Figure 1: Percentage of Fortune 50 board seats held by Asian, Black, Latino, and White men: 2011, 2023, 2024, and 2025
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For the third year in a row, white men did not hold the majority of seats on the boards of America's 50 largest corporations. Whereas fifteen years ago, white men held slightly more than two-thirds of the seats on the top 50 Fortune boards (67.3%), in 2023, for the first time, they held fewer than 50% (49.7%). In 2024, that number dropped to 48.4%, but this year, perhaps in response to Trump having made it clear to corporations that they need not, in fact should not, be concerned about diversity, it climbed back to 49.7%. White men are still in the minority, but by next year might be back in the majority. Of course, since white men make up about 31% of the US population, they have been very much overrepresented in all three years.
As the percentage of seats held by white men rose by slightly more than one percentage point from 2024 to 2025, the percentage held by white women dropped from 25% to 24.5%, the percentage of Asian women dropped from 2.0% to 1.7%, the percentage of Black women dropped from 6.4% to 5.9%, and the percentage of Latinas dropped from 2.4 to 2.2% (see Figures 1 and 2).
When people think of diversity, especially in the mid-2020s, they tend to think of people of color, but, as the data on corporate directors demonstrate, the decline in the percentage of white males over the last decade and a half (from 66.3% in 2011 to 49.7% in 2025) was mostly matched by the increase in the percentage of white women (from 16.8% in 2011 to 24.5% in 2025). Many of these highly educated women were current or former CEOs of Fortune companies (see Zweigenhaft, 2024).
The data for white men and white women, combined, reveal a decline over time in white directors (from 84.1% in 2011 to 74.3% in 2025), but a slight increase from 2024 to 2025 (73.4% to 74.3%). A similar pattern holds for all men: a decline in the percentage of seats held in 2011 (79.8%) to 2025 (65.6%), but a slight uptick from 2024 to 2025 (64.4% to 65.6%). These findings, plus the fact that there were declines for Asian, Black, and Hispanic women, and for Black and Hispanic men (the Asian men showed a slight increase), suggest that although these changes are very small, it is well worth examining more generally in each of the next few years to see if Trump's attack on diversity has had a sustained impact on reinforcing the dominance of whites, or the dominance of males.
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The 2025 data on white women Fortune 50 directors very much correspond to findings reported in a December 23, 2025, article in Fortune by Claire Zillman, a senior editor, titled "Women's steady climb to CEO jobs and board seats is stalling amid a perfect storm of politics, economic uncertainty, and changing management tracks." Zillman reports that in 2025, "The number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500, long on a steady climb, has plateaued," and that "women's momentum in gaining board seats has also slowed." The cause of this, she concludes, is that "companies are deprioritizing — consciously or not — efforts that helped women get to where they are today" (Zillman, 2025; see Figure 3).
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So, too, did the percentage of seats held by Black men decrease in 2025 (from 8.6% to 8.3%), and the percentage of seats held by Latinos (from 2.4% to 2.2%); the only group that I looked at with an increase was that of Asian men (from 3.7% to 4.0%), and, notably, the percentage of seats held by Asian men has increased for three years in a row (see Figure 1).
But just what is the nature of the current diversity? Now that the very term "diversity" is somewhat of a dirty word in Trump's administration, do those who bring diversity differ from those who brought it in the past? What can we learn from the corporate directors in 2025?
In 2025, two companies dropped out of the top 50 (Lowes went from #49 to #51, and Procter & Gamble went from #50 to #52), and two others entered the top 50 (Nvidia jumped from #65 in 2024 to #31 in 2025, and StoneX from #66 in 2024 to #42 in 2025). The boards of many companies remained unchanged, but on some boards directors left (or died) and/or new directors were added. As a result of these changes, the total number of seats decreased from 593 in 2024 to 579 in 2025; the number of seats held by Asians remained the same, and the number of seats held by Hispanics, blacks, and whites declined. Figures 1 and 2 show the data visually, broken down by gender, and, to provide a longer perspective, the two figures include data from 2011.
First, these data are based on the membership on these boards as of December 15 of each year. For example, in 2024 Chevron had six men and six women on its board. In October 2025, one of the women, Alice P. Gast, was replaced by John B. Hess, a white man, so for 2025 I considered Chevron to have seven men and five women, even though it had six and six for much of the year. This is a further reminder that during the course of the year the makeup of some boards change, although many do not change at all. I use December 15 as my cutoff point on the assumption that any appointments made after that date are likely to take place the following year. In support of this assumption, on December 4, 2025, Costco (#12 on the 2025 list) nominated Gina Raimondo to its board, but her nomination was not to be voted on until January 15, 2026 (Kopack, 2024). However, in what I believe is a rare exception to this assumption, on December 19 it was announced that Dina Powell McCormick, only eight months after joining the board of Meta (#22 in 2025) was resigning "effective immediately." She was then named President and Vice Chairman [sic] of Meta in early January.
Second, Walgreens, #28 on the 2025 list, was acquired in August 2025 by a private equity firm, Sycamore Partners. The Walgreen's board was dissolved. Privately held companies do not typically disclose their directors. I have used the Walgreens board as it existed from January through August.
A more careful look at the directors who are not white men who sat on the boards of the top 50 corporations on the 2025 Fortune list is revealing.
The number of seats held by Asians in 2025 remained the same as in 2024, at 33, with Asian males gaining one seat and Asian females losing one seat. Notably, the number of seats held by Asian men increased over the last three years, from 20, to 22, to 23, and the number of seats held by Asian women has decreased, from 14, to 11, to 10.
As Jennifer Ho, a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, pointed out in an article in The Conversation titled "How Asian American Became a Racial Grouping — and Why Many with Asian Roots Don't Identify with the Term," the label "Asian Americans" was first used in 1968 by activists when they created the Asian American Political Alliance in the hope of bringing together many groups of varied backgrounds to lobby for social benefits and gain more political clout under what she calls "one radical umbrella." As she notes, however, these days Asian Americans "come from over 30 countries with different languages, diverse cultures, and histories that have often been in conflict with other Asian nations" (Ho, 2025).
In my research on corporate directors, instead of "Asian Americans" I use the term "people of Asian backgrounds" because not all are Americans, and, in fact, almost all were born in other countries and may or may not be American citizens. In 2025, of the 23 men with Asian backgrounds, thirteen were born in India, two in Japan, and others in England, China, Malaysia, Tanzania, and the USA. Two of the ten women with Asian backgrounds were born in India, two in China, and others in Morocco, South Africa, the Philippines, Alabama, Michigan, and Texas.
Many of the men and women with Asian backgrounds did their undergraduate work in their home countries, and then came to the USA to attend graduate school. The fact that the large majority of the directors of Asian backgrounds were born outside the USA should raise questions about Trump's recent efforts to make it more difficult, or even impossible, for those from other countries to come to the USA for undergraduate or advanced degrees (Blinder, 2025). This could seriously affect the pipeline to the corporate suite, and could decrease the diversity on corporate boards.
The number of seats held by blacks decreased from 89 in 2024 to 82 in 2025 (a drop from 15% to 14.2% — they held 9.4% in 2011). There were three fewer seats held by Black men, and four fewer seats held by Black women. The 42 Black men who held 48 seats (some are on more than one board) are almost all African Americans, though one, Philip Ozuah, appointed to the Cigna board in June, 2023, was born in Nigeria (he received his medical degree at the University of Ibadan), and Peter Akwaboah, who joined the Fannie Mae board in October 2025, was born in England. The 31 Black women who held 34 seats were all born in the USA.
There were 34 seats held by Hispanics in 2025, down from 36 in 2024 (up from 30 in 2023). The Latinos lost a seat, as did the Latinas. Although the number of seats held by Hispanics may at first glance suggest that second and third generation Hispanics are rising to the top in the traditional American pattern for immigrants, in fact, as was the case for those of Asian backgrounds, many were not born in the United States. Two of the 21 men were born in Brazil, two in Argentina, two in Spain, one in Cuba, and one in Portugal (he was then raised in Mozambique). Two of the 13 Latinas were born in Puerto Rico, one in Venezuela, one in Argentina, one in Brazil, one in Mexico, and one in Cuba. And, as was true for those of Asian backgrounds, many of the Hispanics were educated in the USA, either as undergraduates or as graduate students. Denying access to Hispanics who wish to study in the USA is likely, over time, to decrease the number of Hispanic corporate directors.
The increase in the number of seats held by white males by 1.3%, and the corresponding decrease in the number held by others, though seemingly small, may portend a trend that reflects the current administration's attacks on diversity programs. Some of the changes that have taken place are quite revealing. For example, in the early months of 2025 Meta, #22 on the Fortune list, added five new members to its board, four white men and one white woman. One of the white men was Dana White, a college dropout who, after work as a bouncer in a bar, and a bellhop in a hotel, started boxing, and became a boxercise coach. He then became an agent for mixed martial fighters, ultimately became the president and CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).
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| Dana White |
He spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention, endorsing Trump, he supported Trump's candidacy again in 2020, and he introduced Trump at the 2024 Republican National Convention. Immediately after he won the 2024 election, Trump brought White onstage to thank him for his help in getting him re-elected. In July 2025 Trump announced, and White confirmed that there were plans to hold a fight card on the White House grounds in front of 20,000 to 25,000 people, on July 4, 2026, to celebrate America's 250th birthday (Rosenstein, 2025).
In April of 2025, Meta added Dina Habib Powell McCormick, an Egyptian-born white woman, to its board. She lived in Cairo, where her father was a captain in the Egyptian army, until she was four years old, at which time her family moved to Dallas, Texas. She learned to speak English, attended a local private school, the Ursuline Academy, and then went to the University of Texas, Austin.
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| Dina Powell McCormick |
She and her parents were Reagan supporters. While an undergraduate she interned with two Republican state senators, and when she graduated she had a one-year internship with Kay Baily Hutchison, a Republican in the U. S. Senate. That lead to a job with Dick Armey, the Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, an appointment that lasted four years. She then worked for the Republican National Committee, had a position in the Bush administration, and worked for Goldman Sachs.
When Trump was elected in 2016, she became Deputy National Security Advisor in his administration, a position in which she helped determine the administration's foreign policy (she speaks Arabic). She became close to Ivanka Trump, and she was involved in overseeing more than $200 billion in U.S. — Saudi arms deals. In 2018, she returned to Goldman Sachs and stayed there until 2023, when she joined a merchant bank called BDT & MSD Partners. In 2017 she and her husband, Richard Powell, divorced, and in 2018 she married Dave McCormick, a financier who in 2022 ran for Senate in Pennsylvania and won, defeating the Democratic incumbent, Bob Casey Jr.
Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder of Meta, and its Chairman, CEO, and controlling shareholder, clearly saw the potential benefits of adding to the Meta board of directors an Arab-speaking Republican woman with decades of contacts in the Republican party, experience in the first Trump administration, close contacts with the Trump family and throughout the Middle East, and married to a U. S. Senator. (ExxonMobil also saw the value of adding her to its board, even before Trump was elected; it did so in May 2024).
Only eight months after her appointment, Dina McCormick resigned "effective immediately" from the board, and a few weeks later Zuckerberg announced that she had been named the company's President and Vice Chairman. In his announcement, Zuckerberg made clear that her connections with people in power were an important factor in her appointment: "Dina's experience at the highest levels of global finance, combined with her deep relationships around the world, makes her uniquely suited to help Meta manage this next phase of growth as the company's President and Vice Chairman."
With the addition of Dana White, three other white men, and Dina McCormick, the Meta board went from 50% white males in 2024 to 60% in 2025, and it added two people with close connections to the Trump family and administration. When McCormick resigned from the board in late December there was no plan to replace her, so the percentage of white males increased to 64%. Most boards change slowly. The dramatic changes in the make-up of the Meta board suggest that it would be worthwhile to study major companies that make multiple changes to their boards in the space of just a few months to see if Trump's election, and Zuckerberg's board changes, were the start of a larger trend.
Some dramatic changes from 2024 to 2025 also took place on the boards of Fannie Mae (#25 in 2025) and Freddie Mac (#38). Fannie Mae — the Federal National Mortgage Association — was founded in 1938 as part of the New Deal. Its purpose is to make it easier for people to buy homes by helping them to secure mortgage loans. In 1970, Congress created the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac). Its charter was basically the same as Fannie Mae's. Both are publicly traded companies, and both have been on the list of the top 50 Fortune boards for the last three years.
Because the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) regulates these two companies, in 2025 the Trump administration's hostility to DEI had a direct effect on the level of diversity on these two boards. In January 2025, Trump nominated Bill Pulte, a Trump donor who was wealthy enough to have been #164 on the annual Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans, to be the director of the FHFA. Pulte's grandfather, William J. Pulte, founded PulteHomes, the third largest homebuilder in the country, but in 2020, after a bitter dispute, Bill was pushed off the family foundation board (as reported in the New York Times, the board issued a statement that read: "Bill Pulte does not represent, nor is he a spokesperson for, all members of the Pulte family, in any capacity"; Goldstein, Silver-Greenberg, and Rhone, 2025). According to Mother Jones, "Pulte got his job in the administration about three years after his wife, Diana Pulte, donated $500,000 to a super PAC backing Trump. The donation was channeled through a Delaware shell company, ML Organization LLC, that Bill Pulte controlled" (Friedman and Levintova, 2025).
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| Bill Pulte |
In March, just days after the Senate approved his appointment by a vote of 56-43, Pulte made dramatic changes to the boards of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He appointed himself Chairman of both boards, fired eight members of the Fannie Mae board, fired six members of the Freddie Mac board, and appointed new members to each board. He also fired the senior officers responsible for DEI initiatives at both companies. According to one account, he posted on X that he planned to "Make Mortgages Great Again" (Davis, 2025).
As of July, the Fannie Mae board had been reduced in size from 13 to 9, and Pulte had made changes that very much altered the degree of diversity. He removed one Black man (Chris Brummer), one Asian man (Chetlur Ragavan), and three white women (Amy Alving, Diane Nordic, and Diane Lye). A month later, Pulte added Omeed Malik, a billionaire business partner of Donald Trump, Jr., and a co-host of a major Trump fundraiser in 2024, to the board. Though born in New Jersey, Malik qualifies as a person of Asian background — his mother is Iranian and his father is Pakistani. (Pulte tweeted the following: "Omeed Malik will be joining the Board of Fannie Mae, effectively [sic] immediately! Omeed brings great capital markets, legal and investment experience as we Make Fannie and Freddie Great Again!"; Revolving Door, 2025)
Pulte also appointed a Black man, Clinton Jones, a lawyer who had various legal positions in the U. S. House of Representatives for many years, and who had been the General Counsel at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, FHFA, since 2021, to the boards of both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In July, 2025, Pulte appointed Barry Habib, an entrepreneur often seen on television (he describes himself on his LinkedIn account as "a frequent media resource for his mortgage and housing expertise"), the author of a 2020 book titled Money in the Streets: A Playbook for Finding and Seizing the Opportunity All Around You, to the Fannie Mae board. Habib was born in Brooklyn to Turkish immigrants (his father had been an international journalist, and he says in his book that "my ancestors were from Spain").
In October, days after Trump announced plans to sell shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a public offering, Fannie Mae announced the immediate departure of Priscilla Almodovar, a member of the board and the CEO since December 2022, the only Latina and the only woman on the board (Lake, 2025). She was replaced by Peter Akwaboah, a Black man who was born in England, then attended high school in Ghana, and returned with his family to England where he earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Birmingham. He then worked for the Royal Bank of Scotland and Morgan Stanley before joining Fannie Mae as its chief operating officer in 2024.
As of late November, the Fannie Mae board was down to eight, all men: five white men, two Black men, and a Latino.
As for the Freddie Mac board, Pulte's changes reduced the number of seats from 12 to 9. Pulte removed two Black men (Kevin Chavers and Lance Drummond), and one white woman (Jane Prokop, an executive at MasterCard with a Ph.D. in government from Harvard). As a result of the changes that Pulte enacted, another white woman resigned (Grace Huebscher). And, as noted above, among Pulte's appointments was a Black man, Clinton Jones.
As a result of the changes that Pulte made the percentage of white male directors on those two boards increased from 40% in 2024 to 65% in 2025. However, among the new appointees to the boards were a Black man, a man whose mother is Iranian and whose father is Pakistani, and another man of Spanish ancestry whose parents were Turkish immigrants. Just as Trump's second-term cabinet included more diversity than one might have expected given his hostility toward DEI (Trump's initial second-term cabinet included five white women, a Black man, a Hispanic, and one openly gay man, Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury [McCreesh, 2025]), showing that he was willing to have some diversity as long as the diverse appointments were sufficiently loyal, or sycophantic, to him (see Zweigenhaft, 2025), Pulte's changes to the two boards decreased diversity, but he also added some people with diverse backgrounds who were sufficiently supportive of Trump.
The changes Pulte made in the makeup of the two boards — fewer women, fewer blacks, more white men — should be considered in the accompanying context of Trump's Senate-confirmed appointees to his administration. After firing many blacks from high profile positions, Trump appointed mostly whites to replace them. According to the New York Times, drawing on data gathered by the Brookings Institution: "Of the president's 98 Senate-confirmed appointees to the administration's most senior leadership roles in its first 200 days, ending on Aug. 7, only two, or 2 percent — Scott Turner, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Earl G. Matthews, the Defense Department's general counsel — are Black" (Bumiller and Green, 2025). Along these same lines, another report revealed that none of the 27 judges Trump has appointed to the federal bench in his second term have been Black women. Fully 88% have been white (63% white men, and 15% white women; Norwood, 2026).
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| Scott Bessent |
In September, 2025, at a celebratory dinner for 30 top members of the Trump administration, held at an exclusive club in Georgetown, Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, lashed out at Pulte because he had heard that Pulte was bad-mouthing him to Donald Trump. According to Rachel Bade at Politico, Bessent challenged Pulte: "Why the fuck are you talking to the president about me? Fuck you, I'm gonna punch you in your fucking face" (Bade, 2025).
As of late November, 2025, Pulte was under investigation by a federal grand jury for having "used inappropriate tactics to launch probes of President Donald Trump's political foes" (Stein, Siegel, and Mettler, 2025). The most visible of Trump's foes that Pulte went after were Adam Schiff, Democratic Senator from California, and New York Attorney General Letitia James. The "inappropriate tactics" apparently included sharing grand jury information. According to Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanean of MSNOW, "Improperly sharing sensitive grand jury information is a serious breach of Justice Department rules. Investigators who are found to have done so can face criminal charges including obstruction of justice, contempt of court and also stiff fines" (Leonnig and Dilanean, 2025). By early December, 2025, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) opened an investigation into Pulte. said it would act on Senate Democrats' request to investigate Pulte to detail the basis of his charges against various of Trump's detractors, and to examine changes Pulte had made to FHFA's standard mortgage-fraud procedures since being confirmed (Delouya, 2025).
In three editions of our book, Diversity in the Power Elite, Bill Domhoff and I (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 1998, 2006, 2018) have explored what we have called "the ironies of diversity" (that is the title of the final chapter in each of those books). One central irony of diversity is that as a small number of people from previously excluded groups (Jews, women, African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, gay men and lesbians, etc.) are granted entry into the power elite, the processes by which they are chosen and their very presence provide justification for the continuation of the status quo when it comes to power and the distribution of wealth. The continued presence of some diversity among directors of the top 50 Fortune companies, and the ways they have been chosen, is part of this very process (as is Trump's surprisingly diverse Cabinet).
Even if there is still some diversity on these top Fortune boards, diversity which may indeed ironically perpetuate the status quo, the data gathered here for the top 50 Fortune companies in 2025, and corresponding data gathered by others for the entire Fortune 500, however, suggest that diversity may be in decline among the corporate directors of the nation's largest companies.
Bade, Rachel (2025). "'I'm Gonna Punch You in Your F—king Face': Scott Bessent Threatens an Administration Rival," Politico, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/08/scott-bessent-bill-pulte-blowup-00549956
Blinder, Alan (2025). "New International Student Enrollments Plummeted This Fall, Survey Finds," New York Times, November 17. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/us/international-students-enrollment-decrease.html
Bumiller, Elisabeth and Erica L. Green (2025). "Trump Fires Black Officials From an Overwhelmingly White Administration," New York Times, October 8. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/politics/black-leaders-trump.html
Davis, Jim (2025). "Fannie, Freddie board members ousted in sudden, surprising move," Scotsman Guide. March 17. https://www.scotsmanguide.com/news/fannie-freddie-board-members-ousted-in-sudden-surprising-move/
Delouya, Samantha (2025). "Government watchdog launches probe into Bill Pulte over mortgage fraud referrals." CNN. December 4. https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/04/business/government-accountability-office-investigation-bill-pulte-mortgage-referrals
Goldstein, Matthew, Jessica Silver-Greenberg, and Kailyn Rhone (2025). "Housing Official Who Attacked Democrats Invokes Disputed Family Legacy," New York Times, November 14. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/14/business/bill-pulte-mobile-homes-fhfa.html
Habib, Barry (2020). Money in the Streets: A Playbook for Finding and Seizing the Opportunity All Around You. Savio Republic (Post Hill Press).
Ho, Jennifer (2025). "How Asian American became a racial grouping — and why many with Asian roots don't identify with the term these days." The Conversation. May 13. https://theconversation.com/how-asian-american-became-a-racial-grouping-255578
Kopack, Steve (2025). "Biden Commerce Secretary to Join Costco Board as Company Sues over Trump's Tariffs. NBC News. December 4. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/corporations/gina-raimondo-costco-trump-tariffs-rcna247473
Lake, Sydney (2025). "Real Estate's Most Powerful Women Have Fallen From the C-Suite," Fortune, November 7. https://fortune.com/2025/11/07/women-ceos-real-estate-fannie-mae-freddie-mac-opendoor/
Leonnig, Carol, and Ken Dilanean (2025), "Grand Jury investigating potential misconduct in probes of Trump critics," MSNOW, November 20, 2025. https://www.ms.now/news/grand-jury-trump-critics-ed-martin-bill-pulte-rcna244980
McCreesh, Shawn (2025). "Donald Trump's Big Gay Government," New York Times, August 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html
Norwood, Candice (2026). "No Women of Color Appointed to Federal Judgeships in Trump's First Year Back," The 19th, February 3. https://19thnews.org/2026/02/women-federal-judges-trump-second-term/
Revolving Door Project (2025, April 28). "Billionaires and the Trump Admin: Omeed Malik." https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/billionaires-and-the-trump-admin-omeed-malik/
Rosenstein, Greg (2025, July 4). "UFC Confirms Trump's Plan to host a fight at White House in 2026," NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/mixed-martial-arts/ufc-trump-white-house-fight-card-2026-rcna216982
Stein, Perry, Rachel Siegel, and Katie Mettler (2025, November 20). "Prosecutors quiz witness on Ed Martin, Bill Pulte moves in Schiff case," Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/20/pulte-martin-mortgage-fraud/
Zillman, Claire (2025, December 23). "Women's steady climb to CEO jobs and board seats is stalling amid a perfect storm of politics, economic uncertainty, and changing management tracks," Fortune. https://fortune.com/2025/12/23/women-ceo-boards-progress-stalling-politics-economy-ambition-careers/
Zweigenhaft, R. (2025). "Diversity is Not Enough: The Ironies of Trump's Second Cabinet," WhoRulesAmerica.net. http://whorulesamerica.net/diversity/trump_second_cabinet.html