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Four Seattle-area CEOs Rank Among the Best in the Nation

Seattle also ranks fourth among U.S. metro areas in the number of CEOs making Glassdoors top 100 list

By Bill Conroy June 19, 2019

High Angle Shot of a Working Desk of an Successful Person in Office with Cityscape Window View.
High Angle Shot of a Working Desk of an Successful Person in Office with Cityscape Window View.

Four Seattle-area chief executive officers have made a list of the top 100 CEOs nationwide, a showing that ranks Seattle fourth among the metro areas represented in the rankings.

The list of top CEOs was put together by Glassdoor, the second largest online job site in the country. The average CEO approval rating per the study was 69%.

Following are the CEOs from the Seattle area that made the top 100 list.

  • No. 4 John Legere of Bellevue-based T-Mobile (99% CEO approval rating).
  • No. 6 Microsofts Satya Nadella of Redmond-based Microsoft (98% CEO approval rating).
  • No. 24 Brad Jackson of Seattle-based consulting firm Slalom (96% CEO approval rating).
  • No. 42 Craig Jelinek of Issaquah-based Costco Wholesale (95% CEO approval rating)

Nationally, the tech industry had the most CEOs on the list of top CEOs, with 27; followed by health care, with 12; and manufacturing, with eight CEOs. Ranking ahead of Seattle in terms of metro areas with the most top CEOs are the San Francisco Bay Area, with 17; New York City, with 16; and Los Angeles, with six CEOs.

Boston and Dallas/Ft. Worth were tied with Seattle in the fourth spot, with each of those metros having four CEOs on the top 100 list. However, among the group, only Seattle had two CEOs in the top 10.

Todays job seekers are looking for leaders who share their values and will empower them to bring their full selves to work, says Christian Sutherland-Wong, president and chief operating officers of Glassdoor. More and more, were seeing Top CEOs make decisions to shape the culture of their organizations to help recruit and retain quality talent, which has a direct correlation to fueling business success.

Among the common themes associated with top CEOs, according to the study, are strong leadership, dedication to the company mission, investing in company culture, and promoting leadership and professional growth opportunities.

The top three CEOs in the Glassdoor ranking are No. 1. Pat Gelsinger of Palo Alto, California-based tech company VMWare; No. 2 Charles C. Butt of San Antonio-based grocer H-E-B; and No. 3 Lynsi Snyder of Irvine, California-based fast-food chain In-N-Out Burger.

The study also notes that seven female CEOs rank among the top 100, including In-N-Out Burgers Snyder; Cathy Engelbert of New York City-based Deloitte, No. 15; Colleen Wegman of Rochester, New York-based Wegmans Food Markets, No. 52; and Pamela M. Nicholson of St. Louis-based vehicle-rental company Enterprise.

The CEO ranking is based on anonymous feedback from employees who completed a company review via Glassdoor that includes questions related to their CEOs leadership. In total, some 49 million reviews and insights for about 900,000 companies have been submitted through the Glassdoor platform.

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