TOP 10 | SOCIAL IMPACT CEOs

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Patagonia CEO Ryan Gellert – SXSW 2023 Keynote

Company: Patagonia Revenue: US $ 1.5bn( est) Employees: 3,500 Founded: 1973

Ryan Gellert holds the strangest job in retail, running a company whose owner is, functionally, the planet. Since the 2022 transfer, every dollar of profit not reinvested in the business, roughly US $ 100m a year, flows through the Holdfast Collective to climate causes, which turns the quarterly margin conversation into an environmental grant round. Ryan’ s task is keeping the machine profitable enough to keep the planet paid, and he has not treated the ownership structure as a licence to go quiet. Patagonia has sued a US administration over public lands, closed its stores so staff could vote and campaigned against fast fashion while selling fleece jackets at a healthy clip. The former Black Diamond executive, who ran Patagonia’ s European arm out of Amsterdam, treats activism as inventory, stocked deliberately rather than announced. 50 October 2026