More Women Leading Fortune 500 Companies But Little Progress For Black Women

Despite this year’s increase in women's representation, there are still only two Black female CEOs

More women are leading Fortune 500 companies than ever before, but the progress for Black women as CEOs is barely moving, according to a report from Fortune.

The 2025 Fortune 500 list shows that women are running 11% of these companies, just two years after women hit their previous milestone by finally crossing the 10% mark. Female CEOs at the leading Fortune 500 companies climbed to 52 in 2023, stayed there in 2024, and then climbed to 55 in 2025.

Despite this year’s increase in women’s representation, only two Black female CEOs lead Fortune 500 companies: Thasunda Brown Duckett at TIAA and Toni Townes-Whitley at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Before TIAA, Brown Duckett, a Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. member and a graduate of the University of Houston and Baylor University, was the CEO of Chase Consumer Banking, a division of JPMorgan Chase.

Before joining SAIC, Townes-Whitley, a Princeton University graduate, served as a Trustee Board Member for Nasdaq for less than three years and as president of the US-regulated industries for Microsoft, according to her LinkedIn profile.

“The pace of change remains stubbornly slow,” Jennifer McCollum, president and CEO of Catalyst, a workplace gender equity organization, told Fortune. “This minor uptick, while positive, is not a signal that we can ease off our efforts; if anything, it shows the deep-seated nature of the barriers that still exist.”

The Uphill Battle Black Women Face To Become CEOs

Since the beginning of 2025, the U.S. has witnessed a rapid shift in changes that have helped level the playing field. Large corporations have eliminated or vastly changed DEI initiatives that have benefited women, especially Black women, and are making the hiring and search committees for these top jobs more complex.

“If companies reduce their commitment to these policies, there is a great risk of progress stalling or even reversing, impacting opportunities for generations of talent to come,” McCollum adds.

According to corporate leadership expert Lindsay Boyle, companies should take a hard look at the systemic barriers perpetuating biases that women of color face in climbing the corporate ladder and then follow up by actually implementing meaningful changes.

Some of Boyle’s strategies include creating stronger support networks, addressing bias with an intersectional approach, and integrating work-life balance for all genders, among others.