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Microsoft's Nadella finishes 5th in top CEOs survey

Microsoft's Satya Nadella finishes 5th.
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 19: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (L) and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos visit before a meeting of the White House American Technology Council in the State Dining Room of the White House June 19. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The top CEOs in the Seattle are are also some of the top CEOs in the country according to a new survey. Microsoft's Satya Nadella leads local CEO's #5 followed by Zillow's Spencer Rascoff (#10), Amazon's Jeff Bezos (#25), Costco's Jeff Jelinek (#28) and Brad Jackson of Slalom Consulting (#41).

The survey was compiled by Comparably.com, a compensation, culture and career monitoring website.

Western Washington also placed three CEOs in the list of top small and mid-size companies including Bob Pritchett of Bellingham-bases Faithlife (#14), Code.org's Hadi Partovi (#17) and RealSelf's Tom Seery (#33).

Who’s the best CEO in America?

It’s billionaire tech businessman-philanthropist Marc Benioff, CEO of customer relationship management and cloud services company, Salesforce.com.

"As the original founder of Salesforce he has a deep connection with the product and employees that uniquely inspires his team," says Jason Nazar, CEO of Comparbly. "Besides continuing to grow a massively successful public company, he’s been a dynamic leader and consistent voice of company culture issues."

One of those issues has been closing the gender pay and promotion and gap, an issue that has been top of mind given the large number of sexual harassment allegations coming to light in entertainment, politics and business. Benioff pledged to close the gap in 2015 and by early 2017 Salesforce said it had achieved equal pay, promotion and opportunity for female employees.
Second in Comparbly's ranking is Brian Halligan, CEO of marketing software company HubSpot. Shares of the company have risen to above $80 a share from an initial offering price of $25 in 2014. Like Benioff, Halligan is also considered a philanthropist, notably giving $1.6 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

"HubSpot has some of the best overall ratings on Comparably across all categories, and stands out as a company whose employees are deeply engaged and passionate about their corporate mission," Nazar said.

Women CEOs who made the large-company list included General Motors CEO Mary Barra (No. 29) and Julie Sweet (No. 33), CEO of consulting and professional services company Accenture - North America. Among smaller companies, three women, Cyndi Barreda (No. 9), of NetCentrics, Christine Crane (No. 21) of BoldLeads and Lisa Harp (No. 29) of Harp Interactive made the list.

Overall, the top-ranked CEO among small-to-midsize companies was Sameer Dholakia of SendGrid, a cloud-based email services company.

The lists below represent the Best-ranked CEOs by their employees on Comparably.com. The CEOs are ranked, with No. 1 representing the highest-scored CEO. The rankings are separated by large (500 or more employees) and small-to-midsize (less than 500 employees).

Top CEOs - Large Companies

  1. Marc Benioff, SalesForce, San Francisco, CA
  2. Brian Halligan, HubSpot, Cambridge, MA
  3. Brad Smith, Intuit, Mountain View, CA
  4. Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn, Mountain View, CA
  5. Satya Nadella, Microsoft, Redmond, WA
  6. John Pope, Jive Communications, Orem, UT
  7. Hisayuki Idekoba, Indeed, Austin, TX
  8. Adam Miller, Cornerstone OnDemand, Santa Monica, CA
  9. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, Menlo Park, CA
  10. Spencer Rascoff, Zillow, Seattle, WA
  11. Reed Hastings, Netflix, Los Gatos, CA
  12. Glenn Johnson, Insight Global, Atlanta, GA
  13. Sundar Pichai, Google, Mountain View, CA
  14. Alex Shootman, Workfront, Lehi, UT
  15. Tim Cook, Apple, Cupertino, CA
  16. Shantanu Narayen, Adobe, San Jose, CA
  17. Mark Clemens, Golden Hippo Media, Woodland Hills, CA
  18. Aneel Bhusri, Workday, Pleasanton, CA
  19. John Legere, T-Mobile, Albuquerque, NM
  20. Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One, Mclean, VA
  21. Stewart Butterfield, Slack, San Francisco, CA
  22. Aaron Skonnard, Pluralsight, Farmington, UT
  23. Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase & Co, New York, NY
  24. Jensen Huang, Nvidia, Santa Clara, CA
  25. Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Seattle, WA
  26. Jim Whitehurst, Red Hat, Raleigh, NC
  27. Alan Trefler, Pegasystems, Cambridge, MA
  28. Craig Jelinek, Costco, Issaquah, WA
  29. Mary T. Barra, General Motors, Detroit, MI
  30. Lewis Cirne, New Relic, San Francisco, CA
  31. Bill McDermott, SAP, Newton Square, PA
  32. Milton Johnson, HCA Holdings, Nashville, TN
  33. Pierre Nanterme, Accenture, New York, NY
  34. Pat Gelsinger, VMware, Palo Alto, CA
  35. Jack Dorsey, Square, San Francisco, CA
  36. Mikkel Svane, Zendesk, San Francisco, CA
  37. Gene Hall, Gartner, Stamford, CT
  38. Dan Rosensweig, Chegg, Santa Clara, CA
  39. Brian Chesky, Airbnb, San Francisco, CA
  40. Kenneth Lamneck, Insight, Tempe, AZ
  41. Brad Jackson, Slalom Consulting, Seattle, WA
  42. Omar Ishrak, Medtronic, Minneapolis, MN
  43. Michael R. Bloomberg, Bloomberg, New York, NY
  44. Niraj Shah, Wayfair, Boston, CA
  45. Brandon Beck, Riot Games, Los Angeles, CA
  46. Logan Green, Lyft, San Francisco, CA
  47. Robert A. Iger, The Walt Disney Company, Burbank, CA
  48. Chuck Robbins, Cisco, San Jose, CA
  49. Edward Stack, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Coraopolis, PA
  50. Andrew Anagnost, Autodesk, San Rafael, CA

Top CEOs - Small and Mid-size Companies

  1. Sameer Dholakia, SendGrid, Denver, CO
  2. Timo Rein, Pipedrive, New York, NY
  3. Harry Glaser, Periscope Data, San Francisco, CA
  4. Matthew Gonnering, Widen Enterprises, Madison, WI
  5. Gavan Thorpe, Boostability, Lehi, UT
  6. Howard Brown, RingDNA, San Francisco, CA
  7. Chris Ovitz/Reed Shaffner, Workpop, Santa Monica, CA
  8. Giuseppe Incitti, SiteTraker, Palo Alto, CA
  9. Cyndi Barreda, NetCentrics Corporation, Herndon, VA
  10. Kirk Simpson, Wave Financial Inc., Toronto, ON
  11. Matt Westgate, Lullabot, Providence, RI
  12. Yuri Sagalov, Redbooth, Palo Alto, CA
  13. Bob Ruffolo, IMPACT Branding & Design, Wallingford, CT
  14. Bob Pritchett, Faithlife, Bellingham, WA
  15. Alexander Austin, Branch Metrics, Palo Alto, CA
  16. Rob Vandenberg, Lingotek, Lehi, UT
  17. Hadi Partovi, Code.org, Seattle, WA
  18. Alan Rich, Chrome River, Los Angeles, CA
  19. Nick Francis, Help Scout, Boston, MA
  20. Marc Hawk, RevLocal, Granville, OH
  21. Christine Crane, BoldLeads, Chandler, AZ
  22. Cody Sperber, Clever Investor, Tempe, AZ
  23. Mark Leck, The REDX, Orem, UT
  24. Daniel Vetras, Kollective Technology, Bend, OR
  25. Ariel Cohen, TripActions, Palo Alto, CA
  26. Brian Lacey, Mobomo, Vienna, VA
  27. Sam Shank, HotelTonight, San Francisco, CA
  28. Paul Brady, Unitrends, Burlington, MA
  29. Lisa Harp, Harp Interactive, Lombard, IL
  30. Marcus Cobb, Jammber, Chicago, IL
  31. Dave Crumby, Realvolve, Raleigh, NC
  32. Kirill Evdakov, Fasten, Boston, MA
  33. Tom Seery, RealSelf, Seattle, WA
  34. Jon Bischke, Entelo, San Francisco, CA
  35. Lior Div, Cybereason, Boston, MA
  36. Ben Peterson, BambooHR, Lindon, UT
  37. Larry Gadea, Envoy, San Francisco, CA
  38. Mikita Mikado, PandaDoc, San Francisco, CA
  39. Charles Ramsey, Sauce Labs, San Francisco, CA
  40. John Benson, Verisys Corporation, Alexandria, VA
  41. Erick Joseph, Renaissance Electronic Services, Indianapolis, IN
  42. Karl Mehta, EdCast, Mountain View, CA
  43. Brent Bellm, Bigcommerce, Austin, TX
  44. Amrinder Arora, BizMerlin, Vienna, VA
  45. Fred Maglione, OmegaFi, Columbus, GA
  46. Flint Lane, Billtrust, Trenton, NJ
  47. Jeff Tench, New Signature, Washington, D.C.
  48. Ashwin Navin, Samba TV, San Francisco, CA
  49. Sean Kelly, SnackNation, Los Angeles, CA
  50. Vivek Mehra, ParqEx, Chicago, IL

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