Julie Sweet

Julie Sweet runs one of the only 5% of Fortune Global 500 companies helmed by a woman leader—and none of those has more employees than Accenture’s 800,000-plus. The sheer size of the tech-centric professional services giant makes it all the more impressive that Sweet sees agility and moving “super fast,” as she recently told Fortune, as signature achievements of her tenure. Case in point: Within a week of President Trump revealing his aggressive tariff schedule in April, Accenture held webinars with 900 clients around the world. Part of the goal, Sweet said, was to show clients that fast pivots are possible at any scale. In February, Sweet shared news of a breast cancer diagnosis, her second in 11 years. Sweet says she’s made a point of discussing her illness with employees, partly to let them know they will get the support they need through life’s hardest moments. “We want people to build long-term careers,” she said, “and cancer happens to people.”