like the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500. Along the way, Fortune has adapted to a changing world—culminating in important franchises like Fortune Most Powerful Women, which launches its 27th edition in this issue. As Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell said so well in her editor’s note a year ago, describing MPW: “I can’t wait for the day when we can simply rank the world’s ‘most powerful,’ knowing that women and people of color will naturally be all over that list.”

In this jam-packed issue we also launch the 10th edition of Change the World, a list that is rooted in the belief that companies can mobilize the creative tools of capitalism to help solve social problems—achieving goals that are just as important as turning a profit, and sometimes more so. Fortune’s Geoff Colvin also takes an in-depth look at what a Kamala Harris administration might mean for business (page 50), a must-read as we head into the final few weeks of a hotly contested U.S. presidential race.

In keeping with the MPW list’s same hope and aspiration for equality, Fortune’s List Director, Europe, Grethe Schepers and I are proud to introduce Fortune LGBTQ+ Leaders, a groundbreaking new list that celebrates the world’s most successful leaders who also happen to be gay, trans, or anything under the rainbow umbrella of LGBTQ+.

Uniquely among lists in this category, this ranking is based on hard financial data—each leader’s place reflects the revenues of the companies they lead. In our extensive research we found many positives: Compared with our flagship Fortune 500 lists, Fortune LGBTQ+ Leaders is more diverse, with 20% women (compared to 6% in our Global 500) and better-than-expected racial diversity.

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, not only leads our list but was also the first Fortune 500 CEO to come out, in 2014.

Putting together the list made me appreciate the generational shift that’s taken place over the past few decades. For many Gen Xers and boomers, coming out at work would have been career suicide, or worse still, a crime: In the U.K., homosexuality was only fully decriminalized in 2013. And for millennials like me, growing up in the shadow of Section 28—a Thatcher-era piece of legislation that made any discussion of the normality of homosexuality in schools a crime—it still takes courage to be open about who I am today.

“It can feel daunting to speak out at first, but I have learnt that the braver I am, the braver I get, and that by speaking out I can help others to realize that there is a greater world of opportunity out there for them too.”
Dame Julia Hoggett, the first openly gay CEO of the London Stock Exchange

In 2024, when it comes to coming out at work, it still feels like Groundhog Day, a never-ending process each time a new business connection is made and your partner is misgendered. But that initial social awkwardness can be channeled into something positive.

This issue’s cover star, Dame Julia Hoggett, the first openly gay CEO of the London Stock Exchange, turns this challenge into an opportunity: “It can feel daunting to speak out at first, but I have learnt that the braver I am, the braver I get, and that by speaking out I can help others to realize that there is a greater world of opportunity out there for them too.”

There is hope for the future. Speak to Gen Z and you find a different story. They’re ditching the need for cumbersome labels— and instead of saying, “I’m gay,” it’s simply, “I’m dating X,” and that’s that. And if that’s the future, I’m sold.

Alex Wood Morton
Executive Editor, Europe, Fortune
@alexwoodmorton

This article appears in the October/November 2024: Europe issue of Fortune with the headline “The New Normal: Introducing the Fortune LGBTQ+ Leaders List”.

A generational shift has taken place–Gen Z are ditching the need for cumbersome labels