These 5 LGBTQ+ business leaders are transforming the world

While LGBTQ+ politicians and celebrities often grab the daily headlines, LGBTQ+ business leaders have a profound effect on people’s lives and the world at large by influencing the products we use, the media we consume, and even the ways we communicate.

We chose five of the biggest LGBTQ+ business leaders and shared some details about their work and their comings out to demonstrate how representation matters, especially in the C-suite of some of the world’s biggest companies.

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Tim Cook

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Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, is the first Fortune 500 CEO to publically come out as gay.

When he came out in 2014, he saidm “I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.” Cook became the CEO of Apple in August 2011, shortly after founder Steve Jobs passed away. He has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, coming out in an essay for Bloomberg News. The Apple CEO says he was inspired to come out after reading letters from teenagers confronting their sexual orientation.

“If hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to come to terms with who he or she is, bring comfort to anyone who feels alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the trade-off with my own privacy,” he wrote.

Jim Fitterling

Jim Fitterling, the CEO and chair of Dow Inc., came out to his employees in 2014. Fitterling began his career at Dow in 1984 and became CEO in 2018, after which he was appointed the company’s first chief inclusion officer.

“I received overwhelmingly positive support,” he said about coming out.

“I had made a conscious decision to live most of my work-related life in the closet because I had made a calculation in my own head about the risk versus reward of coming out,” he continued. “It’s easy to create fears in your own mind, based on things you see and hear around you, about how you’ll be viewed or accepted after coming out. But people’s reactions were actually very positive. There was very little negativity.”

Sam Altman

The co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is gay and has been out since high school. He came out after fellow students objected to a National Coming Out Day speaker. He married his long-term partner Oliver Mulherin in a beachside ceremony.

Sue Nabi

Sue Nabi is the CEO of beauty company Coty, and is also a trans woman. Originally from Algeria and raised in France, she is one of the first transgender CEOs of a major U.S. company. She is the only trans CEO on the Fortune 1,000, a ranking of the largest businesses in the world.

She founded the vegan luxury skincare brand Orveda in 2018 and spent over a decade at L’Oréal before taking on the leadership role at Coty in 2020.

In an interview with Fortune, she stated, “I love saying to people, ‘Judge me on what I do rather than who I am.”

Chris McCarthy

Chris McCarthy is the co-CEO of Paramount Global.

He said he grew up feeling “depressed, gay, and deeply closeted.” It was the reality TV show,The Real World that gave him his first glimpse into what a life lived outside of the closet could look like.

As CEO of Paramount, McCarthy leads a global team reaching one billion users across 180 countries. Under his leadership, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios has produced some of the world’s most culturally impactful shows, including Emily in Paris, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and the LGBTQ+ sitcom Uncoupled.

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