TIAA CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett on Addressing Representation Among Fortune 500 Executives
In February of 2021, Thasunda Brown Duckett became the second Black woman ever to serve as CEO of a Fortune 500 company when she was tapped to lead financial services giant TIAA. One month later, Rosalind Brewer became the second active Black female CEO in the Fortune 500, when she was named to lead Walgreens Boots Alliance.
Four years later, the number of active Black female Fortune 500 CEOs is the same, even though many U.S.-based companies have promoted expansive DEI strategies. Brewer left Walgreens in September 2023, just before SAIC named Toni Townes-Whitley CEO in October, which kept the number at two.
"I think there is an opportunity to acknowledge the progress but also say there's more work to do," Duckett said in a recent appearance at the Jobs for the Future 2025 Horizons conference in New Orleans.
This is the precarity of progress when the sample size is two, and female representation among Fortune 500 CEOs only recently crossed 10 percent. Black people make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but hold just nine Fortune 500 CEO positions (1.8 percent), and Black representation in senior management positions is estimated by McKinsey to be around 5 percent. Women make up half the population but represent just 12 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs.
"I believe that talent is created equally, opportunity is not. We are still in pursuit of meritocracy," Duckett said at the conference. "It's hard to say we've accomplished meritocracy when there's only two Black women, and there's only 12 percent female in the Fortune 500."
Thasunda Brown Duckett at the 2025 JFF Horizons conference in New Orleans.
Thasunda Brown Duckett at the 2025 JFF Horizons conference in New Orleans.
Jobs for the Future
The story of racial and gender progress in executive representation is an uneven one, with slight growth over time but little in the way of meaningful progress. Duckett believes the solution comes down to smarter succession planning and developing representation in roles that have been known to be a pipeline to the C-suite or CEO position.
"When it comes to becoming a CEO ... we have to look at What's the path? ... You have to understand What is it that this company looks for and values?" Duckett said. "We have to look at the pipeline, and we have to make sure the pipeline is in areas of the business that have a higher propensity to ascend to the C-suite."
Duckett also challenged business leaders to interrogate their hiring, promotion and succession strategies, to determine where barriers to representation exist. She described profit and loss responsibility, revenue leadership and central business strategy as areas where greater representation is needed in order to drive stronger executive representation, specifying that allyship must include more than just the populations affected by exclusionary and biased hiring and promotion practices.
"When and as we become a more inclusive workforce, when and as we become more open to the possibility that talent can look different than how we looked historically, that will unlock more GDP growth, more innovation," Duckett said.
For people who feel they experience downward pressure on their career paths, Duckett pointed to a mindset of bravery and connecting to your purpose in pursuit of senior leadership.
"On our worst day, it is better than [that of] the shoulders of those on which we stand," Duckett said. "We have to preserve that optimism in order to make change moving forward."
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