businessperson of the year 2020

Fortune Editors








To create our annual ranking of star executives, we first screen for 10 metrics ranging from return on capital to total return to investors. Then we identify those who achieved the remarkable. This year, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took the top spot for a second time. Explore the full list below.








Is there anything Elon Musk can't do? The 49-year-old [hotlink]Tesla[/hotlink] and SpaceX CEO (and Boring Co., Neuralink, and OpenAI cofounder—phew!) has seemingly defied gravity this year, transforming his Silicon Valley electric-auto maker into one of the world's most valuable companies and elevating his Los Angeles–area rocket manufacturer to new heights—including successfully sending humans into orbit from the U.S. for the first time since NASA quit doing so in 2011. The key to those successes? Musk's resilience. The über-intelligent, often-controversial CEO places bets to reshape businesses that are bigger than most—cars, spaceships, brain-machine interfaces, etc.—and steers them to success with entrepreneurial audacity and executive fortitude. He has the returns to prove it too: Tesla’s addition to the S&amp;P 500 took Musk's personal net worth to new heights, making him the world’s second-wealthiest person, behind Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. (Read more: Our <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/elon-musk-ceo-tesla-spacex-2020-businessperson-of-the-year">full profile</a> of Fortune’s Businessperson of the Year.)

Elon Musk

<a href="https://fortune.com/most-powerful-women/2020/lisa-su/">Su</a>’s strategic vision to lift [hotlink]Advanced Micro Devices[/hotlink] from near-bankruptcy to the pinnacle of PC processors has taken a few years to realize. But now that the high-performance Zen chip design [hotlink]AMD[/hotlink] first envisioned six years ago is in its third generation of actual products, sales are <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/amd-ceo-lisa-su-supercomputing-gaming-ai/">booming</a>, reaching almost $9 billion over the past 12 months, a 44% gain from the prior year. And AMD’s stock price, under $2 a share in 2016, recently crossed $85—giving the company a stock market value of more than $100 billion. Su is looking to stoke further gains by using AMD’s stock to buy rival [hotlink]Xilinx[/hotlink] for $35 billion to crack the chip market for cars and 5G mobile devices.

Lisa Su

[hotlink]Nvidia[/hotlink] has sold the fastest graphics processing chips for playing video games for most of its 27-year history. But the reason Nvidia overtook [hotlink]Intel[/hotlink] in 2020 as the most valuable U.S. chipmaker started with CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang’s realization that those same kinds of chips would also be well-suited for machine learning, artificial intelligence, and big data analysis—not to mention mining cryptocurrency too. Nvidia’s stock price has gained 122% this year, giving Huang the currency to make a big acquisition. For $40 billion, he’s betting on chip-design powerhouse ARM to help Nvidia get even deeper into cloud computing and smart devices.

Jensen Huang

Over the past year, a host of formidable new competitors have challenged [hotlink]Netflix[/hotlink] in the streaming wars—from Disney+ to NBC’s Peacock to [hotlink]Apple[/hotlink] TV+ to HBO Max. But the company was prepared, having made big investments in original programming and its deep content library. It’s a strategy that’s proved especially prescient during the pandemic, with Netflix set to emerge a winner. The company added 28 million subscribers in the first nine months of 2020—more than it gained for all of 2019—and is on track to hit a new annual record. The share price has also been hitting new highs, with the stock -returning 60% over the past 12 months.

Reed Hastings

Gaines defied the odds in a year defined by a global pandemic and fast-souring relations between Australia and China, Fortescue’s main market. In fact, the $12.8 billion iron ore producer had a banner year, posting record-breaking financial results, and a 137% total return for investors over the past 12 months. Those results owe much to the speedy recovery and soaring demand of China’s steel industry, which despite the pandemic, will have its biggest year ever in 2020. Meanwhile, Gaines implemented safeguards to make sure the virus didn’t hobble her operations; so far there have been zero cases of Covid at Fortescue’s mining sites.

Elizabeth Gaines

The New York–based biotech Schleifer founded in 1988 has been much in the news this year for the drug, an antibody cocktail, it developed to fight COVID-19—and which was used in October to treat President Trump. The FDA granted the drug an emergency use authorization in late November. Regeneron also recently won FDA approval for Inmazeb, another antibody cocktail and the first-ever drug proved to be effective in treating Ebola. Those innovations have helped boost Regeneron’s stock—its total return over the past 12 months is 51%—and the biotech’s impressive financial results support the investor enthusiasm: Revenues and profits are up 40% and 47% respectively for the past 12 months, largely because of strong sales of drugs that treat macular degeneration and allergic diseases like eczema.

Leonard Schleifer

As the mastermind behind the e-commerce and cloud-computing colossus, Bezos in recent years had left behind the daily grind of running [hotlink]Amazon[/hotlink] to focus on big-picture strategy. But during the pandemic, he dived back into the day-to-day challenge of leading Amazon as shifting consumer habits pushed the company’s operations to the max. Amazon has added more than 400,000 new jobs this year to keep up with demand, and last quarter alone revenue approached $100 billion—a company record. Amazon’s valuation has followed suit, with the company’s market capitalization recently hovering at close to $1.6 trillion. But Bezos has still made time for big projects, like building out Amazon’s COVID testing capability.

Jeff Bezos

Under CEO Shantanu Narayen’s leadership, the 38-year-old provider of design and publishing tools has continued to evolve into a massive subscription-based business. And despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, the software company recently announced results from its best third-quarter ever—revenue grew 14% year over year, hitting a record $3.3 billion. [hotlink]Adobe[/hotlink] has benefited from growth in its digital media segment, its largest division, in particular, with demand rising for its subscription-based suite of tools for designing and publishing content and software for document creation and electronic signatures (yes, PDFs are still big business). Adobe’s diverse mix of customers, both large and small, has also helped Narayen to future-proof his company’s business. Now the CEO has a strategy for what he hopes will result in even more growth: In early November, Adobe announced the $1.5 billion acquisition of Workfront, a maker of “marketing workflow management” software.

Shantanu Narayen

Most of the world’s challenges fit into three fundamental tugs-of-war, says Ajay Banga: that between the rights of “the one versus the many”; between the needs of humanity vs. the preservation of nature; and, finally, between short-term gains and long-term goals. The struggles are interconnected, like the sides of a triangle, <a href="https://fortune.com/longform/mastercard-ceo-ajay-banga-credit-card-payment-company/">Banga tells </a>Fortune—and a good leader has to balance all of them. Arguably, few have managed that feat better than Banga, whose decade-plus at the helm of [hotlink]Mastercard[/hotlink] has been a case study in fine-tuned corporate leadership. The stellar financials during his tenure—average annual profit growth of nearly 19%, a 40%-plus return on capital, and a total shareholder return approaching 1,600%—have come on the strength of (not in spite of) generous employee benefits and a commitment to community. Mastercard has ambitiously supported initiatives on environmental sustainability and is working to get a billion unbanked people around the world onto the financial grid—a legacy that ensures that Banga, who passes the CEO baton to Mastercard president Michael Miebach on Jan. 1, will be remembered as one who served the many.

Ajay Banga

A fixture on Fortune’s <a href="https://fortune.com/most-powerful-women/2020/">Most Powerful Women list</a> and our <a href="https://fortune.com/businessperson-of-the-year/2018/">Businessperson of the Year back in 2018</a>, Griffith continued Progressive’s run of excellent results in 2020. Fewer vehicle miles traveled because of COVID-19 restrictions benefited the Cleveland-based insurer, and the company did well to limit reliance on investment income in a year when federal interest rates hovered near zero. Profits climbed 61% over the past 12 months, surpassing $5 billion, and Progressive’s stock has nearly tripled since Griffith took over in mid-2016. The 56-year-old chief executive has also set the company’s North Star on culture and has signed on as a member of the CEO Action for Diversity &amp; Inclusion program.

Tricia Griffith

Xie is a classic Silicon Valley success story whose business, cybersecurity, is hotter than ever. The stock of Fortinet, the company he and his brother Michael founded in 2000, has returned 190% over the past three years. Ken Xie, 57, started his first cybersecurity company as a Stanford graduate student, then in 1996 started another, which was sold to [hotlink]Juniper Networks[/hotlink]. Fortinet, his third company, claims customers include [hotlink]Alibaba[/hotlink], [hotlink]Autodesk[/hotlink], [hotlink]Siemens[/hotlink], [hotlink]Volkswagen[/hotlink], and 70% of the Fortune 100. After 20 years in a crowded industry, it’s still growing revenue 19% a year with no long-term debt.

Ken Xie

Based in the Netherlands, ASML Holding is the world’s largest supplier of photolithographic systems for the semiconductor industry. The company’s technology is key to advanced chipmaking and is used by semi giants such as [hotlink]Intel[/hotlink] and Samsung. A 21-year veteran of ASML, Wennink, 63, took over as CEO in 2013 just as the company was transitioning to a new type of lithography technology: extreme ultraviolet (EUV)—an approach that results in the production of faster, more powerful chips. That, in turn, has turbocharged ASML’s growth. In 2020, EUV made up 66% of ASML’s total system revenue. The company beat expectations with $4 billion in revenue in Q3 and it has grown profits 49% over the past 12 months.

Peter Wennink

Previously an executive at Converse, [hotlink]Nike[/hotlink], and the Timberland Co., Powers is no stranger to success in the footwear business. And he has put some serious pep in the step of Deckers, which owns athletic-shoe company Hoka One One, casual footwear brand UGG, and sandal maker Teva. Powers, 53, took the reins as CEO of Deckers in 2016, and over the past three years the company’s profits have grown at an annual rate of 264%. Admittedly, he has had a far different pandemic experience than the CEOs of many other retailers. The company’s brand portfolio is particularly well positioned to satisfy a work-from-home and fitness-focused consumer base. Deckers grew net revenue in each of the past two quarters, in large part owing to booming sales of the super-cushiony running shoes made by Hoka One One, which saw 83% year-over-year growth in Q2. Shares of Deckers have soared more than 50% in the past year.

David Powers

In her first full year at the helm of the $44-billion-in-annual-revenue professional services giant, Sweet seized the pandemic-fueled moment, cementing Accenture’s reputation as the catalyst behind the <a href="https://fortune.com/fortune500/">Fortune </a>500’s digital transformation. Under her watch, the company has been relentless in its focus on disruptive tech; nearly 70% of its revenue already comes from cloud, digital, and security, and in September Accenture launched a three-year, $3 billion investment in further strengthening its cloud business. Along the way, Sweet has committed to making the company more diverse: After announcing Accenture would reach gender balance by 2025, the firm released targets for increasing race and ethnicity representation in the U.S., U.K., and South Africa to increase the number of Black and Latinx employees, both overall and among managing directors.

Julie Sweet

A pandemic that dealt a blow to the profits of many human health care businesses hasn’t sidetracked animal health company <a href="https://fortune.com/2020/05/16/zoetis-ceo-kristin-peck-animal-drugs-pets-livestock-coronavirus/">Zoetis</a> from its upward trajectory this year. Driven by strong sales in the company’s companion animal portfolio, as owners are spending more time with (and adopting) pets during lockdowns, [hotlink]Zoetis[/hotlink] has managed to grow profits nearly 14% over the past 12 months. The company’s stock, meanwhile, has gained roughly 26% year to date, far outpacing the S&amp;P 500. Zoetis, spun off from [hotlink]Pfizer[/hotlink] in 2013, makes vaccines, medicines, and other products for livestock and companion animals, with a roughly 50/50 split between the two businesses. Peck, a former Pfizer exec who took the helm of Zoetis in January mere weeks before the pandemic hit, was seemingly destined for a top job at the animal health company: Growing up in Connecticut, Peck had horses, dogs, cats, and birds, and her first job was at a legacy Zoetis company. Earlier this year, Zoetis launched a promising drug that has already proved a strong source of growth for the company: Simparica Trio, a combination flea, tick, and heartworm medicine for dogs, and the only such combo product currently available in the U.S. Indeed, with her company’s sales of pet products rising, Peck recently upped Zoetis’s full-year revenue forecast for 2020 to between $6.55 billion and $6.63 billion.

Kristin Peck

Goodarzi confronts the challenge that faces every [hotlink]Intuit[/hotlink] CEO: reinventing the company before more innovative competitors leave it behind. Intuit has managed to do so multiple times since its 1983 founding, remaining independent and highly successful. Now Goodarzi, 52, is leading its latest transformation, making Intuit’s tax, bookkeeping, and personal finance products A.I.-driven. To acquire the new skills Intuit needs, Goodarzi had to lay off some 700 employees and hire 700 others with the required expertise, an unprecedented move at this longtime fixture on Fortune’s ranking of the <a href="https://fortune.com/best-companies/">100 Best Companies to Work For</a>. The stock was recently near its all-time high.

Sasan Goodarzi

Since taking over as CEO of the Chinese tech giant in 2015, Zhang has continually found ways to boost the company’s prodigious growth. Zhang was the key architect of Singles’ Day, for instance, the online shopping festival popularized by [hotlink]Alibaba[/hotlink]. This year sales from the event totaled some $75 billion––up 26% over 2019. Further, Alibaba has reported revenue growth for each of the past three quarters and a 31% increase in total revenues over the past 12 months. A graduate of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and a certified accountant, Zhang first joined Alibaba in 2007 and succeeded cofounder Jack Ma as executive chairman in 2019. With Alibaba recently increasing its stake in the brick-and-mortar retailer Sun Art, Zhang continues to carry out Ma’s vision of a blended online and offline shopping experience.

Daniel Zhang

The strategic pivot Friedman embarked on at Nasdaq a few years ago is now delivering handsome returns: Leaning into fast-growing and highly profitable niches such as market indexes as well as data and analytics has helped boost Nasdaq’s earnings 73% over the past 12 months. It’s also become the go-to stock exchange for companies going public, with Nasdaq winning two-thirds of U.S. IPOs so far in 2020 (and 81% if you exclude the trendy but controversial listings of so-called SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies). Its latest big score: Airbnb, which chose the tech-heavy exchange over the NYSE for its upcoming debut (following other new Nasdaq additions including drug price startup [hotlink]GoodRx[/hotlink] and antivirus software maker McAfee). Investors in Nasdaq’s own stock have also reaped benefits, with its shares up 20% over the past year.

Adena Friedman

Since being named CEO of the health insurer in 2013, Broussard has continued Humana’s push into the Medicare Advantage business, with membership in its alternative to traditional Medicare up 17% last year—its highest increase in a decade and far outpacing the rest of the industry. The strategy has paid off with its three-year annual profit growth hitting 64%. The company outperformed in the first half of 2020 as people stayed away from nonessential medical care during the early days of the pandemic. But Humana—which will continue to offer COVID benefits in 2021, such as no co-pays for testing and treatment and two weeks of home-delivered meals for members with a diagnosis—says COVID testing and treatment costs will approach $1 billion this year.

Bruce Broussard

When Warner joined Renewable Energy Group in 2019, she’d already had a decades-long career in the oil and gas industry. But as the president and CEO of Iowa’s Renewable Energy Group, North America’s largest producer of biodiesel and other low-carbon fuels, she’s now finding a career at the heart of the energy transition. In November, the company reported that it is on track for a strong year, as momentum has built behind efforts to reduce CO2 emissions—and to promote alternative fuels—helping REG’s stock reach record highs. That’s especially notable, as global lockdowns this year have dented energy demand and thrown business-as-usual into disarray.

Businessperson of the Year 2020