Why women leaders on our list matter more than ever

CNBC is now accepting nominations for the 2026 Changemakers list that features women transforming business and philanthropy, who have accomplished a meaningful achievement in 2025. With a community of 100 women who we’ve named to our 2024 and 2025 lists thriving and innovating across industries, it’s more important than ever to highlight the women defying odds. Just like the women on our first two Changemakers lists, for this upcoming list we’re looking for women who are taking novel approaches to old business problems and identifying new business opportunities. 

Our Changemakers community has continued to reach new milestones, with a number of notable moves this year. Instacart CEO Fidji Simo was hired by OpenAI as head of applications. Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart’s basketball league, Unrivaled, drew new investors, including Serena Williams’ firm Serena Ventures, at a valuation of $340 million. Paris Hilton, after launching a new skincare line, Paravie, in August debuted as the star of Karl Lagerfeld’s new campaign.

Angela Hwang is continuing her role innovating in biotech as CEO-Partner of Flagship Pioneering and CEO of Metaphore, after leaving her role at Pfizer, where she helped bring 600 medicines and vaccines to patients. Sima Sistani, formerly the CEO of WeightWatchers, is now an adjunct professor at Duke. And former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is now a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, amid reports that she’s considering a presidential run. 

I’m thrilled to get to interview so many of our Changemakers along with other influential women for the new CNBC podcast I am hosting, “Changemakers & Power Players,” which is launching Tuesday on all major platforms. I’ve learned so much from these women about how they’ve navigated seemingly impossible situations and found the strategies that work best for them — in business, and in life.

Women have made some progress in leadership — they now run a record 11% of Fortune 500 companies, a number that’s been on the rise over the past decade. But that record number still represents a massive gender gap, and it’s actually growing in key roles across corporate America. In fact, for the first time in years, female representation on S&P 500 boards and leadership teams has declined, according to a report from Altrata released in August. And new female director appointments for Russell 3000 companies have dropped to their lowest point since 2017, according to Equilar. That could have massive ripple effects across corporate policies and the perspectives included in C-suite decision making.

Meanwhile, in what Fortune dubbed the “bro-IPO” summer, 88% of the 61 companies that filed for IPOs in early August had one or zero women on their board of directors, while 93% had one or zero women in their C-suite. Given that women hold about 30% of board seats at Russell 3000 companies and 29% of C-suite roles, the newly-minted public companies show a notable decline in leadership diversity. This comes as firms roll back gender diversity efforts. After an unfavorable appeals court decision in December, Nasdaq stopped mandating companies disclose their board gender and diversity stats. In February, Goldman Sachs dropped its pledge to refuse to take companies public if their boards were entirely male. In any case, female representation in key powerful roles is even more rare in the new breed of public companies. 

That’s why we believe it’s more important than ever to highlight the work of women who are succeeding — innovating and driving change at their organizations and beyond. Just as in the past two years, this list will be unranked, and will feature women across industries, including philanthropy. We’re thrilled to have the guidance of our CNBC Changemakers Advisory Board of experienced leaders across industries to help us determine the weight of criteria used to select the list and identify an inclusive group of women. 

We hope you’ll consider nominating yourself or women who are running large organizations. We’re looking for leaders at companies and organizations with at least $25 million in annual revenue in at least one of the past three years, or an enterprise value of $100 million for private companies and $250 million for public companies.

We will announce the list in February 2026 and we’ll host our third annual Changemakers Summit in April. Please reach out to changemakers@cnbc.com with any questions.

Learn more about nominations for the 2026 CNBC Changemakers list.

Follow and listen to the CNBC “Changemakers & Power Players” podcast on Apple and Spotify.