[This is an expanded version of an article that appeared in The Conversation on February 12, 2025.]

Despite the Supreme Court's 2023 decision banning affirmative action from colleges and universities, and widespread and sometimes vehement pressure on corporations to eliminate their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, in 2024 the top 50 companies on the annual Fortune 500 continued to diversify their boards.

I have been tracking diversity on Fortune-level boards of directors for decades (see, for example, Zweigenhaft & Domhoff, 2018). In a study based on 2023 data, I found that the percentage of white male directors on the top 50 companies on Fortune's annual list dropped below 50% for the first time and there were corresponding increases in the percentages of white women, Asians, blacks, and Hispanics (Zweigenhaft, 2024).[1]

Commitment to, and then retreat from, DEI

After the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, many companies pledged to increase their commitments to racial equity. Between May 2020 and October 2022, the top 1000 Fortune 1000 companies either committed or pledged $340 billion to racial equity (Reed, 2024). Many companies created programs to monitor and increase diversity, inclusion and equity (DEI). However, in 2023, presumably encouraged by the Supreme Court decision that banned affirmative action in colleges and universities, anti-DEI activists increased the pressure they had been putting on corporations to eliminate DEI programs. One such activist, Bobby Starbuck, a podcaster with more than 600,000 followers, lobbied companies intensely (Guynn, 2024).

As a result, many companies reduced or eliminated their commitments to diversity. Some, including Ford (#17 on the 2024 Fortunelist), Lowes (#49), and John Deere (#64), did so before the November election (Bomey, 2024, Segal, 2024), and others, such as Walmart (#1 on the 2024 Fortune list), did so after the election (Hirsch, Goldberg, and Holman, 2024). Then, in January 2025, in the weeks before Trump's inauguration, McDonald's (#131 on the 2024 Fortune 500 list) announced that it was retiring various of its goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels, and would no longer participate in the annual survey by the Human Rights Campaign (Danziger, 2025), and Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta (#30 on the 2024 list) was terminating its DEI programs (Walker, 2025).

On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order terminating all DEI programs across the federal government; it also requires the government to look at private sector D.E.I. initiatives (Kanno-Youngs, Shear, and Weiland, 2025). A few days later, Target (#37) announced that it was rolling back its diversity efforts (Nassauer, 2025). In early February, Alphabet, the umbrella company for Google's internet-related businesses, announced that it, too, was retreating from its DEI initiatives (Alphabet was #8 on the 2024 Fortune list). Google made clear that it was doing so because of Trump's executive orders aimed at DEI initiatives (Grant, 2025).

A few companies, including Costco (#11), Apple (#3), Microsoft (#13), and JP Morgan (#12), took public stands claiming that they were planning to continue their DEI policies. Considerable attention was given to Costco's stance because, as the New York Times put it, the board's views were "particularly forceful" (Gallogly, 2025). Within a week or so, 19 Republican attorneys general called on the company to end the policies (Reuters, 2025)

The Supreme Court decision in June 2023 had an immediate effect on college enrollment. In the fall of 2024, many elite schools reported sharp drops in diversity in their incoming classes. For example, at Brown University, the Black and Hispanic enrollment dropped by 10 percentage points in the incoming first-year class, at MIT those two groups decreased by 10 percentage points, and at Amherst by 13% (Knox, 2024a). In a comprehensive analysis of the make-up of the class of 2028 at "more than 25" colleges and universities, Inside Higher Education concluded that "the general trend points to an overall decline in Black and Hispanic enrollment — in particular among the Ivies and small, highly competitive liberal arts colleges" (Knox, 2024b; see, also, Knox, 2024c). In the fall of 2024, the law school at Harvard accepted the smallest number of black students since 1965 — in 2023 the school admitted 43 black students, but in 2024 it admitted only19 (Palmer, 2024). So, too, have many schools eliminated departments and programs devoted to diversity (Gretzinger, et al, 2024).

Diversity on the top 50 Fortune boards in 2024

In striking contrast to the changes in the make-up of incoming classes at colleges and universities, the data on corporate board membership showed that diversity continued to increase. From 2023 to 2024 the percentage of white males continued to decrease. At the same time, the number of seats held by Blacks increased from 86 to 89, the number of seats held by Hispanics increased from 30 to 36, and the number of seats held by white women increased by nine, from 139 to 148 (there was a slight dip in the number of seats held by Asians, from 34 to 33). These numbers combine to mean that from 2023 to 2024, the percentage of seats held by white males decreased a bit, from 49.7% to 48.4%, and the cumulative percentage of seats held by Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and white women increased, from 50.3% to 51.6%.

Figure 1: Race and gender in Fortune 50 boardrooms, 2024

At the 50 biggest Fortune 500 companies, slightly more than half the board seats were held by directors who aren't white men, as of December 2024.

(click to enlarge)

Looking at the data on Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians by gender, some intriguing differences emerge, though some may simply be the result of the small samples. The number of seats held by Black women increased from 33 to 38, while the number of seats held by Black men decreased from 53 to 51. In contrast, two more seats were held by Asian men in 2024 than in 2023, but the number of seats held by Asian women dropped from 14 to 11. The number of seats held by Latinos and Latinas increased, from 18 to 22 for the men, and from 12 to 14 for the women.

Boards of directors change slowly. Most of the top 50 boards on the Fortunelist make no changes in a given year, and those that do typically replace only one or two people. In some cases, boards expand by adding members without anyone dropping off. For example, Marathon, #16 in 2023 and #24 in 2024, added three members to its board in 2024, two white women and one Black woman, increasing its size from 11 to 14; in October, 2024, Cencora, #10, added two people to its board, one white male and one African American male, but did not replace anyone, so the board went from 11 to 13; and CVS, #6, added four people to its board in November, 2024, expanding from 12 to 16. (Expanding the size of the board may be a quicker and easier way to increase diversity than asking some white men to leave the board).

A few companies dropped out of the top 50 in 2024, and a few others climbed into the top 50. As a result of these changes, the number of seats on the top 50 boards increased from 574 in 2023 to 593 in 2024 (the data in this report are based on the make-up boards as of mid-December). Even though most of the 593 were the same people who sat on the boards in 2023, the changes are revealing in that they reflect increases, not decreases, in diversity.

There are other indications that the boards are more diversified than in the not-so distant past, and that the boards are becoming more, not less, diverse. In 2023, four companies either had an equal number of men and women on their boards or more women than men. In 2024, that number had increased to seven.

Figure 2: Race and gender in Fortune 50 boardrooms, 2011

White men dominated the boards of the 50 biggest Fortune 500 companies in 2011.

(click to enlarge)

Increasingly diverse CEOs

From 2023 to 2024, the number of CEOs of the top 50 companies who were not white men increased, from 14 in 2023 to 15 in 2024 (at both Marathon, #24, and Freddie Mac, #36, white men stepped down and white women were appointed as CEOs). For most of 2024 the number was 16, but in October the board at CVS, #5, asked Karen Lynch, a white woman, to step down and replaced her with a white man. At the end of 2024, the top 50 Fortune companies included seven white women, three Asian men, three Latinos, one African American male, and one Latina as CEOs. Moreover, it is noteworthy that 12 of the 50 CEOs (24%) were born outside the USA, an indication that the corporate elite is becoming more of a global elite than in the past. (One of the 12 is Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, #40 on the 2024 list, born in South Africa).

Just as many of the CEOs of the top Fortune companies were born and raised in other countries, so, too, were many of the Black, Hispanic, Asian and white women directors. In fact, almost all of the Asians were born outside the USA, most of the Hispanics, some of the Blacks, and a few of the white women. It is likely that if Fortune boards are to continue to increase in diversity, or even to maintain the same level of diversity, they will draw heavily on men and women born and educated outside the country's borders.

The future of board diversity under Trump

The data reported in this article show a slight uptick in diversity for the boards of the top 50 companies on the Fortune list from 2023 to 2024. However, as noted above, after his inauguration, Trump immediately took on diversity efforts both in the federal government and in the corporate world. A headline in the New York Times read "Trump's Attack on D.E.I. Stirs Fear at Corporations" (Goldberg, 2025).

There is concern that the attacks on D.E.I. will decrease diversity in the pipeline that leads to the executive suites of American corporations, and that this in turn will contribute to decreased diversity in boardrooms. As Lily Mae Lazarus, writing in Fortune magazine put it in late January, 2025, "The precedent set by the Trump administration could undo decades of progress that have allowed women and people of color to rise to the C-suite and boardroom" (Lazarus, 2025).

Whether the many attacks on D.E.I., first from right wing bloggers, then from the Supreme Court, and then from the newly inaugurated President, will affect the make-up of Fortune-level boards in 2025 and beyond remains to be seen. Future updates based on board membership in 2025 and 2026 may indicate the degree to which the anti-DEI attacks extend to the corporate board level.

References

Bomey, Nathan (2024). "Anti-DEI movement gaining steam as Ford exits LGBTQ+ index, Axios, August 8.

Danziger, Pamela N. (2025). "McDonald's Joins the Stampede of Corporations Retreating from DEI," Forbes, January 9.

Gallogly, Neil (2025). The D. E. I. Retreat Has Some Notable Holdouts, January 22. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/22/business/dei-programs-initiatives-costco-microsoft.html

Goldberg, Emma (2025). "Trump's Attack on D.E.I. Stirs Fear at Corporations," New York Times, January 24, B1.

Grant, Nico (2025). Google Unwinds Employee Diversity Goals, Citing Trump's D.E.I. Orders, New York Times, Feb. 5. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/technology/google-diversity-goals-dei-trump.html

Gretzinger, Erin, Maggie Hicks, Christa Dutton, and Jasper Smith (2024). "Tracking Higher Ed's Dismantling of EDI," Chronicle of Higher Education, September 13. https://www.chronicle.com/article/tracking-higher-eds-dismantling-of-dei

Guynn, Jessica (2024). "Jack Daniel's DEI flip-flop questioned," USA Today, September 5.

Hirsch, Lauren, Emma Goldberg, and Jordyn Holman (2024). "Walmart Eases Off D. E. I. At Conservative Pressure," New York Times, November 27, pp. B1 and B3.

Kanno-Youngs, Zolan, Michael D. Shear, and Noah Weiland (2025) "Trump's Executive Orders: Reversing Biden's Policies and Attacking the 'Deep State,'" New York Times, January 21.

Knox, Liam. 2024a. "Brown Sees Steep Drop in Diversity of Incoming Class," Inside Higher Education. September 9.

Knox, Liam. 2024b. "Our Comprehensive, Inconclusive Diversity Database." Inside Higher Education, October 2.

Knox, Liam. 2024c. "More Selective Colleges See Diversity Dip," Inside Higher Education, November 13. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/11/13/vanderbilt-and-other-selective-universities-see-diversity-drop

Lazarus, Lily Mae (2025). "How the Trump administration's anti-DEI stance could reshape the future C-suite," Fortune, January 27.

Nassauer, Sarah (2025). "Target Drops DEI Goals and Ends Program to Boost Black Suppliers," Wall Street Journal, January 24. https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/target-dei-program-ended-77cb4c75

Palmer, Kathryn (2024). "Harvard Law Enrolls Smallest Number of Black Students Since 1965," Inside Higher Education, December 18. https://insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/12/18/harvard-and-unc-enrolled-fewer-black-law-students-year

Reed, Adolph, Jr. (2024). "No Movement in Sight," The Nation, September issue, p. 10.

Reuters (2025). Republican state attorneys pressure Costco to drop diversity policies. January 28.

Segal, David (2024). "This Anti-DEI Agitator Strikes Fear into Big Companies," New York Times, November 3, Business Section, pp.1, 6-7.

Walker, Adria R. (2025). "Meta terminates its DEI programs day before Trump inauguration The Guardian. January 10. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/10/meta-ending-dei-program

Zweigenhaft, Richard L. and G. William Domhoff (2018). Diversity in the Power Elite: Ironies and Unfulfilled Promises, 3rd Edition, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Zweigenhaft, Richie (2024). "White men are now less than half of corporate board members — after a decade of progress." The Conversation. March 13. https://theconversation.com/what-the-numbers-say-about-diversity-on-corporate-boards-224892

Notes

[1] I use the term Hispanics to include men and women. When I write about men or women separately, I use the terms Latinos and Latinas respectively.