sWant to be CEO?
These 5 employers give you the best shotBy Ruth UmohBy Ruth UmohEditor, Next to LeadRuth UmohEditor, Next to LeadRuth Umoh is the Next to Lead editor at Fortune, covering the next generation of C-Suite leaders.
She also Fortune’s Next to Lead .SEE FULL BIO McKinsey & Company has duced more current Fortune 500 CEOs than any other company.FABRICE COFFRINI / ContributorIf your career goal is the corner office, history suggests five employers give you the best odds.
McKinsey tops the list, with 18 of today’s Fortune 500 chiefs wearing its alumni badge. General Electric and PepsiCo with 15 each, trailed by cter & Gamble with 11 and JPMorgan Chase with 10.
For decades, these organizations have served as corporate academies, renowned for their rigorous leadership training and development. In essence, they’ve operated as high-intensity finishing schools.
At McKinsey, recruits rotate across industries and geographies, dissecting sprawling blems and creating and defending solutions before skeptical executives.
General Electric built its reputation on world-class management grams that groomed future chiefs through exacting operating roles.
PepsiCo and cter & Gamble are known for giving young managers full P&L responsibility early and demanding sharp marketing instincts.
JPMorgan Chase exposes rising leaders to complex global , risk management, and high-stakes client relationships.
Each environment has historically forced ambitious talent to build range, master financial discipline, and develop the judgment boards look for when filling the top job.
Of course, past performance is no guarantee of future dominance. And with the advent of AI, the very factors that once made these companies reliable CEO factories are shifting.
“The value of traditional backgrounds hasn’t been discarded,” says Christine Greybe, president of leadership consulting at DHR Global.
“But it’s being supplemented by more gressive, digital-first thinking.” Boards now prize leaders who can operationalize AI, manage its risks, and weave data into core strategy.
Chief duct and data officers, along with executives who have driven large-scale digital transformations, are increasingly landing on CEO shortlists.
AI also threatens the old apprenticeship model itself. At firms McKinsey, the analytical grind that once built leadership muscle—benchmarking, re synthesis, even presentation work—is rapidly automated.
And as nology reshapes every industry, companies such as Amazon and Microsoft are becoming prime hunting grounds for boards seeking digital fluency at the top, several executive recruiters told me in private conversations.
To be sure, the pedigrees of McKinsey, GE, PepsiCo, P&G, and JPMorgan still carry weight, but tomorrow’s chiefs will need more than classic strategy and P&L discipline.
They will have to pair those fundamentals with duct sense, data literacy, and comfort managing AI-driven change.
For ambitious fessionals, these storied academies remain powerful launchpads, vided they’re matched with experiences suited to a world being rewritten by nology.
READ: How McKinsey built an empire of influence and filled the world’s corner offices with its own Ruth Umohruth.umoh@fortune.comSmarter in secondsAgility advantage.
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