100 Most Powerful Women in Business Methodology (2025)
Fortune’s editors scored each candidate for the 2025 100 Most Powerful Women in Business list on the following metrics:
- Size of the business the person runs, based on our screen that factors in mid-term
(three-year) and short-term (past 12 months) revenue and profit growth, profitability,
and market value. - Health of the business, based on trailing 12-month measures of liquidity, operating efficiency, and solvency.
- Innovation: Has the person accomplished something nobody else has and that
competitors followed? - Influence: How greatly do their words and actions shape the behavior of others?
- Trajectory: Where is the person in the arc of their career?
- Impact: Is this person using their power to make the world a better place?
You’ll find on this list women in some of the biggest CEO jobs around the world. These leaders run Fortune 500 and Global 500 businesses with billions of dollars in revenue. Yet women still lead only about 11% of Fortune 500 companies—which means that when tracking women’s corporate influence, a CEO title is not the only measure of impact. The MPW list also features women who wield influence in other ways—including being on track to get those top jobs, whether in public succession contests, or simply due to their achievements so far. A handful of founders too, make the list on the strength of what they have built.
The women featured on this list are enormously powerful today—and poised to become even more so tomorrow. Read more about the list.
Data editors: Scott DeCarlo and Aris Stavropoulos