Just one woman has ever founded and led a Fortune 500 company. Here’s her story
– Another glass roof. While 11 % of Fortune 500 is now led by female executive chiefs, there is another barrier that has proven almost impossible to break women: establishing a company and expanding its scope to the list of the largest companies in America through revenues.
Only one institution started in the history of Fortune 500, which is 70 years old and led a company that manufactures the list. Meanwhile, 24 male founders-his patronage of 500 giants-Mark Zuckerberg in Mita to Jensen Huang in Nafidia.
It was the only woman to run Fortune 500 founded by Marion Sandler. The Golden Mortgage Lesser Foundation West West Financial, which she led with her husband and Co-CEO Herb Sandler for more than four decades. She was one of the first executive presidents of women in Fortune 500 in 1997 and one of the tallest executives of women in the list at all.
Sandler has created one of the largest savings and loans in the country with $ 124 billion and 285 savings branches across the United States at its peak. The company was praised as one of the best lenders in the country and has become a pioneer in its manufacture, creating a modified mortgage of the option that allowed borrowers temporarily to contact the small loans that do not cover interest. While Sandler was often described as marketing mind and consumer behind work, her commercial achievements and financing were pioneering.
After obtaining a Master of Business Administration from New York University in 1958, Sandler was one of the first women to occupy a professional financing function in Wall Street and the first executive woman who was rented in Dominique & Dominic, a banking and investment banking company. I continued to work in Openheimer and a company as a first handman, as well as an advisor to institutional investors, and consult with major commercial publications.
Golden West appeared last time in The Fortune 500 in 2005, and since then, the founder of another woman has not joined Sandler in The Inte. Several institutions built their companies in the unit of more than one billion dollars – but to reach the volume of Fortune 500 business, as the smallest company this year achieved $ 7.4 billion of revenues, it is another level. Companies established in 2024, according to Pitchbook, received only 20 % of funding and 25 % of the total VC deals. For companies that have been established for females without institutional factors for males, the number decreases to 1 % of financing and 6 % of all deals.
Not just a male founder does not make obtaining financing and gaining investor confidence more difficult for institutions. Sexual concepts about leadership and unconscious bias also nourish this course. Research from Yale University has shown that women are getting 22 % less funding than investors who have suffered from “failure” by another company led by a woman in the past five years. Ultimately, without equal access to capital, women’s institutions are rarely able to expand their business with the same size as their male counterparts.
Even for companies that reach public subscription (another teacher has been for decades far from institutions), it is difficult to double the founders to stay as executives after that. A study conducted in 2018 from the Harvard University law Forum on Corporate Governance reported that 60 % of the founders are replaced by the default, and among those who remain, only half in the role remains after three years unless they had strong control of the vote.
Two decades have passed since the CEO founder has operated Fortune 500-and in all possibilities, it will be longer before. But who may be able to one day? Melanie Perkins, one of the founders of Canva, has a real technical giant building that competes with Microsoft and Google. Although Canva has not yet been published, it is almost midway to the Fortune 500 revenue index – with $ 3 billion of sales. (It is an emerging company, both the highest value, which was established and led by a woman.) Responding this email to send your thoughts about who may break this barrier one day.
Laila May Lazaros
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This story was originally shown on Fortune.com
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2025-06-06 13:05:00
