Roz Brewer and Thasunda Brown Duckett are women who run high-profile businesses as CEOs and were recently recognized for going down in history as Black women in business, Black Enterprise reported.
Originally reported by ABC News, the duo made history by both being placed on this year’s Fortune 500 list for the first time. Brown Duckett of TIAA and Brewer of Walgreens Boots Alliance broke the glass ceiling again and again because of their groundbreaking work in their respective fields. Per Fortune, Walmart ranked No. 1 on the list, according to Black Enterprise. For the Fortune list, the 500 corporations who made the cut this year generated $13.8 trillion in revenues, or about two-thirds of the U.S. economy, according to the magazine. The yearly list categorizes America’s largest companies.
“It does not escape me that I am standing on the shoulders of giants, including the cooks and janitors and others who look like me and were first to enter corporate America,” Brown Duckett said to ABC News, per the article. “They created the space for me to have this opportunity. My hope is that corporate America realizes that talent is created equally but opportunity is not, and we all acknowledge that there’s still more work to be done.”
Brown Duckett added in the article: “Today is my first day as president and CEO of TIAA, an extraordinary company founded more than a century ago to help promote [those] working in higher education retire in dignity. I am all in on TIAA’s mission to serve teachers, healthcare workers and others in service. #gratitude”
Women represent just about 8.2 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. Women of color make up only 1.2 percent., reported CBS News, per the article. Fortune Magazine said that Brewer’s Walgreen Boots Alliance ranked No. 16, and Brown Duckett’s TIAA was in at No. 79.
“Before Duckett and Brewer began their new jobs, only one Black woman—former Xerox chief Ursula Burns—had ever run a Fortune 500 business on a permanent basis,” Fortune also said, according to the article. “Burns stepped down from that role in 2017, and, with the exception of Mary Winston, who served as Bed Bath & Beyond’s interim chief for several months in 2019, Black female CEOs have been missing from the Fortune 500 ever since.”
NPR made note that making moves to address the continuous lack of diversity in this business realm is a steady challenge for many high-ranking American companies, yet it is a problem they are trying to find solutions for.
“According to Equilar, a clearinghouse for corporate leadership data, 29.6 percent of companies on the S&P 500 do not have at least one Black board member. Today, there are five Black CEOs in the Fortune 500. When Ken Frazier retires from Merck next month, there will be four,” NPR said.
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