Pockets of progress: Diversity gains slow among the 2025 Top 100

We have tracked the gender and ethnic diversity of Top 100 executives since 2020 and, while there are some bright spots, the overall picture shows how far many of the largest companies still have to go.

White males dominate the C-suite by a wide margin. Black men and women hold precious few positions of authority at the largest contractors in the federal market.

This year, we identified 1,143 executives by scouring websites and LinkedIn. Men of all races make up for 812 of those positions, or 71%. Women of all races represent 331 of those positions.

The male/female ratio is a bright spot. In 2020, we identified 680 executive positions with 22.6% of of them being held by women at the time.

We have also improved in identifying the executive positions, so it is a positive sign that we have a higher percentage of women across a larger pool of executives.

In looking at all minority groups, we identified 150 executives who were either Black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian. That translates to 13.1% of the total 1,143 positions we looked at for 2025.

In 2020, the percentage was 11.6%. Another sign of some improvement. The 150 executives included 103 as non-Black minorities and 47 who were Black.

We also looked at the data for the distribution of women and minority executives across the Top 100.

For 2025, 36 companies have no minority executives. In 2020, 48 companies had no minorities.

Only seven companies today have no women executives, which is a significant improvement from our 2020 finding of 25 companies with no women in the C-suite.

But the signs of improvement fade away when we focus on Black executives.

In 2020, we did not separate Black men and Black women. They held 5.6% of the executive positions at that time. Today it stands at 4.1%, with a total of 47 positions held by either Black men or Black women.

Black men held 28 positions, or 2.5% of the 1,143 total. Black women held 19 positions, or 1.6%.

For CEO positions, males hold 86 of 102 positions and women hold the remaining 16. Two companies have co-CEOs, which is why our total comes out to 102.

Two companies have Black men in the top spot -- Rene LeVigne at Iron Bow Technologies and David Steward, who is the founder and chairman of World Wide Technology. Toni Townes-Whitley, CEO of Science Application International Corp., is the only Black female CEO.

The data shows a mix of positives and negatives. Across the board, Top 100 companies have a long way to go if they want to reflect the diversity of the U.S. population.

The question now is whether a positive trajectory will continue.

With changing federal policies and some companies stepping back from public diversity commitments, the next few years will test whether the GovCon sector can sustain and build upon these gains without the institutional support that helped drive them.