How People Actually Get to the C-Suite in S&P 500 Companies

Over the past two decades, as the challenges facing businesses have become increasingly complex, CEOs face pressure to have the right people in the C-suite. A strong top team—one that is aligned and collaborative, rather than just a collection of talented leaders—is the foundation for everything that follows. For those aspiring to these top roles, the bar is higher than ever.

Each year, we map the profiles, tenure, and career backgrounds of leaders in the nine most common functional leadership roles in S&P 500 C-suites and track how they are changing. (The roles are chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief human resources officer, chief legal officer, chief supply chain officer, chief information officer, and chief communications officer.) Our data focuses on the people who were in the role as of June 30, 2025, and excludes those holding interim appointments. Prior to 2025, we analyzed C-suite functional leaders in the Fortune 500.

Our Findings

Here are five observations from our analysis that may be especially useful for aspiring C-suite leaders:

1. The route to the C-suite is most likely an internal track.

Nearly 60% of S&P 500 C-suite functional leaders—and as many as 80% depending on the role—are promoted from inside their company. Internal appointments have trended upwards since 2020, when 55% of the C-suite leaders we tracked were selected from within their companies. CEOs and chief operating officers (COOs) are most likely to be insiders, followed by chief financial officers (CFOs) and chief marketing officers (CMOs). Internally promoted C-suite leaders tend to have long tenures with their companies—16 years on average.

2. Getting hired for a C-suite role from outside is more likely if you’re in (or previously served in) the same role at a different company.

When companies do look outside for C-suite leadership, they tend to prioritize experience. The majority of externally hired C-suite executives (57%) previously served in the same position at another public or private company. For some roles, those numbers are even higher: chief legal officers (71%) and chief financial officers (75%) were most likely to have previously held the role. If you include people hired into C-suite roles internally and externally, about one-third C-suite leaders have served in the role before, a level that has been fairly consistent over the past five years.

Industry experience tends to be less important overall than prior experience in the role for external hires, with wide variations across functional leadership positions. While 93% of externally hired COOs and 83% of externally hired CEOs came from the same industry, nearly 60% of CHROs and more than half of chief information officers were hired from another industry sector.

3. CEO transitions create opportunities in the C-suite.

Sitting CEOs in our C-suite study have the longest tenure at 7.8 years—versus an average of four or five years for most other roles. This means that CEOs are likely to replace leaders in each of the major functional disciplines at some point during their tenure. Many of these changes occur in the first 12 months: At least one in five CFOs, CHROs, and CMOs turn over in their CEOs’ first year. Within four years, most CEOs have hired a CFO. More than one-third of chief legal officers have transitioned out within the first four years, as have 42% of chief technology officers and 39% of chief supply chain officers. CEO tenure has been on the decline in recent years, suggesting that we may see a corresponding increase in C-suite turnover.

4. Some functional roles have more C-suite opportunities than others.

The makeup of senior leadership teams varies widely, and not every company has someone in each of the nine roles we studied Our analysis of S&P 500 C-suites, for example, identified 503 CEOs—a few companies have co-CEOs—but only 334 chief supply chain officers. Nearly all S&P 500 companies have a CFO and CHRO, and four in five have a chief communications officer. Over the past few years, we have been tracking a decline in the percentage of CMOs—now about 70%—as companies shift from enterprise marketing leadership to a regional or business unit model, or combine functional responsibilities such as sales and marketing, branding or customer experience into larger commercial or revenue officer roles.

5. Women and people from underrepresented backgrounds hold more than 40% of C-suite roles, but representation varies widely across roles.

Overall, 43% of S&P 500 C-suite roles are held by women and people from historically underrepresented ethnic and racial groups. C-suites overall are somewhat more diverse than they were five years ago, but representation continues to vary widely by role. Fewer than one-quarter of CEOs and COOs are from these groups, compared with 78% of CHROs and 70% of chief communication officers. Women are most likely to hold chief HR, communications, and marketing roles. The chief information role has the highest percentage of ethnically diverse leaders at 21%.

Charting a Path to the C-suite

So what do these findings mean for aspiring C-suite leaders? Given the narrow internal and external paths to the top, it’s important to recognize that C-suite functional roles represent a big step up from other functional leadership jobs. Leaders on the CEO’s team have dual roles: managing their specific function and working with the management team to set direction, drive execution, and maximize organizational performance. Both these responsibilities have become more challenging as the demands on CEOs and their teams continue to grow and the needs of the business change.

Being successful requires more than just intimate knowledge of the company and deep expertise within your function. Based on our research and extensive work with C-suite leaders globally over many years, those who thrive tend to excel in a few key areas:

• Collaborating and influencing. Achieving the strategic objectives of the business today requires top leaders to work closely together to plan and execute key initiatives and remove barriers to change, including functional silos. C-suite functional leaders who lack strategic influence risk becoming pigeonholed—the human resources leader who is stuck as the “people” person, the CIO as the “technology” person, the general counsel as the naysayer, or the CFO who is regarded at the “accountant.”

• Leading people. The ability to build and empower strong teams is a cornerstone for success in top functional leadership roles. The most successful of these leaders place the right people in the right roles, empower their people and delegate, which enables them to amplify their leadership and frees them to focus on leadership team responsibilities. In communications with their team and broader organization, they engage people and connect with them on an emotional level by anchoring execution to strategy and purpose.

• Self-evaluation and adjustment. We have also found that the C-level leaders who are most able to make a difference in their organizations adapt and grow with the job and the changing business. These leaders seek inputs broadly and adjust their point of view and behavior when new information becomes available.

Job rotation, P&L experience, and exposure to different business units and functions equip leaders for bigger, more complex roles. These opportunities build leadership skills and deepen understanding of how various parts of the business contribute to overall strategy. But it can be hard for aspiring C-suite leaders to gain these diverse experiences, since many functional routes up are highly specialized. Even without formal development and job rotation programs, however, aspiring C-suite leaders can build skills and gain exposure in other ways, including:

• Work today on becoming the leader you want to be when you arrive. Be clear on your values, first principles and what you appreciate most from great leadership. Become the leader you’d like to work for.

• Help those around you be successful and win. Sustained success in the C-suite is built as much on trust and followership as on individual capability. You may have all the skills but if nobody wants to follow you, you won’t last long. Build genuine, long-term relationships, help others grow and succeed, and stay connected over time with colleagues inside and outside the organization. Invest in managing talent and developing your team, devoting time to helping them address gaps in skills and experience and leverage strengths.

• Do an annual self-evaluation with brutal candor, looking at your strengths, gaps, missing experiences and the decisions you avoid. Try to continuously improve every aspect of yourself. Ask: “How will I get 10% better as a leader next year?” Create an accountability system, using an external coach or small group of trusted colleagues, to support efforts to build new skills or change behaviors, and carve out time for reflection and learning.

• Maintain an outsider’s perspective. Regularly step back and view the organization through fresh eyes. Challenge assumptions, resist legacy thinking and bring an enterprise-wide perspective to decision-making.

• Recognize by the time you get to the C-suite (if you do), the job will look vastly different and may be harder than it is today. Prepare for this by getting comfortable leading in uncertainty, volatility and change. Volunteer for demanding roles and cross-business initiatives to build your understanding of interdependencies across the company and hone your ability to adapt, collaborate and influence.

• Stay curious and humble. Keep learning, seek out diverse perspectives, invite feedback, and lead with humility and self-awareness as the demands of the job change. Practice active listening to hear alternative perspectives and make room for others to contribute and challenge ideas collaboratively.

. . .

For those eyeing top functional leader roles, the path to the top will be filled with challenges. Aspiring C-suite executives should seek out experiences that challenge their thinking, deepen their understanding of the business, and build leadership skills to win—and succeed in—top functional roles.

Copyright 2026 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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