Fortune is adding a new dimension to its Most Powerful Women list
2020 calls for a shake-up.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Cori Bush has an AOC moment, Rihanna talks Fenty Skin, and Fortune is shaking up its MPW lists. Have a wonderful Wednesday.
– A list fit for 2020. For more than 20 years, Fortune has compiled its Most Powerful Women lists to highlight the world’s leading female executives and call attention to their contributions to the business community.
To determine the two rankings—one of U.S.-based executives and one of executives based outside the U.S.—Fortune editors have long leaned on four criteria: the size and importance of the woman’s business in the global economy, the health and direction of the business, the arc of the woman’s career, and her social and cultural influence.
But a year like 2020 requires a shake-up. This year Fortune is adding a new factor to our original four: how an executive wields her power to shape her company and the wider world for the better. Did she introduce hazard pay for frontline employees during the pandemic? Has she instituted gender/racial pay parity? Or maybe she’s measurably reduced the company’s carbon footprint?
The coronavirus pandemic and the world’s reckoning with racism have demanded that leaders act in ways that don’t always show up on an earnings report; in fact, they’ve demanded that, at times, earnings take a back seat. Fortune is eager to consider leaders who’ve met this extraordinary moment as we determine what it means, right now, to be a powerful woman in business.
As we embark on this project, we urge you to help. Here you will find a form where you can nominate female executives at for-profit, private sector businesses who merit consideration. The deadline is Aug. 24.
We look forward to receiving your suggestions and sharing the 2020 MPW lists with you in the November issue, appearing online in October.
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was curated by Emma Hinchliffe.