For aspiring business leaders, hard work pays off—sometimes even in the form of a fast-track move to the C-suite.
Leaders likely to succeed are there on Fortune The most powerful executives on the rise list, a collection of 25 rising stars in Fortune 500 companies. But it’s not easy to tell how they got to senior positions at companies like Walmart, Amazon, and Apple, especially from an educational perspective.
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While some took more traditional paths by studying business and economics in school and later earning a degree MBAothers have carved out less popular routes, such as studying subjects like physics, political science or pharmacology.
However, they have at least one thing in common: they all value education enough to earn a bachelor’s degree from universities of all sizes around the world. With the exception of the University of Michigan—where PepsiCo’s Ram Krishnan and Foot Locker’s Frank Bracken studied, all of the most powerful rising executives attended unique schools as undergraduates.
Figures for the education of the most powerful rising executives:
- 100% have a bachelor’s degree
- 60% attended postgraduate studies
- 40% have an MBA
- 16% attended the Ivy League
- 40% studied engineering or computer science
The presenters also did not generally attend schools that are generally considered the best of the best; only four leaders received a degree from an Ivy League school.
The most powerful rising executives differ from leading Fortune’s Future 50 lista set of companies that are best suited for long-term growth. Some company executives didn’t get a degree at all, saying it was a waste of time. On the other hand, others looked to PhDs to be leaders in these fields.
One thing both lists had in common was the number of business leaders with degrees in subjects like computer science and engineering. Both also have significant numbers of individuals who earned their degrees outside the US
An undergraduate word cloud of Fortune’s most powerful rising executives.
However, the education of the most powerful rising executives is very similar to that of a Fortune 1000 CEO, at least as far as an MBA is concerned. About 40% of Fortune 1000 CEOs they have a bachelor’s degree in business studies.
