Jim Fitterling

Unlike most CEOs, Jim Fitterling is a “lifer”: someone who has spent their whole career at a single organisation. In Fitterling’s case, this is the Dow Chemical Company, where he has worked since graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a degree in mechanical engineering. He is also openly gay, though he spent the first thirty years of his now thirty-five year career closeted.

Inspired by Tim Cook’s example, Fitterling came out to Dow about his orientation on World Coming Out Day 2014 and continued his decades-long ascent through the company ranks, eventually being named its COO and president in 2016 and finally its CEO in 2019. This final role cemented him as the third openly LGBT+ CEO of a Fortune 500 company and, more significantly, the first board-appointed “out” CEO of a Fortune 100 company. Dow materials credit him as playing “a key role in the Company’s transformation” into a higher-growth business that reported sales revenue of $43 billion in 2019.

Alongside his business success, Fitterling has continually acted in support of LGBT+ recognition. Within Dow itself he has encouraged employees to feel comfortable in sharing their sexual orientation and pushed to appoint the company’s first Chief Inclusion Officer. In 2018 he defied critics by flying a rainbow flag outside Dow’s Missouri headquarters, and went on to top FT’s OUTstanding list and join Out Leadershp’s Global Advisory Board.

FItterling also shares Beale’s cautious optimism about the state of LGBT+ corporate representation. “Even though we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress, 50% of LGBT+ people in the United States are not out at work,” he remarked in an interview. Characterising insufficient LGBT+ inclusion as a “business performance issue”, Fitterling has sought at every step to correct it in his own business and elsewhere.

“Even though we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress, 50% of LGBT+ people in the United States are not out at work.”

by CEO Today