Table of contents for October/November 2024 in Fortune

Global Forum 2024 Fortune convenes CEOs from some of the world’s largest and most innovative companies, including members of the Global 500, to discuss critical trends, technologies, and strategies. (Nov. 11–12, NYC) Brainstorm Design Macau Participants will share their insights on how immersive environments and experiential designs are revolutionizing an array of industries. (Dec. 5, Macau) Brainstorm AI 2024 The top minds in AI—those at startups and Fortune 500 companies, as well as investors, policymakers, and academics—discuss this pivotal moment for the industry. (Dec. 9–10, San Francisco) FOR MORE INFO, GO TO FORTUNE.COM…

THE HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY IS AT A BREAKING point. Hospital systems and clinics are beleaguered by a shortage of workers, increased burnout, and rising health care costs that threaten their ability to provide quality patient care, as reported by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. This landscape has made talent retention and employee well-being make-or-break factors for many health institutions. For Hackensack Meridian Health (HMH), New Jersey’s largest hospital network, prioritizing leadership development and enhancing team member wellness are key to overcoming these obstacles. “At HMH, our mission to transform health care starts with strengthening our leaders so they can create confident, thriving, and engaged teams,” says HMH CEO Robert Garrett. “We use actionable insights to ensure leaders take the best care of their teams and our patients.”…

ARCHITECTURE IS A COMPETITIVE INDUSTRY that demands hiring and retaining top design talent. The American Institute of Architects reports that the highest performing firms consistently maintain a low turnover of less than 10%. By that measure, Grimm + Parker Architects, a firm specializing in sustainable, community-focused design, is exemplary. Founded in 1972 with locations in Maryland and Virginia, the firm maintains a 2% turnover rate or less, soundly beating the national average of 13.6%, according to the 2022 Deltek Clarity study. CEO and president Melanie Hennigan attributes the company’s market-leading retention capabilities to its culture of caring. “We genuinely care about our colleagues, our work, and our clients,” says Hennigan. “We demonstrate this by building trust, being good businesspeople, and having each other’s backs.” This sense of teamwork is…

TESHIMA CORPORATION IS A COMPANY STEEPED IN Japanese business traditions, such as hard work and high quality control. However, the stainless steel tubing firm best known for its needle products is also providing a forward-thinking example of how things can be done differently. Led by representative director and president Yukiko Teshima, the business has bold plans for global expansion and digital transformation while also prioritizing greater gender balance in the workplace. Based in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture, the 52-year-old company manufactures a wide range of steel tubing used in different sectors, including ultra-thin tubes for industrial production, as well as cylinders and pipes for automotive plants. Its flagship products, though, are health care supplies, such as high-precision stainless steel needles. Ranging from injection needles and suction nozzles cannulas and otoscopes,…

MARY BARRA’S first year on the job as the first woman ever to lead a global automaker was about as rough as a CEO’s first year can be. Barra, a General Motors lifer, took the helm at GM in January 2014. Just a few weeks into the gig, she found herself navigating a catastrophic recall of millions of GM-made cars due to faulty ignition switches, some of which had caused fatal accidents. Barra spent much of her debut year on Capitol Hill, testifying in front of lawmakers who grilled her about why the defects had gone unfixed for so long. It was the kind of experience that might make you want to quit before year two—but this January, Barra celebrated year 10. Leading the company through the recall crisis…

Since 1899, Marquis Who’s Who has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals from every significant field of endeavor and remains the standard for reliable biographical reference material for researchers, libraries, and executive institutions around the world. Please visit www.marquiswhoswho.com for additional information. GIBSON JAMES BRADLEY Director of Executive Compensation (Retired) Procter & Gamble URBANDALE, IA Leveraging more than 40 years of professional experience, Gibson James Bradley has brought comprehensive expertise across a spectrum of compensation and human resources initiatives, serving at the helm of numerous business, organi-zational and cultural transformations at prestigious companies across the nation. Joining Procter & Gamble in 1997, he retired from the organization in 2006 as the director of executive compensation. Instrumental in spearheading positive change, he was praised by the chief executive…

JUNE 1996 Mike Lynch and two cofounders launch Autonomy, an enterprise software firm specializing in data analytics, with Lynch as CEO. FEBRUARY 2011 After a number of acquisitions over the previous decade, Autonomy reports 2010 revenue of $870 million. OCTOBER 2011 HP acquires Autonomy for more than $11 billion, or a bit over $42 per share. With his proceeds from the sale, estimated at $800 million, Lynch later launches the venture fund Invoke Capital. AUTONOMY NOVEMBER 2012 HP writes off $8.8 billion of the purchase of Autonomy, accusing Lynch’s management team of “serious accounting improprieties.” APRIL 2018 Former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain is convicted of fraud in the U.S.; he serves five years in prison. NOVEMBER 2018 A U.S. grand jury indicts Lynch for fraud; the U.K. agrees to…

SOONER OR LATER, government debt will devastate the economy. That’s a message we hear often (especially in election years). But the U.S. has mocked the fiscal scolds, delivering consistent GDP growth over the past 10 years even as total federal debt has doubled to a benumbing $35.4 trillion. One reason for the run of luck: Treasury bills, seen as ultrasafe, attract hordes of buyers despite paying very low interest, enabling Uncle Sam to run huge deficits without short-term repercussions. But economists point out that inflation can bring that party to an ugly end—forcing governments to pay higher interest to lenders, and then to borrow more to pay that interest. Such cycles have sunk smaller economies (think Argentina or Greece). The U.S. economy is a far sturdier ship, of course—but…

WHEN AN industry is facing disruption, which company has the better chance of ultimate survival: a startup or an incumbent? Three years ago, I made a career bet. I was offered a dream job as the editor of Fortune. But I already had a good job as the editor of a media upstart that boasted a larger newsroom, more readership, and higher revenue than my potential new employer. The upstart had adapted quickly to an onslaught of disruptive digital forces like mobile and social media. Fortune, meanwhile, didn’t even have its own website until 2014. Despite the upstart’s momentum, I bet on the incumbent. I believed it would be easier to lead the digital transformation of a trusted brand than to try to build a brand as trusted as…

THE GLITZY OPRAH WINFREY–HOSTED “Unite for America” Zoom event Sept. 19 featured the corps d’elite of entertainment, government, and business, as well as the woman being feted herself: Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. The event brought together the 140 “unity groups” that have held Zoom calls to fundraise for Harris, including White Women: Answer the Call, White Dudes for Harris, Cat Ladies for Harris, and Tech4Kamala. “The grassroots people-powered movement behind Kamala Harris has unleashed a unifying force unlike anything we’ve seen in politics in a very long time,” Winfrey almost sung to the crowd. Then the media mogul pivoted to face a woman wearing a deep-violet dress in the front row: Jotaka Eaddy, who started this movement with her weekly Zoom call for powerful Black women. “I know…

WHEN MY BONOBOS cofounder, Brian Spaly, and I had a falling-out in 2009, two years after starting the company, we made a strange decision. We decided that we would share the details of how our partnership fell apart with the community where our friendship and our company were forged: Stanford Business School. Brian and I were not on speaking terms at the time, in part due to my cowardice in not picking up the phone. But we still held great affinity for each other, and we felt in some ways let down by what we had learned—or should I say, not learned—in school. Most of the case-study protagonists who come through Stanford reflect the survivorship bias of entrepreneurs who have made it. But what about the lessons from those…

THE WAIT IS OVER. After more than a year of will-they-or-won’t-they, the Federal Reserve on Sept. 18 announced the first cut to its benchmark Federal funds rate since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a 50-basis-point drop that Chairman Jerome Powell signaled is likely the first of many. With inflation at its lowest level since early 2021, an uptick in the unemployment rate, and growing worries about softening consumer spending, the cut was anything but a surprise. But it does signal the start of a pivot in how the average investor should position her portfolio, as wealth planners and other experts tell Fortune. For starters, investors should expect short-term volatility, especially if the Fed embarks on a sequence of rate changes, says Chester Spatt, finance professor at Carnegie…

KAMALA HARRIS’S FIRST speech outlining her economic policies did not bode well for business. In Raleigh, N.C., a week before the convention where she officially became the Democrats’ nominee for president, her language sounded bellicose: She boasted that as California’s attorney general she “took on insurance companies and Big Pharma,” that she “went after companies that illegally increased prices,” and that as president she would “attack” the high cost of health care and “crack down” on unscrupulous corporate landlords. In that speech and many to follow, “big banks,” “Wall Street,” “corporations,” and “middlemen” were the liberal version of red meat—dirty words thrown out to elicit loud boos. Yet while Harris’s public rhetoric does little to win over businesspeople, she is attracting the support of many of them. The language…

WHEN THE FORTUNE CHANGE THE WORLD LIST made its debut in 2015, the business world was beginning an unprecedented pivot—publicly embracing social responsibility. Widening income inequality, the Global Financial Crisis of 2008–09, and a growing awareness of climate change had made the public increasingly skeptical of businesses’ motives. CEOs responded with commitments to do better for people and the planet. “Stakeholder capitalism” was in; pure profit-seeking was out. Since then, as society has become more polarized, it’s gotten harder for business leaders to highlight efforts like these; some critics dismiss them as lip service, while others deride them as “woke.” But our list has spotlighted hundreds of companies that let their actions speak for them—harnessing the creative impulses of capitalism to address social problems, and generating revenue while doing…

THE RICH AND FAMOUS are just like us, celebrity gossip magazines love to tell you. When it comes to Silicon Valley’s billionaires, though, they are acting a lot more like your politics-obsessed uncle. With a blizzard of tweets, blog posts, public comments, and podcasts, the tech industry’s most powerful business leaders are delivering a running commentary on this year’s presidential campaign cycle that’s hard to tune out. Bolstered by hubris and net worth, these billionaires have loudly aligned themselves with their preferred candidate, taken potshots at the opposition, and flogged their personal policy prescriptions—often in feisty social media spats with one another. One day it’s Vinod Khosla, the Sun Microsystems cofounder and venture capitalist, sparring with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about Trump’s views on NATO and climate change. The…

FOR CENTURIES, JAPANESE BUSINESS HAS BEEN RENOWNED for its adherence to traditions and customs. Today, however, a new generation of female executives is shaking up the boardroom to encourage more women into the workforce and promote diversity. In a nation where women make up just 13.4% of executive roles, compared, for example, to the 35% of senior leadership positions occupied by women in the U.S., gender equality is a pressing concern. The pay gap is 22%, according to OECD data, while fewer than 1% of the 1,802 Tokyo Stock Exchange companies have a female CEO. In recent years, both government and business leaders have been working to address these statistics, with legislation enacted in 2015 to support parity. According to the women working to narrow the gender gap, however,…

WITH MORE PEOPLE IN DEVELOPED NATIONS now living well into their 70s, care for the aging is one of the most rapidly growing sectors in the U.S. economy, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. To meet this demand, providers are under pressure to deliver a range of affordable services while still offering personalized, high-quality support to the aging population. Chapters Health System, one of the country’s premier chronic illness management organizations, is delivering on these needs and outperforming competitors by prioritizing its employees. “We have two jobs at Chapters Health: taking care of patients or taking care of those who do,” says Andrew Molosky, president and CEO at Chapters Health. “Providing exceptional, high-quality patient services starts with listening to and building trust with our staff.” For more…

WHEN FORTUNE launched its Most Powerful Women list in 1998, women were just starting to trickle into the C-suite in significant numbers. “[Now] is the right time to bring you Fortune’s first-ever list of the 50 Most Powerful Women…because women, at last, are achieving profound power in the most important and influential industries,” Fortune wrote at the time. Women in business have certainly come a long way since then. No stat proves that better than the share of CEOs on the list. That first year, 15 CEOs made the inaugural ranking of 50. This year, women with that title represent well over half of the larger list of 100. Fifteen of the CEOs on this year’s list are brandnew to the ranking, while others are stalwarts who have retained…

IN JULY, Cathy Engelbert walked onto the court at Phoenix’s Footprint Center, beaming before the crowd of 18,000 that watched the WNBA All-Star Game. The WNBA commissioner was not-so-secretly thrilled that Team WNBA—which bore her league’s name—notched a 117–109 upset over Olympic-bound Team USA, also made up of WNBA players. “This is going to get great reviews,” says Engelbert, 59. The All-Star Game was just one in a string of resounding successes for the league in 2024. Fan numbers have been swelling. ESPN viewership climbed 170% to 1.2 million per game; teams sold 400,000 tickets in one month; and 21 games garnered more than 1 million viewers each—18 of which featured the Indiana Fever and their No. 1 draft pick, Caitlin Clark. These stats seemed unattainable five years ago,…

IN NOVEMBER 1996, Joe Bae had been working at buyout shop Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. for six weeks as an analyst doing spadework on deals when Scott Nuttall, another recruit, moved into the office next door. Both Bae and Nuttall, who had each worked at big Wall Street firms, soon relished the freewheeling small-group vibe over, as Bae puts it, “feeling like a cog in a large, sophisticated machine.” KKR had just two dozen employees and lacked even an HR department. Their bosses were already legends, courtesy of their epic purchase of RJR Nabisco. “Back then, Henry Kravis and George Roberts were the de facto investment committee,” says Bae. The process was that after studying the transactions, “you walk into Henry’s office, then you call George, and then…