Counsel Collective · Leaders to Watch
The CEO
Power List
2026
The chief executives setting the standard for modern leadership — recognized not for their title, but for how visibly and credibly they lead, in the company and in the culture.
The 2026 Edition
Leadership is the rare discipline practiced almost entirely in public. These eighteen chief executives set the tone for their companies and their industries — and do it out loud, where everyone else can learn from it.
How honorees are chosen
Ranked across five dimensions of influence
Influence isn’t a popularity contest. Each leader is weighed on a blend of public presence and standing in the field — reach, voice, prominence, newsworthiness, and the kind of leadership we’d champion.
I
Reach
II
Public Voice
III
Prominence
IV
Newsworthiness
V
Strategic Fit
The Class of 2026
Hover or tap any leader to flip their card and read the citation. A gold mark denotes a recognized LinkedIn Top Voice. This list grows through the year as the class takes shape.
01
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Satya Nadella
Chairman & CEO
Under Satya Nadella, Microsoft became the defining company of the AI era — a multi-trillion-dollar reinvention built on conviction and a culture of learning. One of the most influential voices in business on where work goes next.
Category — Technology
02
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Marc Benioff
Chair, CEO & Co-Founder
Marc Benioff built Salesforce into the world’s #1 CRM and made stakeholder capitalism a boardroom standard — now steering the company, and much of enterprise software, into the age of AI agents.
Category — Technology
03
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Thasunda Brown Duckett
President & CEO
Thasunda Brown Duckett leads TIAA’s mission to secure retirement for millions, pairing Fortune-500 scale with a rare gift for making financial wellbeing feel personal — and one of finance’s most followed leadership voices.
Category — Financial Services
04
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Josh Bersin
CEO & Founder
Josh Bersin is the analyst the HR world reads first, decoding how AI, skills and leadership are reshaping work — and helping the largest companies in the world act on it.
Category — Research & Advisory
05
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Aaron Levie
Co-Founder & CEO
Aaron Levie took Box from a dorm-room idea to an enterprise-content leader, and has become one of tech’s sharpest, most quoted voices on what AI means for how companies actually work.
Category — Technology
06
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Vlad Tenev
Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder
Vlad Tenev set out to democratize investing and built Robinhood into a generation’s gateway to the markets — now pushing the frontier again with his AI venture, Harmonic.
Category — Fintech
07
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Brian Chesky
Co-Founder & CEO
Brian Chesky turned an air-mattress idea into a category-defining travel platform, and his design-led, founder-mode philosophy has become one of the most studied leadership playbooks in tech.
Category — Travel & Hospitality
08
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Spencer Rascoff
CEO
Zillow co-founder Spencer Rascoff now leads Match Group, bringing a serial builder’s instinct to the future of human connection — and teaching the next generation of founders along the way.
Category — Consumer Tech
09
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Andy Jassy
President & CEO
Andy Jassy built AWS into the engine of the cloud era and now leads all of Amazon, steering one of the world’s most consequential companies through its AI transformation.
Category — Technology & Commerce
10
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
David Risher
CEO
David Risher engineered one of tech’s most disciplined turnarounds at Lyft while expanding literacy for millions through Worldreader — leadership measured in both performance and purpose.
Category — Mobility
11
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Tobi Lütke
Co-Founder & CEO
Tobi Lütke built Shopify into the backbone of independent commerce, and is one of the most original voices anywhere on craftsmanship, AI and how high-performing teams really work.
Category — Commerce
12
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Dylan Field
Co-Founder, CEO & Chair
Dylan Field bet that design belonged in the browser and built Figma into the tool a generation creates in — now, post-IPO, expanding what collaborative creativity can be.
Category — Design Software
13
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Whitney Wolfe Herd
Founder, CEO & Exec Chair
Whitney Wolfe Herd built Bumble into a global brand by putting women first, then returned to the CEO seat to relaunch it around AI — one of the most compelling comeback stories in tech.
Category — Consumer Tech
14
Hover to flip
LinkedIn Top Voice
Yamini Rangan
CEO
Yamini Rangan leads HubSpot’s customer-obsessed growth into the AI era, a CEO known for turning culture and genuine customer love into durable company performance.
Category — Software
15
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LinkedIn Top Voice
Lisa Su
Chair & CEO
Lisa Su engineered one of the great turnarounds in corporate history, making AMD a central force of the AI-compute boom — a masterclass in patient, technical leadership.
Category — Semiconductors
16
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Brian Niccol
Chairman & CEO
Fresh off transforming Chipotle, Brian Niccol now leads one of the most-watched turnarounds in business, refocusing Starbucks on the experience that built it.
Category — Consumer / Retail
17
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Ryan Cohen
Chairman & CEO
Chewy co-founder Ryan Cohen is reshaping GameStop as chairman and CEO — one of the most closely followed capital-allocation and retail-reinvention stories of the decade.
Category — Retail
18
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Bob Clark
Founder & Executive Chairman
Bob Clark founded and built Clayco into one of the country’s largest design-build firms, delivering the advanced factories, data centers and campuses behind the real economy — and investing deeply in the next generation of builders.
Category — Design-Build & Construction
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