Fortune’s Most Powerful Women list is all about power: who has it, who gained it, and who maintained it. This particular post, though, is about who lost it—at least in the context of our annual ranking.
Ten women fell off our 2016 MPW list, for reasons ranging from retirement to poor performance. Seven were CEOs, including a handful from Fortune 500 companies.
The two top-ranking executives to depart the list had long been MPW staples: DuPont CEO and chairman Ellen Kullman and Carol Meyrowitz, who held the same titles at off-price retailer TJX Companies. Both women stepped down from the CEO role, but under very different circumstances.
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Kullman retired from DuPont in October after winning a bitter and very public proxy battle with activist investor Nelson Peltz. Yet the company’s financial performance continued to suffer. The previous year’s profits had declined 25%, and the company cut its operating earnings forecast the day Kullman’s departure was announced.
Meyrowitz, meanwhile, left TJX’s corner office at the top of her game. CEO since 2007, she had a stunning run at the retailer behind brands including Marshalls and T.J. Maxx, with the company surpassing Macy’s in size during its fiscal 2015.
The highest-profile departure from our list, though, is the CEO who oversaw the smallest company: Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer. Mayer drops from our ranking as she sells the company, which lost $4.4 billion in the last quarter of 2015, to Verizon. (For more on why Mayer fell off this year’s ranking, click here)
A group of CEOs running smaller companies—some of them among the ranks of the Fortune 500—fell off in part to make room for head honchos running bigger enterprises, such as Progressive’s Tricia Griffith, and women running massive business units at massive companies, like Aetna president Karen Lynch. Included in that category: Ilene Gordon of Ingredion, Kim Lubel of CST Brands, Beth Mooney of KeyCorp, and Sheri McCoy of Avon Products.
Rounding out the departures were Walmart EVP Michelle Gloeckler, who took a new job at Academy Sports; Wells Fargo’s Carrie Tolstedt, who retired; and Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who got a boost last year from The Force Awakens.
2015 Rank and Title of this Year’s MPW List Drop-Offs
- No. 5 – Ellen Kullman, CEO and Chairman, Dupont
- No. 11 – Carol Meyrowitz, CEO and Chairman, TJX Companies
- No. 18 – Marissa Mayer, CEO and President, Yahoo
- No. 27 – Carrie Tolstedt, Senior EVP, Community Banking, Wells Fargo
- No. 38 – Michelle Gloeckler, EVP, Consumables and Health and Wellness, U.S. Manufacturing Lead, Walmart U.S., Walmart
- No. 42 – Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm, Disney
- No. 45 – Ilene Gordon, CEO, Chairman, and President Ingredion
- No. 47 – Kim Lubel, CEO, Chairman, and President, CST Brands
- No. 48 – Beth Mooney, CEO and Chairman, KeyCorp
- No. 49 – Sheri McCoy, CEO, Avon Products
