Julie Sweet is an American business executive. She is chief executive officer of Accenture, a multinational professional services company. She is also a member of the Global Management Committee for Accenture. According to The New York Times, she is "one of the most powerful women in corporate America." She was named to Fortunes "Most Powerful Women" list from 2016 through 2019.
Prior to Sweet's work at Accenture, she was an attorney at law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore. She worked at the firm for 17 years and was partner for 10. Sweet was the ninth woman ever to make partner at the firm. She worked on financing, mergers and acquisitions, and general corporate counsel. Accenture recruited Sweet as general counsel in 2010. In 2015, she became CEO of Accenture's North America business, the company's largest market. Since early in her career at Accenture, she served on the company's global management committee. Alongside then-CEO Pierre Nanterme, Sweet developed Accenture's mergers and acquisitions strategy. Accenture named Sweet its CEO effective September 2019, the first woman to hold that position. She replaced interim CEO David Rowland. At the time of her appointment, she was one of 27 women leading companies in the S&P 500 and the 15th female CEO of all Fortune Global 500 companies. Sweet has advocated for diversity, inclusion, and workplace gender parity. Sweet supports Accenture's goal to have a staff equally represented by men and women by 2025; as of 2019, 42 percent of Accenture's staff was female. Sweet was named a top CEO for diversity by the website Comparably in 2019. Sweet has called for addressing the skills gap in the U.S. and supported the national apprenticeship movement. She participated in The New York Timess New Rules Summit. In addition to her work at Accenture, Sweet served on the boards for Catalyst, a non-profit, and TechNet Executive Council, a network that promotes growth, as of 2019. The New York Times called Sweet "one of the most powerful women in corporate America" in 2019. Fortune listed her as one of the "Most Powerful Women" in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019; in 2019, she ranked No. 9.
