Estée Lauder Companies’ (ELC) Fabrizio Freda and Mary Kay’s David Holl have been named among the world’s most reputable CEOs.
The beauty industry leaders ranked alongside eight other chief executives including the likes of Nintendo’s Shuntaro Furukawa, Ralph Halmers of ING and Emmanuel Faber of Danone.
It is the second consecutive year that Freda has made the cut for Reputation Institute’s global RepTrak study, while Holl is a newcomer.
ELC and Freda were celebrated for implementing a reverse-mentoring programme to further employee development and to prioritise the hiring of younger teams.
“Part of his legacy is really making strides toward winning over the Millennial cohort,” said Stephen Hahn-Griffiths of the Reputation Institute to Forbes.
“He’s [Freda] taken a company that’s been around for generations and has made it relevant to emerging audiences around the world.”
However, Google’s top boss Sundar Pichai – who was named the most reputable CEO in the world last year – failed to make the top ten after a string of employee protests over the firm’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations and data breaches.
But he is not alone as eight of the CEOs who appeared on the list failed to return for a second year, including LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner and Mondelez’s Dirk Van de Put.
Women were also absent on this year’s list, with the Reputation Institute contributing the lack of female representation to their lack of familiarity with the general public.
According to the Reputation Institute, female leaders were familiar with 12% of the general public, whereas their male counterparts reached 15%.
The overall results revealed a key correlation between CEO reputation and social responsibility, employee responsibility and environmental responsibility, as leaders are no longer expected to rely solely on finances as a performance indicator.
