Fortune 100 companies have never been great at putting women in charge, and tech companies aren’t an exception – only three of the top 10 US tech companies have women at the helm.
And while Google has a male CEO in Sundar Pichai and a male chief executive at its parent company, Alphabet, it’s made strides when it comes to women in leadership roles: Women make up nearly half of Google’s management team (46% to be exact).
While it’s not a perfect 50-50 split – there are six women and seven men – it’s more equal than any other top tech company’s executive team.
Of Apple’s 11 top execs, only one is a woman: Angela Ahrendts, senior vice president of retail. Microsoft does a bit better with three female execs out of 15, and IBM has four women out of 21 execs, plus a female CEO in Ginny Rometty. While Intel has the same number of women Google does, it also has 22 male executives.
But it’s Google that has the most gender equality among its leadership team. Take a look:
Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Cloud
In November 2015, Google scored a huge coup by acquiring Bebop Technologies, a startup in the cloud-computing software space led by Diane Greene. Google convinced its board to hire Greene to lead all its cloud businesses, including Google for Work, Cloud Platform, and Google Apps.
Greene is a legend in Silicon Valley: she founded VMware with her husband and Stanford professor, Mendel Rosenblum, and a few others in the late 1990s. She then served as the company's first CEO and led it through its sale to EMC for $635 million.
Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube
Wojcicki was Google's 16th (and first female) employee and became CEO of YouTube in 2014. As senior vice president of product management, Wojcicki oversaw Google's two main advertising products, AdWords and AdSense. But even before her promotion to YouTube boss, Wojcicki was known as "the most important Googler you've never heard of."
Wojcicki also helped Google get its start: She rented her garage to Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they first started Google.
Jessica Powell, vice president of global communications
Powell originally joined Google in 2006 and previously led Google's PR teams for Asia, Southern Europe, and emerging markets. After Google's previous PR boss, Rachel Whetstone, left the company in 2015, Powell took the helm.
Lorraine Twohill, senior vice president of global marketing
Twohill has been with Google for more than a decade and was promoted and given a senior VP role at Google in 2014. She oversaw Google's logo change in 2015 and was the brains behind several of Google's award-winning ads.
Business Insider named Twohill No. 1 on its list of the 50 Most Innovative CMOs in the world in 2016.
Jen Fitzpatrick, vice president of Geo, Local, and Maps
Fitzpatrick joined Google as an intern in the summer of 1999, and has been there ever since. She was named as the head of the Maps division in fall 2014. Fitzpatrick also cofounded Google's User Experience team and has led software development for products like Google Search, AdWords, and News.
Ruth Porat, senior vice president and CFO
Porat joined Google as itsnew CFO in March 2015, but before that, she was known as "the most powerful woman on Wall Street." Since then, she helped guide Google through the blow-up of its corporate structure and has led the charge in cutting costs across the company.
Learn more about Porat here.
The other half of Pichai's management team is made up of seven male executives, including Google's chief business officer and head of hardware.
The male executives include:
- Philipp Schindler, senior vice president and chief business officer
- Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of platforms and ecosystems
- Sridhar Ramaswamy, senior vice president of ads and commerce
- John Giannandrea, senior vice president of engineering
- Kent Walker, senior vice president and general counsel
- Rick Osterloh, senior vice president of hardware
- Urs Hölzle, senior vice president of technical infrastructure