99 Men and 1 Woman?

SMITH BRAIN TRUST – “Infuriating” was how one Maryland Smith professor described the Forbes list of “America’s Most Innovative Leaders.”

The list, published Friday, received marquis design treatment on the Forbes website, with a big-font headline and an all-caps sub-headline that asked, urgently, provocatively, “Who Are The Most Creative And Successful Business Minds Of Today?"

Then came the list. Ninety-nine men. And just one woman. (Whose entry, at No. 75, didn’t even include a photo.)

The list sparked an almost immediate backlash across social media for its stark gender imbalance. And on Monday, as the uproar continued, the magazine’s editor would issue an apology and an explanation, blaming the methodology of the data-driven list. “This pool ultimately proved the problem: Women, as we all know, are poorly represented at the top of the largest corporations (just 5% of the S&P 500) and fare even worse among growing public tech companies. In other words, for all our carefully calibrated methodology, women never had much of a chance here,” he wrote.

Many suggested that Forbes’ editors should have questioned the flawed list, rather than publishing it. And with good reason, suggests research from Maryland Smith’s P.K. Kannan.

His research into artificial intelligence and machine learning has underscored the dangers of blindly relying on algorithms to make important decisions. “Small errors,” he says, “like a flaw in the attribution scheme, can have a major impact.”

As the uproar over the Forbes list continued across social media, Maryland Smith experts compiled a list of their own, with just a few of the women that should make any list of innovators. Here’s a partial list of those names:

Laura J. Alber, CEO of Williams-Sonoma

Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors

Corie Barry, CEO of Best Buy

Sara Blakely, founder and owner of shapewear brand Spanx

Gail K. Boudreaux, president and CEO of Anthem Inc.

Stacy Brown-Philpot, CEO of TaskRabbit and a member of the Board of Directors of Hewlett-Packard and Nordstrom

Michele Buck, president and CEO of The Hershey Company

Safra A. Catz, co-CEO of Oracle Corporation

Susan L. Decker, former president of Yahoo!, member of the Board of Directors for Berkshire Hathaway

Mary Dillon, CEO of Ulta Beauty

Melinda Gates, former general manager at Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Shafi Goldwasser, co-founder and chief scientist at Duality Tech

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Beth Ford, CEO of Land O'Lakes

Marillyn Adams Hewson, chairwoman, president and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin

Michelle D. Gass, CEO and director of Kohl's Corp.

Lynn J. Good, chairman, president and CEO of Duke Energy

Ilene Gordon, former CEO of Ingredion

Tricia Griffith, CEO and president of Progressive

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental Petroleum

Margaret Keane, CEO and president of Synchrony Financial

Katrina Lake, founder and CEO of Stitch Fix

Mary Laschinger, chairman and CEO of Veritiv Corp.

Christine A. Leahy, president and CEO of CDW

Fei-Fei Li, chief scientist of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Google Cloud

Anna Manning, president and CEO of Reinsurance Group of America

Kathryn V. Marinello, president and CEO of Hertz

Jessica O. Matthews, founder and CEO of Uncharted Power

Kathy Mazzarella, president and CEO of Graybar Electric

Mary Meeker, former Wall Street securities analyst, now partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins

Beth E. Mooney, CEO of KeyCorp

Deanna M. Mulligan, president and CEO of the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America

Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo

Phebe Novakovic, former intelligence officer, now chairwoman and CEO of General Dynamics

Neri Oxman, designer and professor at the MIT Media Lab, leading the Mediated Matter research group

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Penny Pennington, managing partner of Edward Jones Investments

Patti Poppe, president and CEO of CMS Energy

Kira Radinsky, eBay director of data science and chief scientist Israel (former SalesPredict CTO)

Teresa Rasmussen, CEO of Thrivent

Rihanna, (Robyn Rihanna Fenty) singer, style icon, philanthropist and makeup entrepreneur

Ginni Rometty, chairman, president and CEO of IBM

Lori J. Ryerkerk, president and CEO of Celanese Corp

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook

Anne-Marie Slaughter, international lawyer and foreign policy analyst, president and CEO of New America

Jill Soltau, former CEO of Jo-Ann Fabrics, now CEO of JCPenney

Lisa Su, electrical engineer and CEO and president of Advanced Micro Devices

Adi Tatarko, CEO and co-founder of Houzz

Kathy J. Warden, CEO and president of Northrop Grumman

Joey Wat, CEO of Yum China Holdings

Meg Whitman, CEO of short-form mobile video platform Quibi, former president and CEO of Hewlett Packard

Mary Winston, interim CEO of Bed, Bath and Beyond

Anne E. Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of personal genomics company 23andMe

Janet Yellen, former chair of the Federal Reserve, now an economist at the Brookings Institution

With contributions from Joseph P. Bailey, Wedad J. Elmaghraby, Sara Herald, David Kass, Elinda F. Kiss, Henry Lucas, Wendy W. Moe, Paulo Prochno, Nicholas Seybert, and Emanuel Zur.