The S&P 500 is a stock market index that tracks the 500 most widely held stocks on the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. 29% of the CEO positions at S&P 500 companies are currently held by women.
Here are a few words of wisdom and inspiration from some of the top women CEOs from across the globe.
Mary Barra – General Motors 
“Do every job you’re in like you’re going to do it for the rest of your life, and demonstrate that ownership of it.”
Meg Whitman – Hewlett-Packard Enterprise 
“Do what you love and success will follow. Passion is the fuel behind a successful career.”
Indra Nooyi – PepsiCo 
“Leadership is hard to define and good leadership even harder. But if you can get people to follow you to the ends of the earth, you are a great leader.”
Lynn Good – Duke Energy 
“Effectiveness comes from those qualitative things that give you the ability to network, communicate and lead people toward an outcome they can’t see.”
Debra A. Cafaro – Ventas, Inc. 
“Go through some difficult experiences. If you can live through them and learn from them, you have a much better chance of knowing what to do when the chips are down and everyone else is freaking out.”
Marillyn Hewson – Lockheed Martin 
“Good leaders organize and align people around what the team needs to do. Great leaders motivate and inspire people with why they’re doing it. That’s purpose. And that’s the key to achieving something truly transformational.”
Marissa Mayer – Yahoo 
“I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough.”
Irene B. Rosenfeld – Mondelez International, Inc. 
“Our emerging workforce is not interested in command and control leadership. They don’t want to do things because I said so, they want to do things because they want to do them.”
Denise M. Morrison – Campbell Soup Co. 
“You can lead the change or be a victim of change”
Virginia M. Rometty – IBM 
“Don’t let others define you. Define yourself.”
