What does it takes to become a CEO of Fortune 100 (F100)? What external factors contribute to their successful career paths? In various Forbes articles, writer Kimberly Whitler explores this topic, and takes into consideration several factors:
(1) The educational backgrounds that helped create most CEOs of F100. These backgrounds include the levels of education, diverse majors, as well as the institutions’ brands.
(2) The number of firms that F100 CEOs worked for before they began working as CEOs.
(3) The early career choices that helped put them into these positions .
For convenience we have organize the author’s study into 4 simple tables. But first, let us consider this question:
What is the Fortune 100?
According to Ivestopedia:
“The Fortune 100 is a list of the top 100 companies in the United States. It is a subset of the Fortune 500, a list of the 500 largest U.S. public and privately held companies published by Fortune magazine. Fortune creates the list by ranking public and private companies that report annual revenue figures to a government agency. The ranking is based on total revenues for the company’s corresponding fiscal year.”
The four tables for your reference include:
(1) Types of Graduate Degrees that F100 CEOs Have
(2) Top Graduate Schools Attended by F100 CEOs
(3) Undergraduate Schools Attended by Top 15 F100 CEOs
(4) The F100 CEOs’ Tenure Experience at Their Current Companies
Types of Graduate Degrees that the F100 CEOs Have
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Trend: Obtaining multiple specialized master’s degrees has become very popular. This is particularly true in the area of data science. Skills sorely needed in pursuit of such degrees include coding, big data analysis, statistics, machine learning, natural language processing, data manipulation, exploratory data analysis, as well as other related fields of study.
Top Graduate Schools Attended by F100 CEOs
[supsystic-tables id=120]
Note:
1. The ranking information is based on U.S. News and World Report’s National University Rankings 2020.
2.Interesting Fact:
1) Only 54% of F100 CEOs hold graduate degrees. Among those who have graduate degrees, 69% attended private U.S. colleges, 27% went to pubic ones, and 4% obtained their graduate degrees from schools outside the United States.
2) 30% of the F100 CEOs did their graduate studies at an Ivy League school.
Top Undergraduate Schools Attended by Top 15 F100 CEOs
[supsystic-tables id=121]
Interesting Fact:
An Ivy League education can be valuable and rewarding for many people, while it is also true that most Fortune 100 CEOs did not go to Ivy League schools.
Only 11% of the F100 CEOs completed their undergraduate work at an Ivy League school. In other words, 89% of them finished their undergraduate work at non-Ivy-League schools. 47% of the top 100 Fortune CEOs attended public undergraduate schools.
F100 CEOs’ Tenure Experience at Their Current Companies
The 2019 Millennial Manager Workplace Survey, released by Akumina, reports that 75% of millennials believe that constantly changing jobs advanced their careers. – Business News Daily
However, findings from Forbes’ studies indicate that job-hopping is not a conducive to anyone eyeing an F100 CEO position. In fact, most F100 CEOs have worked for the very same companies they lead for at least 10 years before being appointed. Take a look at the table below:
[supsystic-tables id=122]
Conclusion:
You may very well become the next Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, the next Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, or Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Each and every one of them were once international students who had studied in the United States.
Related reading:
The largest U.S. college admissions scam
(Read how much the rich pay to get their kids admitted to top schools.)