businessperson of the year 2018

We start with results. Each December, when we choose Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year, we run the numbers, weighing 10 financial metrics including 12-month and 36-month increases in profits and revenue (we use a three-year window to eliminate any companies that post a great year following a slump). We also weight stock performance and total shareholder returns over the same period. Only then do we factor in those intangibles that separate so-so CEOs from the standouts—things like business influence, strategic vision, and the impact of their leadership. The result? Twenty businesspeople who delivered.

Tricia Griffith is a rarity on two fronts: a CEO that started as an entry level employee at the company she now leads, and one of just 24 female Fortune 500 chief executives. But she’s also something else: a CEO pulling off the remarkable feat of transforming an 81-year-old company into a growth powerhouse. Progressive’s stock is up nearly 50% over the past 12 months and profits have more than doubled. In 2017, [hotlink]Progressive[/hotlink] vaulted past [hotlink]Allstate[/hotlink] as the nation’s third largest auto insurer behind Geico and [hotlink]State Farm[/hotlink]. And perhaps most impressively, at the end of the third quarter, [hotlink]Progressive[/hotlink] hit $30 billion in net premiums written after reaching $20 billion just three years earlier. Meanwhile Progressive’s one-year and annualized three-year sales growth (at 20.2% and 11.4%, respectively) tops both Apple’s and Microsoft’s. Fortune gets an inside look at how Griffith is rewriting the rules of underwriting.

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<a href="http://fortune.com/2018/11/15/progressive-insurance-ceo-tricia-griffith/">Read: Meet the CEO of the Insurance Company Growing Faster Than Apple.</a>

Tricia Griffith

At his company's annual customer conference in August, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, 57, was sporting what he called a “badass tattoo” showing off the name of the company he’s run since 2012. Turns out it was a gag, just a temporary tattoo, but Gelsinger’s accomplishments this year are anything but a joke. Fighting to keep the company’s virtualization apps relevant in an age of cloud computing, Gelsinger is focusing on helping customers improve security and manage apps and data across multiple cloud vendors. Revenue rose 13% in the first half of the year to $4.2 billion, while net income gained 144% to $1.6 billion. It’s fitting that after scaling such heights, the CEO this summer scaled Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for a girls’ school in Kenya.

Pat Gelsinger

Jensen Huang, CEO of graphics chipmaker [hotlink]Nvidia[/hotlink], hasn’t taken his foot off the gas since Fortune named him 2017’s Businessperson of the Year. The Silicon Valley company he cofounded continues to blow away Wall Street estimates for its biggest businesses, including gaming, data centers, and automotive. (A far smaller bet on cryptocurrency hasn’t quite panned out.) To say investors have enjoyed Huang’s tenure would be a dramatic understatement: [hotlink]Total[/hotlink] return to shareholders over a three-year period has been an astounding 789%, making Nvidia the fourth-largest company by market cap of the 20 on our list. The even better news? There’s still a lot to look forward to. The launch of Nvidia’s next-generation graphics cards, called Turing, should stoke sales even further. And while rival [hotlink]Intel[/hotlink] has vowed to produce competing graphics chips in 2020, its lack of a permanent CEO gives Huang the strategic upper hand.

Jensen Huang

As e-commerce began making department stores passé, chains like Macy’s, [hotlink]J.C. Penney[/hotlink], and Sears tried to stop the bleeding by closing hundreds of locations. Wisconsin-based Kohl’s, in contrast, kept stores open while racing to upgrade its own technology. Today it’s recognized as one of retail’s savviest survivors—its stock has nearly doubled in the past year. Gass, a [hotlink]Starbucks[/hotlink] veteran who helped make “frappuccino” a household word, has been CEO only since May. But during her five years at Kohl’s, she engineered many of its most successful innovations, including big bets on [hotlink]Under Armour[/hotlink] and other activewear brands. Her latest experiment: a risky but revolutionary partnership with [hotlink]Amazon[/hotlink].

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<a href="http://fortune.com/longform/kohls-amazon-michelle-gass-retail/">Read: Kohl's Cracks the Retail Code.</a>

Michelle Gass

Rorsted was eight years into a skillful makeover of Henkel, a German consumer goods giant known for Right Guard deodorant and glue, when he was named the surprise choice to lead Adidas in 2016. Adidas picked up $1 billion in market value on the news of his appointment and has gained $26 billion (or 128%) since. The 56-year-old exec has sought out efficiencies, grown Adidas e-commerce, and scored big on athleisure, contributing to double-digit growth in the U.S. and Asia. Plus, Adidas got a nice bounce from its sales of World Cup soccer merchandise this year. Rorsted has set aggressive targets for 2020, and analysts, eyeing the global expansion of soccer and the growth of the sportswear
market in China, see room to soar.

Kasper Rorsted

The impressive turnaround that CEO Lisa Su has pulled off at Advanced Micro Devices continued to pay off big time in 2018. Though AMD’s share price has gone on a wild ride—it had tripled for the year at one point but was up only 77% by the end of October—the chipmaker’s sales and profits have been steadily increasing on the strength of the high-performance microprocessor lines Su first started planning five years ago. “The thing about our industry is, you don’t know when you make those decisions whether they’re going to be the right decisions or not,” Su tells Fortune. “We try to get more right than wrong.” Stumbles at rival [hotlink]Intel[/hotlink] have also helped [hotlink]AMD[/hotlink] claw back market share in PCs and, especially, servers—perhaps the most lucrative opportunity. But it’s too soon to say whether Su’s efforts and increased spending on R&amp;D will [hotlink]grab[/hotlink] “a little of the market or a lot,” according to Bernstein Research analyst Stacy Rasgon. Says Su: “I’m not taking a victory lap.”

Lisa Su

The bull market and low-interest-rate environment have been very good indeed to brokerage [hotlink]Charles Schwab[/hotlink] and its CEO of 10 years, Walt Bettinger, who joined Schwab in the ’90s when it bought his retirement-plan business. Schwab used the pain of the financial crisis to expand its off erings beyond its discount stock-trading roots to off er a little bit of everything to everyone: It’s a bank, a mutual fund combine, a full-service brokerage, a collection of wealth managers, and even a robo-adviser. The results : three-year annual revenue growth of almost 13% and annual earnings growth of more than 21%. With a 72% stock market return over the same period, add shareholders to the list of those satisfied by the
company Bettinger leads.

Walt Bettinger

Under the leadership of François-Henri Pinault, French conglomerate Kering (formerly PPR) has refocused on what it does best: luxury. It has shed brands like Puma and sportswear brand Volcom and revitalized those like Gucci, which last quarter saw sales rise 28%. Meanwhile, sales at Kering’s other big brands, which include Saint Laurent and Balenciaga, continue to thrive despite fears of a slowdown in luxury spending in China. Pinault, also known as Mr. Salma Hayek, has prioritized overhauling Kering’s supply chain, making it faster to react to changing fashion. But he hasn’t shied away from occasionally needling his archrival, Bernard Arnault, chairman of the other major French luxe group, LVMH, which owns much larger rival Louis Vuitton and a few years ago tried to buy Gucci. “The potential of Gucci might be the same potential as Louis Vuitton, yes, over time,” Pinault told the Financial Times earlier this year. Mais bien sûr.

François-Henri Pinault

No blemishes here: With sales up 74% and the stock up 82% from this time three years ago, the Ulta juggernaut continues, despite other retailers—from Walgreens to [hotlink]Target[/hotlink] to Macy’s—raising their beauty game. Ulta figured out early on that customers want beauty products up and down the price ladder, salon services, and a self-service approach (rather than cloying beauty counter salespeople). And it has thrived under the leadership of CEO and self-professed hair product aficionado Mary Dillon. In just the past couple of months, Ulta has announced deals with the high-end Kiehl’s brand and an exclusive arrangement with social media sensation and lip kit queen Kylie Jenner, whose products will get their first-ever brick-and-mortar presentation

Mary Dillon

The Ethiopian-born deSouza lived in both Addis Ababa and Dubai before blazing his way to a spot at MIT at just 16. After stints at [hotlink]Microsoft[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Symantec[/hotlink], he landed at [hotlink]Illumina[/hotlink] in 2016. As the market leader in the DNA sequencing space, Illumina partners with at-home DNA test firms like 23andMe and pharma giants such as Amgen—an infiltration strategy that makes it a key link in the drug development, consumer health, and medical testing supply chains. DeSouza hasn’t been shy about striking deals either. This month, Illumina snapped up smaller rival Pacific Biosciences for about $1.2 billion. The results? Illumina’s shareholder return has been 60% over the past 12 months and more than 200% over the past five years.

Francis Desouza

It says something about the stature of JPMorgan Chase’s 62-year-old CEO that he’s spent significant time this year quashing rumors that he’s planning a White House run. But Dimon, who has served 13 years leading the nation’s largest bank, says he’ll stay for at least another five. Investors certainly don’t want to see him go: [hotlink]JPMorgan Chase[/hotlink] has delivered total shareholder return of 90% over the past three years. Just as important, Dimon has become a role model for civic-minded capitalism, steering a growing share of the bank’s profits toward struggling urban communities through the $500 million AdvancingCities program, which funds businesses and development in high-poverty neighborhoods from Detroit to Paris.

Jamie Dimon

The maker of creativity tools like Photoshop doesn’t quite [hotlink]grab[/hotlink] headlines like some of its Silicon Valley neighbors. But [hotlink]Adobe[/hotlink] is playing the long game—and so is Shantanu Narayen. In November the CEO celebrated his 11th anniversary at the helm, a tenure that’s increasing rare in corporate America. One glance at Adobe’s stock price—which this year gained 57% to peak at about $275—reveals why. Narayen’s move to turn boxed software into cloud services gave the San Jose company a subscription business that keeps on giving. And his recent rash of marketing-tech acquisitions—$1.68 billion for Magento, $4.75 billion for Marketo—signals he’s not afraid to compete with [hotlink]Salesforce[/hotlink] and [hotlink]Oracle[/hotlink]. A quiet giant? Not anymore.

Shantanu Narayen

Huateng "Pony" Ma (ma is horse in Chinese, hence the nickname) may be the most soft-spoken billionaire tech entrepreneur in the world. The cofounder of Tencent, Ma quietly presides over one of China’s most dynamic companies. Tencent began as a messaging service but grew into China’s dominant mobile-game maker. Games were lucrative, but Tencent’s WeChat tool—which is how Chinese people talk, message, and pay—catapulted it into the cultural stratosphere. Tencent’s growth has been phenomenal: Revenues and profits have jumped an average of 44% annually for the past three years. One challenge? The Chinese government is cracking down on the addictive nature of Tencent’s games.

Huateng 'Pony' Ma

Author Brad Stone famously called [hotlink]Amazon[/hotlink].com “the Everything Store.” It’s now equally apparent the company’s founder, with his ruthless, focused, methodical approach to business, is “the Everything CEO.” Amazon redefined retailing, and though it took two decades to get there, the company has become consistently profitable. Bezos rewrote the rules for web hosting too, creating Amazon Web Services, the profit and growth engine of the company. Along the way, Bezos has injected new life into the Washington Post and space company Blue Origin. But despite Amazon’s reach (which will increase even further with its headquarters expansions), the company still grows like a startup: Revenues have jumped 26% annually over the past three years.

Jeff Bezos

Brexit, financial crises, and general market turbulence around the globe have certainly tested this international retail-banking powerhouse in recent years. Yet Botín, who has helmed Santander since the sudden death of her father, Emilio, in September 2014, has deftly steered the firm to steady revenue and profi t growth while improving the bank’s capital ratios, accelerating digitization, and cultivating greater loyalty from its 140 million customers in Europe and the Americas. In September, Botín named UBS vet Andrea Orcel (a longtime Santander adviser) as CEO, but Botín’s public face seems to get only more prominent with her new and active Twitter account, where she shares her views on everything from the EU to blockchain to feminism.

Ana Botín

Impressive market share. Conspicuous pricing power. Headroom for days. [hotlink]Google[/hotlink], Netfl ix, Amazon? No—Pay Pal. Schulman ascended to the payment processor’s top job following its split from [hotlink]eBay[/hotlink] in 2014. Since then he’s been moving aggressively to put [hotlink]PayPal[/hotlink] in front of every wallet-toting customer on the planet. A recent partnership with [hotlink]Walmart[/hotlink] placed the company in the checkout aisles of America’s richest retailer, while his $2.2 billion acquisition of Sweden’s iZettle—PayPal’s largest-ever purchase—gave PayPal solid footing among European merchants. At the same time, the company’s 2013 deal to buy Venmo owner Braintree, which gave PayPal access to a new generation of U.S. customers, continues to pay dividends. Schulman, who sits on the boards of Teach for America and Autism Speaks, has in recent years not shied away from politics, notably canceling a 2016 North Carolina expansion after that state passed a restrictive bathroom-use law.

Dan Schulman

Gary Guthart, for one, welcomes our new robot overlords. Well, at least when it comes to minimally invasive surgery. Intuitive Surgical’s stock has soared 221% over three years as it has come to dominate the robot-assisted surgery space, where its flagship da Vinci devices are ubiquitous. With four robotic arms that wield various instruments and a high-resolution 3D camera, the da Vinci machines enable surgeons to operate on patients through small surgical holes, nixing the need for cutting someone open. More than 4 million procedures had been conducted with da Vinci systems through 2017. And Guthart isn’t just a businessman; he helped develop the technology that drives computer-enhanced surgery during his time at SRI International.

Gary Guthart

It's easy for corporate success stories to get lost in the unglitzy realm of manufacturing; it’s easier still when they’re buried inside a struggling global conglomerate. Thyssenkrupp North America is one such tale—and the unassuming protagonist here is Patrick Bass, who took the helm in January 2015. Since then, tkNA, which operates more than 40 businesses making 1,000-plus things, from industrial materials to automotive assembly lines, has solidly boosted both sales and profit margins while steadfastly investing in new tech to seed the next generation of growth. Bass, whose 6-foot-5 offensive lineman frame seems to belie the soft-spoken engineer inside, has focused on building the tools for a digital-industrial age—but it’s machine-making wizardry that gets him most excited. Just get him talking about “the Multi,” a “rope-less” elevator that can go horizontally and diagonally as well as vertically. Anyone who’s ever wanted to ride in the “Wonkavator” now has a chance.

Patrick Bass

After Hollub graduated from the University of Alabama, she took a job on an oil rig in Mississippi—and was hooked. She spent the next 30 years climbing the ladder at Occidental—until 2015, when she was named CEO, making Hollub the first woman to run a major American oil company. (She took office in April 2016.) Occidental reported more than a half-billion dollars in losses in fiscal year 2016, but soon her focus on cutting costs and expanding operations would pay off. Revenue is up 40% over 12 months, and profits grew by nearly one-third over the past three years, owing in part to early investment and rapid growth in the Permian Basin near West Texas. Does she have a good luck charm? Perhaps—her prized possession is a portrait of legendary ’Bama coach Bear Bryant.

Vicki Hollub

What do Nissan, Honda, and Toyota have in common? In the first six months of 2018, Geely Automotive leapfrogged them all to become the third-best-selling car brand in China, the world’s biggest auto market. What’s more, it increased sales 43% year over year, even as overall Chinese car sales declined. Geely has built a global footprint thanks to founder and chairman Li Shufu, who engineered its 2010 acquisition of Sweden’s Volvo. But its market-share wins in China testify to the skills of Gui, its CEO since 2006, who has also managed to deftly guide Geely into the electric-car and autonomous-vehicle arenas. Next up: bringing its Lynk &amp; Co brand to Europe. As Gui said this summer, “We have a real product to go global now.”

Businessperson of the Year 2018