With the exits of Apple’s Tim Cook and Dow’s Jim Fitterling, the Fortune 500 is losing two groundbreaking gay CEOs—leaving just one

When Jim Fitterling of Dow and Tim Cook of Apple step down as CEOs in July and September respectively, the Fortune 500 will lose two widely respected leaders who led their companies through transformational eras. The exits of the two men, who both identify as gay, will also mark a dispiriting step backward for LGBTQ+ representation in the C‑suite. After September, there will be only one out LGBTQ+ chief executive left in the Fortune 500: Land O’ Lakes’ Beth Ford. It’s a reminder of how the highest echelons of corporate America remain largely straight, white, and male—and how difficult it is to maintain gains in representation. Only three years ago, there were four LGBTQ+ CEOs when Macy’s was still led by Jeff Gennette, who stepped down in 2024. Outside of the Fortune 500, there have also been recent exits: Coty, the beauty products maker giant, saw its CEO Sue Nabi, a rare transgender executive, leave her job late last year. Other historically underrepresented groups in the C-suite have also seen only modest gains in representation. There are 11 Black CEOs and 22 women CEOs among the 500—historically high percentages but far below each group’s share of the U.S. population. (Fitterling is being replaced by Karen Carter, a Black woman.) To be sure, there will almost certainly be at least one more gay CEO in the Fortune 500 soon. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is widely expected to list shares on the stock market later this year, and its CEO, Sam Altman, is gay. (Companies can only be included on the Fortune 500 if they file financial information with U.S. regulators.) Still, two CEOs out of 500 for a group that makes anywhere from 3% to 10% of the U.S. population (and more among younger Americans) will hardly be a paragon of representation. So what gives? For one thing, the number of LGBTQ+ chief executives is almost certainly an undercount, given that people sometimes stay in the closet—mum about their sexual or gender orientation. (Cook only came out in 2014, three y