For nearly 16 years, Pippa Begg served as co-chief executive of Board Intelligence alongside Jennifer Sundberg.
Together, they cultivated the business, which delivers analysis and services to company boards. Today, it boasts a staff of 200 and a prestigious clientele, including Nationwide, Rolls-Royce, and Reckitt.
“We are quite different people – very much yin and yang – but I think decisions are better made with two brains rather than one, as it stops hubris,” says Begg, who is based in London.
Begg and Sundberg exemplify a growing trend of companies experimenting with a co-CEO leadership structure.
In 2015, 11 companies within the Russell 3000 – the group of the largest public companies in the US – employed co-CEOs. By 2024, this number had more than doubled to 24, according to an analysis by MyLogIQ, a public company intelligence firm.
Numerous major corporations, including Oracle, Comcast, and Spotify, also made similar appointments in 2024. Netflix, meanwhile, has operated with co-CEOs since 2020.
Top corporate executives are handsomely compensated. A report from last year indicated that chief executives at the UK’s largest firms are paid, on average, 122 times the salary of the average full-time UK worker.
However, leadership roles are not without their challenges.
According to a survey by leadership advisory firm ICEO, 56% of top executives reported feeling burnt out in 2024.
The co-CEO model distributes responsibility, accountability, and ultimately, the burden of leadership between two individuals.
Leadership coach Audrey Hametner has observed that co-CEOs are often able to take time off that sole CEOs might otherwise feel unable to. She recounted an instance of a CEO client who had not taken a vacation in five years but was finally able to take a family holiday after finding a co-CEO partner.
Hametner notes that this model also allows leaders to focus on their strengths.
She offered the example of a previous client where one co-CEO worked more closely with the marketing and product departments, while the other primarily engaged with finance, government regulatory bodies, and legal matters.
“You may have co-CEOs where one is an outgoing and high-level thinker, who may find it more challenging to focus on all the small tasks, and the other CEO is more detail-oriented and loves to speak to the data and the nuances,” she says.
Sharing the workload may also afford co-CEOs more quality time with their families. That’s something they might be lacking – 60% of CEOs report spending too little time with their family, according to a study by executive search firm Russell Reynolds.
Begg took three maternity leaves of approximately six months each over a five-year period, returning to work each time on a four-day week basis.
Similarly, Sundberg took two maternity leaves during that period.
Begg observes that this is an unusual occurrence for a CEO on both counts.
Some female CEOs have publicly stated that they took minimal maternity leave, with 71% of women in leadership positions taking less than six months’ leave for fear of jeopardizing their jobs, according to data from That Works For Me.
The same study reveals a 32% drop in women at managerial level after having children.
Begg attributes her ability to avoid becoming another statistic to her co-CEO partnership.
“Without the co-CEO structure, the trade-off would have either been too great for the business, or too great for the way that we wanted to have our children and have maternity leave,” she reflects.
“If we hadn’t had the co-CEO model, we probably would have felt that we needed to find a new CEO, or even sell the business, which are things that happen to so many female-run businesses because they don’t see how it’s going to work. Our experience was that this can really work.”
This has also been the experience for Dhruv Amin and Marcus Lowe, the co-founders and co-CEOs of Anything, a startup focused on “vibe coding,” which allows anyone to create an app without coding knowledge.
Thanks to this structure, Amin was able to take two paternity leaves of three weeks each in 2024 and 2025.
“Marcus has covered for me twice. We’ve both had times when we’re gunning hard for the company, and times we’re not. The structure gives us permission to be human without everything falling apart,” says Amin, who is based in San Francisco.
In Finland, Denise Johansson was able to take three weeks away from work when her father died suddenly in 2024. She has been co-CEO and co-founder of payment processing platform Enfuce with Monika Liikamaa since 2016.
“It was not only a huge emotional shock, it also came with a lot of unexpected responsibility as I inherited another business at the same time,” says Johansson, who is based in Mariehamn, in the Åland Islands.
“Monika stepped in without hesitation, took on more of the day-to-day load, and created the space I needed to deal with both grief and practical issues.”
With six children between them, Johansson and Liikamaa are also able to take time with family while the other one holds the fort.
“If my kids need me, I will be off with them – no question. We coordinate so that key moments for our children are protected, while the company still has a steady hand on the wheel,” says Johansson.
Yet, the co-CEO model has yet to become a mainstream, long-term solution. Salesforce, SAP, and Marks and Spencer all appointed co-CEOs in the early 2020s, but these arrangements lasted no more than two years.
Tierney Remick is a Chicago-based vice chairman and co-leader of the global board and CEO practice at business consultancy Korn Ferry.
She’s observed that co-CEOs tend to work best at independent companies without complex structures, and with two people who have already worked together.
Otherwise, there can be power struggles, misalignment in vision, and confusion amongst the wider company.
“Leaders trying to establish their partnership, as well as drive the business and evolve the strategy – and doing it in a way that doesn’t create confusion in the organization – is usually very difficult if they don’t know each other,” says Remick.
Co-CEO pairings can also be used as a type of succession planning to see if one will ultimately become the sole, core CEO, she adds.
“There’s a tremendous amount of succession planning happening at the moment. And there is the reality that the pipeline of ‘ready-now’ CEOs has decreased over the last several years,” she says.
“So we are seeing boards find different ways to expand the roles and responsibilities of high potential leaders, to see how they accelerate and grow in a market that is creating a lot of change and ambiguity every day.”
For Begg, her co-CEO days came to an end in 2024 when Board Intelligence acquired private equity backers, which became a natural point for Sundberg to stand down. Sundberg remains on the company’s advisory board.
Now that Begg is the sole CEO, she acknowledges that she has less time to spend with family, so her husband left his job to be more present at home.
After their youngest child started school last September, he set up a consultancy that he works on during school hours.
“He carries the load of home and family life. It still probably raises an eyebrow when he’s called into a meeting and he says it has to be between 10am and 3pm. They’ll be shocked that a man has said that,” says Begg.
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