Fifty-seven percent of CEOs and board members have relatively little confidence that their CEO succession planning process is positioning their organization well for the future, according to a recent Heidrick & Struggles survey.¹  

The good news is that many boards—and particularly those at companies traded on public markets—are increasing their investment in CEO succession planning. Through our work, we have identified a few steps leading boards are taking to improve their succession planning for themselves and for CEOs, including making planning a continuous, transparent process linked to long-term strategy. (For more, see “CEO and board confidence monitor: Beating the succession planning paradox.”)

We know that boards are increasingly seeking CEOs with capabilities such as having a learning mindset, humility, and being able to lead across boundaries that divide people. (For more, see “Route to the Top | Today’s CEO: The growing importance of character, learning, and leading in a contested world.”) 

We also know that those capabilities can be found in leaders with all kinds of backgrounds: Our Route to the Top research has over the past seven years explored trends in CEO appointees at public companies in the largest markets around the world—their prior functional experience, age, tenure, race or ethnicity, gender, and education, whether they are promoted from within their organization or hires from the outside, and more.

This year, a few notable data points stand out:

• Globally, the share of CEOs with advanced degrees has increased, from 58% in 2019 to 65% in 2025.
• We see some of the highest shares on diversity measures in Asia Pacific markets. Singapore and Australia/New Zealand have the highest share of women CEOs, at 17% and 16%, respectively. 
• The United States and Canada have the highest share of CEOs with previous COO experience, at 42% each.
• We found that North American CEOs are the oldest, both at appointment and currently. This region has the lowest share of CEOs appointed before age 45, as well as those with longer average tenures.
• Europe has the highest share of CEOs with cross-border and cross-sector experience, while North America has the lowest.

We have compiled key data from each market into the interactive experience below, where you can view aggregated data by market and year across a range of measures, including education, appointment type, and prior C-suite experience.

• Market data: Timelines
• New appointments, by market
• Trends

¹ “CEO and board confidence monitor: A worried start to 2024,” Heidrick & Struggles, January 17, 2024

Market data

Trend data

These charts compare the year-over-year information of all the CEOs included in our study. Please note that the number of markets included in our report has increased over the years.

In 2019, 16 markets were included; in 2020, 20 markets were included; in 2021, 24 markets were included; in 2022, 25 markets were included. Since 2023, there have been 27 markets included in our study.