In baseball parlance, General Mills executive Dana McNabb will enter the on-deck circle on June 1 as the food giant’s chief operating officer.

It’s unclear whether she’ll come up to bat—at some point—as the next CEO of General Mills.

But right now she stands the best chance of joining a tiny club of Minnesota women who lead Fortune 500 companies. From mid-2019 through early 2025, the club had the same three members.

Beth Ford became CEO of Land O’Lakes in August 2018. A few months later, Terry Rasmussen took the helm at Thrivent. In June 2019, Corie Barry succeeded Hubert Joly as Best Buy’s CEO.

The club finally expanded to four members in April 2025, when Gunjan Kedia was promoted to CEO of U.S. Bancorp. Club membership will drop back down to three women on Oct. 31 when Jason Bonfig succeeds Barry as CEO.

These are the types of leadership moves that are watched carefully by professional women who’d like to see more women leading Fortune 500 and public companies.

Among Minnesota’s 17 Fortune 500 companies, four are led by women. That’s 23.5% or a long way from gender parity.

Following Beth Ford’s path

McNabb’s scenario is exciting for women’s leadership advocates because she’s embarking on the same path that Ford took before her board named her CEO of Land O’Lakes.

Chris Policinski was CEO of Land O’Lakes when Ford joined the agricultural cooperative in January 2012 as chief supply chain and operations officer. Ford assumed profit and loss responsibility for two of its three main businesses, Dairy Foods and Animal Nutrition, in November 2015. Ford was given the P&L leadership responsibility for the third business unit, Crop Inputs, two years later.

The Land O’Lakes board got to watch Ford lead all the company’s businesses, and the directors were impressed with her performance. Ford was named CEO in 2018.

McNabb now gets her own chance to excel in the demanding role of COO. She’s already demonstrated her leadership acumen through numerous roles since joining General Mills in 1999.

“In addition to her current accountabilities leading North America Retail and North America Pet, McNabb will add responsibility for all General Mills’ operating segments and key operating functions, including the International and North America Foodservice segments and the Digital & Technology, Innovation, Technology & Quality, Strategy and Growth, and Supply Chain teams,” General Mills said on May 6 in announcing McNabb’s promotion to COO.

In a major vote of confidence for McNabb, the company announced she also will be joining the General Mills board of directors.

“Dana is a disciplined, strategic leader and results-driven operator with a proven passion for our brands and consumers,” Jeff Harmening, General Mills CEO and chairman, said in a May 6 statement. “As someone who looks ahead and acts with urgency, Dana has led an initiative to reinvigorate our brands by strengthening their remarkability. She is exceptionally well suited to lead our global operations and restore profitable growth for General Mills and our shareholders.”

Harmening had worked for General Mills for 23 years when in May 2017 the board of directors announced that he was being promoted from president and COO to CEO.

From 2016 through mid-2018, seven of Minnesota’s 15 largest public companies announced CEO departures. In 2018, Bill George, former Medtronic CEO, told Twin Cities Business that “we’re going through major generational change with CEOs in the Twin Cities.”

George, who is an executive education fellow at the Harvard Business School, maintains that a CEO is well-positioned to succeed when the person was promoted from within the company. In those cases, George said, the new CEO, who possesses years of experience within the corporation, is likely to have the “vision to understand where the company needs to go in a new era.”

When the seven companies got new CEOs in the 2016 to mid-2018 time frame, two were external hires—Mark Gross at Supervalu and Mark Walchirk at Patterson Cos. Gross was hired to do a turnaround in the grocery business, while Walchirk was charged with addressing issues within the dental business.

Male executives succeeding male CEOs

General Mills and four other Minnesota public companies had smoother CEO successions as their boards selected internal candidates to become CEO.

Harmening, who had been in the No. 2 job at General Mills, succeeded CEO Ken Powell. Andy Cecere was promoted to CEO of U.S. Bancorp, succeeding Richard Davis, one of the most prominent Minnesota CEOs in the past 25 years.

In September 2017, David Wichmann, UnitedHealth Group’s president, became CEO of the huge corporation. UnitedHealth Group had seen tremendous growth under Stephen Hemsley, who had been CEO since 2006. Because of a spate of problems facing UnitedHealth Group, Hemsley returned to the CEO job in May 2025, succeeding Andrew Witty.

Michael Roman became CEO of 3M on July 1, 2018. His predecessor was Inge Thulin. At Hormel, James Snee followed Jeff Ettinger to the CEO’s job on Oct. 31, 2016. Ettinger returned to Hormel on July 14, 2025, to serve as interim CEO for 15 months.

In all five cases where the No. 2 executive was named the CEO, a male executive was promoted to succeed a male CEO.

Kweilin Ellingrud, senior partner for McKinsey & Company and an expert on gender equality, maintains that one of the biggest impediments to women’s advancement in corporate America is a lack of profit and loss experience.

Ellingrud, who is based in Minneapolis, argues that women need to get P&L experience relatively early in their careers, so they can progress through the corporate pipeline to the C-suite.

“For Fortune 500 CEOs who are promoted from within, every year between 95 and 100% of them are promoted from running the biggest P&L [business unit] or the second-biggest P&L,” Ellingrud told Twin Cities Business in 2024. Ellingrud and two McKinsey colleagues explained the roadblocks and opportunities for women in a book published last year that’s called The Broken Rung.

In McNabb’s case at General Mills, she’s successfully navigated the career ladder at the huge corporation. Now many women in workplaces across Minnesota and the U.S. will be watching for news that McNabb’s reached the top rung.