6. Ginni Rometty
Chairperson, President and CEO, IBM, 60
The pressure on Rometty keeps growing—as IBM’s revenue continues to shrink. In July the tech behemoth reported that sales had contracted yet again, marking its 21st consecutive quarter of decline. Earlier, in May, famed investor Warren Buffett sold off a third of his company’s shares in IBM, sending the stock tumbling. But there are bright spots too. Revenue from newer businesses like analytics, cloud, mobile, and security now account for 45.6% of sales, up nearly five percentage points from the year before.
7. Meg Whitman
CEO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, 61
Nearly two years after cleaving HP in half in the biggest split by revenue in corporate history, Whitman has continued trimming divisions off the piece she still runs. That’s meant that sales for HPE, which specializes in servers and networking systems, are still decreasing, even as its profits have started growing again. Still, five years since unveiling her plan to rescue HP, Whitman—who was a finalist for the Uber CEO job—is now under pressure to deliver on the promised results, namely revenue growth.
8. Safra Catz
Co-CEO, Oracle, 55
As co-CEO, Catz is leading a major expansion: hiring 5,000-plus new engineers, salespeople, and other staff to beef up the enterprise tech giant’s cloud business. The division, Oracle’s fastest-growing, brought in $4.6 billion in the company’s last fiscal year, up 60% from the one prior. Catz also spearheaded the 2016 $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite, the largest deal in Oracle’s history. In her spare time she oversees a $3.5 billion company investment in STEM initiatives and was on President Trump’s transition team.
9. Phebe Novakovic
Chairperson and CEO, General Dynamics, 59
Novakovic now runs a government contractor a third more valuable than it was a year ago, benefiting from a political environment favorable toward military outfitters. Still, sales fell slightly in 2016 as defense spending shifted toward aircraft and weapons systems and away from the boots-on-the-ground technology in which the company specializes. But Novakovic’s push to expand cybersecurity capabilities has been a boon, helping GD land new contracts and record operating earnings and margins last year.
10. Ruth Porat
SVP and CFO, Google, Alphabet, 59
When Porat was told her nickname at Google is “Ruth Vader”—thanks to her relentless focus on the bottom line—her response was, “That’s fantastic!” Wall Street thinks so too: Since she became CFO in May 2015, shares have jumped more than 70%; it’s currently the world’s second-most-valuable company after Apple. And while the Morgan Stanley vet’s discipline is seen as a major reason behind the end of some of its moonshot projects, she insists she is more focused on investment than cost-cutting.
