The Best Companies for Future Leaders 2025

Methodology: How TIME and Statista Determined the Best Companies and Colleges for Future Leaders of 2025

Business is evolving faster than ever, and companies are rethinking the path to the c-suite. Whereas in the past aspiring leaders might earn their stripes by rotating through a new part of the business for a year or two, today more top firms are “constantly providing people with new opportunities,” says Stephan Meier, a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School. To supercharge the pace of skill-building, “you now have to do rotational programs on steroids.” The ability to not only rapidly learn new terrain but ensure that teams are ready to overcome new challenges is becoming an indispensable leadership skill, Meier says.

This is, in essence, what global consultancies like Accenture and Deloitte are designed to do. No surprise, then, that five of the top 10 best companies for future leaders in TIME and Statista’s new ranking are consultancies. The study analyzed the resumés of 4,000 top U.S. leaders in business, government, academia, nonprofits, and other sectors. Compared to last year’s list, that’s twice as many resumés drawn from a wider range of fields and leadership positions. With 175 organizations now recognized, the new ranking offers a wide-angle look at the places today’s top leaders are most likely to have spent at least some of their working lives. The Smithsonian Institution, The World Bank Group and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, all government-affiliated, make their debuts for 2025. So does the nonprofit American Cancer Society.

Yet McKinsey & Company remains at number one, underscoring the unique role consultancies play in churning out society’s future leaders. (Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg all once worked at McKinsey.) At consulting companies, “every client creates the possibility for somebody to have a leadership opportunity,” says Scott Anthony, a professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, who worked at McKinsey early in his career. “They just teem with opportunities.”

Read More: The Best Colleges for Future Leaders 2025

So do large blue chip companies like consumer goods powerhouses Procter & Gamble and PepsiCo, and IBM, he says. The top companies for future leaders have three things in common: ample leadership opportunities for younger employees, feedback cultures that help budding leaders improve, and formal investments in leadership development. “That’s the connective tissue,” Anthony says.

Strikingly, none of the country’s big five tech firms—Meta, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft—are in the list’s top 10. This probably relates to the relative youth of these companies, Anthony says. “People are still making careers in these companies,” versus purposefully developing for a few years and then heading for the door. An exception is Microsoft, which is the oldest of the cohort, founded in 1975; it clocked in at #11, up from 21 last year. Meta, Alphabet, and Apple also rose higher, signs that more alums of these companies are now spreading their wings in leadership.

Boris Groysberg, a professor at Harvard Business School, says it’s all about acquiring new skills. In the past, a linear path up the org chart to a top leadership post was the norm. Today, zig-zagging and lateral movement between organizations is valued by many hirers as new technologies depreciate the value of existing skills. “I’ve never seen so much focus on skills and skills development,” he says. “Companies are basically saying, ‘Where you worked 10 years ago doesn't tell me anything. What are the skills and capabilities you have now?’”

In other words: tomorrow’s top leaders will be lifelong learners who take flight by embracing new challenges. —Jeremy Gantz