Good morning. Lila MacLellan here, filling in for Sheryl today. Jane Fraser, CEO of Citigroup, is a widely respected leader, but she recently told me about the chief executive she admires. “Julie is one of the top leaders in the corporate world, period,” she said of Accenture CEO Julie Sweet. “I mean, there aren’t many other people who can come close.”
“She’s very clear-eyed; she’s always curious,” Fraser also told me. “I think this is probably what will give her incredible longevity as a leader.”
As I write in a profile that also appears in the latest edition of Fortune magazine, Accenture’s results support Fraser’s views. Sweet took control of the tech-forward consulting giant in 2019, leaving her post as CEO of North America to take the corner office. Accenture’s market cap has grown from $90 billion in 2018, the year before Sweet was named global CEO, to $149 billion today. And in 2018, Accenture recorded annual revenue of $41 billion. Last year, it was $65 billion.
Some of that growth can be attributed to Accenture’s famously aggressive acquisitions strategy, which once earned the company the title of “world’s most acquisitive firm.” Indeed, Sweet first joined Accenture in 2010 as general counsel and was recruited because of her career as an attorney who led large and often innovative M&A deals.
But Sweet’s leadership style—shaped by her unique history—also explains her success at the firm and Accenture’s eye-popping organic growth. As I learned, Sweet managed to stay ahead of several trends, including cloud migration, partly by studying emerging technology, taking in many points of view, and then acting quickly when she sees an opportunity. To Fraser’s point, Sweet’s curiosity and openness arguably allowed her to see the rise of generative AI long before ChatGPT arrived. Despite current headwinds in its federal contracting business, analysts say Sweet has now positioned Accenture to take advantage of a coming massive cycle of AI adoption as some of the globe’s largest businesses look for assistance. Even if generative AI itself eats away at some of the demand for Accenture’s IT services, as one analyst suggested, companies will keep coming to Accenture for ever-more-complicated AI projects.
“We’ve already been leading,” Sweet told me, describing the company’s focus on AI, “but we are doubling down on that because we know that the unlock for clients in difficult times is scaling the impact of AI.” Read the full profile here.
When Match Group released its latest earnings this week, its CEO Spencer Rascoff boasted that Hinge, one of its flagship dating apps, was “crushing it,” with growth accelerating despite reports that young users are breaking up with dating apps. Revenue was up 25% compared to the same quarter the prior year, and users had flocked to the site. Previously languishing Tinder was also showing signs of a turnaround. Match’s stock popped 12% that day.
But the day before that earnings call, a Match Group shareholder named Ned Habedus filed a lawsuit against the company’s board of directors, including Rascoff and former CEO Bernard Kim, that raises questions about the company’s leadership and the board’s priorities in the wake of a bombshell investigation published earlier this year.
That media report, “Dating App Cover-Up: How Tinder, Hinge, and Their Corporate Owner Keep Rape Under Wraps,” by the Pulitzer Center and Calmatters, co-published by The Guardian and The 19th, grew out of 18 months of reporting and is widely excerpted in the new lawsuit, which was filed in a federal court in central California.
Quoting the reporting, the lawsuit alleges that “‘Match Group has known… which users have been reported for drugging, assaulting, or raping their dates since at least 2016, according to internal company documents. Since 2019, Match Group’s central database has recorded every user reported for rape and assault across its entire suite of apps; by 2022, the system, known as Sentinel, was collecting hundreds of troubling incidents every week, company insiders say.’”
Match did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment on the new lawsuit. Nor did its former CEO Bernhard Kim. When the investigation was published, the company told the media outlets that it “vigorously combats violence,” according to the report. “We will always work to invest in and improve our systems, and search for ways to help our users stay safe, both online and when they connect in real life,” Match Group said in a statement at the time. It also said: “We take every report of misconduct seriously, and vigilantly remove and block accounts that have violated our rules regarding this behavior.”
However, Match Group has not yet produced a promised report that would give all stakeholders, including customers, a clear sense of the risks facing users. And some accused offenders found ways to stay on the site, allowing them to continue trawling the websites for potential targets—sometimes for months or years—even after their crimes had been reported to Match.
The complaint also claims, again citing the investigative report, “In one particularly outrageous example… cardiologist Stephen Matthews retained access to Match’s platforms as late as January 25, 2023, despite a user reporting him for sexual assault on September 28, 2020. Match only removed his profile after he was arrested by law enforcement.” In 2024, Matthews was convicted by a Colorado court of drugging 10 women he met through dating apps Hinge and Tinder, and sexually assaulting eight of them. He was sentenced to serve 158 years in prison.
An attorney for the plaintiff declined to comment and pointed Fortune to the complaint.
Match Group, a $8.8 billion company, owns more than a dozen apps, including Tinder, Hinge, Match, Meetic, OkCupid, and Plenty Of Fish. The lawsuit seeks damages from the executives and board members named for breaches of fiduciary duty, securities law violations, and unjust enrichment. It also calls for reforms to corporate governance and risk oversight, restitution of executive pay, and other costs incurred by the company.
It is a derivative lawsuit, in which a shareholder brings claims against leadership on behalf of the company. Any payments ordered by the court go to the company, and shareholders benefit indirectly. (Typically, directors have insurance policies that will cover such payments. If the misconduct is not covered by the policies, however, board members are obliged to cover the costs themselves.)
The Pulitzer Center report opens with a harrowing and detailed account from one of Matthews’ victims, who says that when she visited Matthews at his home, he drugged and assaulted her. She was able to escape and get into an Uber, and after the effects of the drug had worn off, she reported the incident to Match. At the time of that assault, two other women had already reported Matthews to the site, according to the report.
In several cases, the lawsuit compares what the company disclosed in securities filings and during analyst calls with what the Pulitzer Center’s report alleged that the company already knew. For example, the legal filing states that the company revealed falling monthly active user figures for Tinder in November 2024 without disclosing what the plaintiff alleges was the real reason the app was losing customers: the long-running safety issues outlined in the exposé published a few months later.
“Competition or economic considerations did not cause the rapid decline in Tinder’s MAU,” the complaint says. “It faltered because users had grown tired of meeting abusers and predators on the platform.”
“Users also were frustrated by the Company’s failure to curtail this nefarious conduct,” it continues, “which was known to the Company’s leadership.”
Nearly three years ago, Niki Mock, founder of the nonprofit FurnishHopeDC, posted a message on Nextdoor, explaining that she was looking for a gently used bunk bed for a low-income family in Washington, D.C. Not having enough beds meant the family was sleeping on the floor. She recalls receiving a response: “I’ll buy one.”
The message had CEO-style brevity because it came from one: Julie Sweet, chief executive of the consulting firm Accenture. Sweet spends her days advising some of the world’s most influential corporate leaders and running a company with more than 770,000 employees. And on many days, she also makes time for FurnishHopeDC, a community organization that gives new and gently used household goods to families in need of them who live in D.C.’s Ward 7 and Ward 8.
FurnishHopeDC has outfitted more than 900 homes since it launched five years ago; in the past three years, Sweet has been responsible for more than half of the homes the organization has served. She donates at least 10 twin beds, including mattresses and frames, per month to the charity, and has purchased more than 400 bedding bags, which each cost more than $200. Inside these bags are duvets or comforters, covers, sheet sets, pillowcases, pillows, Squishmallows (for kids’ beds), and throws. Sweet also donates new high-end beauty products, toys, and pots and pans, but most of her energy goes into bedding. “The sheets that she gives us, I swear, are higher quality than the sheets I sleep on,” says Mock.
Accenture CEO Julie Sweet has focused some of her philanthropy on giving bedding to families who need it in the D.C. area.
Photograph by Mackenzie Stroh for Fortune
Sweet’s focus on bedding is not random or merely a reflection of her personal obsession. The CEO, who grew up in a working-class household in California, sees bedding—and a good night’s sleep—as “critical for adults and kids to be able to be successful,” she told Fortune. A lovely, inviting bed, she said, gives people “a place of refuge each day.”
“Often these families live in cramped quarters, and the only place they can call their own is their bed,” Sweet explained in an email. “Having a good quality bed allows them to sleep better, which is so important for health and being able to have a positive mindset and the strength to do the very hard things they must do.”
The sleep divide is real
Over the past several years, sleep has become a market worth hundreds of billions globally, populated by high-tech mattresses, data-collecting wearables, sleep apnea devices, and more. One-percenters who are busy optimizing every aspect of their diet and lifestyle with an eye to achieving more or living forever are happy to splurge on big-ticket sleep buys. And where CEOs once bragged about getting by with four hours of REM, they have now taken to the Gen Z trend of “sleep-maxxing.”
However, research has shown that not getting enough sleep is a larger problem for people who earn less and live in low-income neighborhoods, not stressed-out white-collar workers and executives. The reasons for what some call the “great sleep divide” are varied and complex, but studies suggest that the culprits include stress, being unemployed, or working multiple jobs. Living in crowded circumstances, and in districts with high levels of light and noise pollution and fewer green spaces, can also play a role.
Research has validated a connection between cognitive function and good sleep habits. If you’re extremely sleep deprived, your brain functions about as well as someone who is drunk, which does not bode well for one’s performance at work or school. Having too little sleep can also tank a person’s mood and motivation. Over the long term, good sleep habits are correlated with healthy aging, and poor sleep is now seen as a risk factor for chronic illnesses like heart disease and, for adults in midlife, dementia.
Meanwhile, the high cost of buying multiple beds and bedding can be a barrier to families outfitting a home, especially for those moving out of homelessness, who are among the families Mock’s nonprofit serves. This year, tariffs appear to be driving the costs of bedding even higher, since the vast majority of bed linens are manufactured overseas.
Better than money
Sweet shops online for bedding to donate and keeps an eye out for sales, Mock explains. “When she sees one, she calls and says, ‘How many of these would you like?’” When President Trump revealed his tariff plans, Sweet got in touch, wondering what she should buy before tariffs pushed prices higher.
The CEO is the only donor who always gives the organization brand-new sheets, and the only one selecting prints featuring unicorns, cars, and rocket ships for children, and lush colors for adults. “I can tell she really enjoys that part, picking out the different designs and then imagining what child is getting what,” Mock says. “I have no idea when she has time to do this, because each bag is different.”
The nonprofit fields messages from Sweet at all hours of the day, even when it’s 2 or 3 a.m. in the time zone where Sweet is traveling.
Mock says she and her partner Adriane Herbert sometimes have to explain to people how to use a duvet and duvet cover, because they haven’t had one before, and she has had to persuade Sweet to stop including dust ruffles, which can allow bedbugs, mice, and cockroaches to travel too easily.
Every time Mock is there to see a new bed put together, she snaps a photo and sends it to Sweet to show the real person on the receiving end.
“This is so much better than getting money,” says Mock. “She’s putting her time, effort, and obviously, money into it, but it’s really her heart and soul.”
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