After uproar over Forbes' list of "America's Most Innovative Leaders," professors at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business compiled a list of their own, of the women that they say should make any list of innovators.
The response at Maryland Smith follows an almost immediate backlash across social media sparked by the list's stark gender imbalance. Ninety-nine men. And just one woman.
The magazine's editor would issue an apology and an explanation, blaming the methodology of the data-driven list. "This pool ultimately proved the problem: Women, as we all know, are poorly represented at the top of the largest corporations (just 5% of the S&P 500) and fare even worse among growing public tech companies. In other words, for all our carefully calibrated methodology, women never had much of a chance here," he wrote.
Maryland Smith marketing professor P.K. Kannan's research into artificial intelligence and machine learning has underscored the flawed list by showing the dangers of blindly relying on algorithms to make important decisions. "Small errors," he says, "like a flaw in the attribution scheme, can have a major impact."
Kannan's colleagues' response to Forbes' list produced the following names of women innovators:
Laura J. Alber, CEO of Williams-Sonoma
Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors
Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy
Sara Blakely, founder and owner of shapewear brand Spanx
Gail K. Boudreaux, president and CEO of Anthem Inc.
Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit and a member of the Board of Directors of Hewlett-
ackard and Nordstrom
Michele Buck, president and CEO of The Hershey Company
Safra A. Catz, co-CEO of Oracle Corporation
Susan L. Decker, former president of Yahoo!, member of the Board of Directors for Berkshire Hathaway
Mary Dillon, CEO of Ulta Beauty
Melinda Gates, former general manager at Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Shafi Goldwasser, co-founder and chief scientist at Duality Tech
Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Beth Ford, CEO of Land O'Lakes
Marillyn Adams Hewson, chairwoman, president and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin
Michelle D. Gass, CEO and director of Kohl's Corp.
Lynn J. Good, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy
Ilene Gordon, former CEO of Ingredion
Tricia Griffith, CEO and president of Progressive
Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum
Margaret Keane, CEO and president of Synchrony Financial
Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of Stitch Fix
Mary Laschinger, chairman and CEO of Veritiv Corp.
Christine A. Leahy, president and CEO of CDW
Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google Cloud
Anna Manning, president and CEO of Reinsurance Group of America
Kathryn V. Marinello, president and CEO of Hertz
Jessica O. Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power
Kathy Mazzarella, president and CEO of Graybar Electric
Mary Meeker, former Wall Street securities analyst, now partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins
Beth E. Mooney, CEO of KeyCorp
Deanna M. Mulligan, president and CEO of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America
Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo
Phebe Novakovic, former intelligence officer, now chairwoman and CEO of General Dynamics
Neri Oxman, designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, leading the Mediated Matter research group
Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Penny Pennington, managing partner of Edward Jones Investments
Patti Poppe, president and CEO of CMS Energy
Kira Radinsky, eBay director of data science and chief scientist Israel (former SalesPredict CTO)
Teresa Rasmussen, CEO of Thrivent
Rihanna, (Robyn Rihanna Fenty) singer, style icon, philanthropist and makeup entrepreneur
Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO of IBM
Lori J. Ryerkerk, president and CEO of Celanese Corp
Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook
Anne-Marie Slaughter, international lawyer and foreign policy analyst, president and CEO of New America
Jill Soltau, former CEO of Jo-Ann Fabrics, now CEO of JCPenney
Lisa Su, electrical engineer and CEO and president of Advanced Micro Devices
Adi Tatarko, CEO and co-founder of Houzz
Kathy J. Warden, CEO and president of Northrop Grumman
Joey Wat, CEO of Yum China Holdings
Meg Whitman, CEO of short-form mobile video platform Quibi, former president and CEO of Hewlett Packard
Mary Winston, interim CEO of Bed, Bath and Beyond
Anne E. Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of personal genomics company 23andMe
Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve, now an economist at the Brookings Institution
Maryland Smith faculty contributors: Joseph P. Bailey, Wedad J. Elmaghraby, Sara Herald, David Kass, Elinda F. Kiss, Henry Lucas, Wendy W. Moe, Paulo Prochno, Nicholas Seybert and Emanuel Zur.
Visit Smith Brain Trust for related content at http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/faculty-research/smithbraintrust and follow on Twitter @SmithBrainTrust.
About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, specialty masters, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.
