She is the co-founder and CEO of United Therapeutics. Martin Rothblatt is widely popular for her dynamic personality as she is not just a business person but also a lawyer and an author. Total revenue of the company in 2019: $506 million He has also been applauded for taking the initiative to promote workforce diversity and inclusion. Currently, apart from Shaftesbury, he is also serving as a Director of Longmartin Properties Limited. He has been openly gay throughout his 30-year career. In 2017, he was also considered to be one of the leading LGBT executives in the organization. His experience and knowledge as immensely helped in delivering success. He is also a qualified Chartered Accountant. As a CEO he is responsible to devise a strategy and supervise day-to-day operations. He became the CEO of Shaftesbury in 2011 and has previously also served as the Finance Director.
Total revenue of the company in 2019: $172 millionīrain Bickell joined Shaftesbury back in 1986. In 2015, he was named to be one of the leading global LGBT executives by Financial Times.
He also won several awards such as ‘Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Ernst & Young. He is married to Gary Hess and has a daughter named Logan. He was the first openly gay CEO of a bank at that time when homophobic culture was prevalent. He came out as gay at an early age and has been a part of many human rights campaigns. Trevor Burgess is the CEO of Neptune and along with that is also the founder of TRB Development. Total revenue of the company in 2019: $7 million Therefore let's take a look at the 15 biggest companies with CEOs that are challenging the status quo by being openly gay, starting of course with number 15: 12. To ensure that our data was correct, we checked the revenues of these companies either from Forbes, Fortune or their own annual reports, with foreign currencies converted to US dollars. However, even companies which are said to be gay-friendly such as Coca Cola ( NYSE:KO) or General Motors ( NYSE:GM) Now, if you search for the biggest companies with gay CEOs, other than Apple and a few others, there are few proper lists. Similarly, it was Tim Cook who paved the way for other LGBT leaders by becoming the very first openly gay CEO of a renowned company that is a part of the Fortune 500 list. For example, the appointment of Inga Beale was a CEO of Lloyd in 2014 was hailed by many as they claimed that it will encourage other organizations to have more visible LGBT representation.
Having said that, there are still many well-known Chief Executive Officers who came out as gay and became a source of inspiration for the young generation belonging to the LBGT community. But still, even in today’s world, many companies prefer to have a heterosexual person as their CEO. Moreover, people have now become more vocal against companies that marginalize LGBT. Even a couple of decades ago the concept of LGBT workplace protection was relatively unheard of and many companies used to lay off people based on their sexuality. It is only five years ago same-sex marriages have been legalized in the USA and then later on in other parts of the world.Įven then, while the United States has banned discrimination based on sexuality, many people still face a lot of discrimination in the workplace, which is quite hard to fight off and can often be at a subtle enough level that it gets quite hard to prove. For example, in 2013 the Supreme Court of USA allowed the government to not provide federal benefits to homosexual couples. People from LGBT had to fight for their basic rights for a prolonged period. This is because while companies claimed to be a welcoming place for LGBT, the reality was far-fetched. Click to skip ahead and jump to the 5 biggest companies with gay CEOs.Ī couple of decades ago it was not usual to find an openly-gay person at a senior position in any organization. In this article we are going to list the 12 biggest companies with gay CEOs.