Palanor reads where the leaders of public companies went to school from what their own SEC filings say, and where founders behind private raises went from open data. Everything is counted in people, with the filing each degree came from.
What's covered
- Public-company leaders: the CEOs, executive officers and directors of the S&P 500, Russell 1000 and S&P MidCap 400, from each company's latest proxy statement (DEF 14A), and the management of companies that listed since 2024, from their final IPO prospectus.
- The S&P 500 over time: the members on 1 July of each year from 2014, read point in time (the index as it stood that day, not today's members looked back), each with the proxy in force that day.
- Founders: people a Form D lists as executive officers, directors or promoters of a venture-style raise since 2015, matched to Wikidata.
How a degree is read
- Fixed rules read biographies: "Mr. Brown has a B.S. from Villanova University", "She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School", or an Education list on a director card. When a card prints the name after the biography, Palanor only credits the list to the person the card's own text names.
- A model reads only the biographies the rules could not. Its answer is kept only when the person is one the filing profiles and the school's name appears word for word in the filing.
- Trusteeships, professorships, executive programs, certificates, honorary degrees and "attended" never count.
- Schools are matched to the Research Organization Registry (ROR). Business, law and medical schools count toward their university (Wharton toward Pennsylvania). A name shared by two institutions matches neither, unless exactly one of them is in the United States.
- The CEO is the officer who signs the principal-executive certification on the 10-K.
- Where no filing states a leader's school, it can come from Wikidata (CC0), only when the person's name and their company both match, the company by its SEC CIK. Those are marked Wikidata on the person's page. Wikidata's "educated at" can include study that did not end in a degree (an executive program, a transfer), so its records are a little less precise than the filings' (see the hand check).
- Before publishing, random samples of 100 records (drawn across rules, cards, the model, Wikidata and Form D) were checked by hand against the filings and Wikidata. The first check found the school right in 96, the person in 98 and the degree level in 95; the rules were fixed for every error it found, and a fresh sample of 100 then had the school and the person right in all 100 and the degree level in 99.
Coverage
Many proxy statements print no education, and older ones print it less often. Every count is of leaders whose school is known (from a filing or, failing that, Wikidata), and each page says how many that is. The coverage signals (leaders.sp500.*.known_share) track it year by year.
Founders are matched to Wikidata only when both their name and their company match exactly (by SEC CIK when Wikidata has one). Most founders are not in Wikidata, so the matched set is small, about one in several hundred, and leans to well-known founders. The founders chart is labelled as known-alma-mater coverage and is not comparable with commercial startup databases.
Where to find it
- Universities (palanor.com/universities, and inside Palanor): universities by the current leaders and founders they educated, with charts. Each university's page lists its current CEOs, executive officers, directors and Form D founders.
- People pages list a person's degrees (each linked to its filing), the companies whose filings name them and any Form D raises. Names and degrees only; no contact details. Only executive officers of covered public companies are indexed by search engines; directors' and founders' pages are not.
- Company pages show where the company's current leaders went to school.
- Entity Screener: the Leader educated at filter finds companies with a current CEO, executive officer or director from a university.
- Signals: for S&P 500 CEOs, executive officers and directors, the MBA share and Ivy League share (of those with a known school), the coverage, and per university the number of people; for founders, per university counts since 2015 and the coverage rate. Annual, from 2014 (founders from 2015).
How fresh it is
New proxy statements are read every day (most arrive March to May); the S&P 500 year is added each July. The founder match is rerun when the Form D data sets and Wikidata are refreshed.
Sources
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR: proxy statements, 10-K certifications, IPO prospectuses and the Form D data sets (public domain). Research Organization Registry, ror.org (CC0). Wikidata (CC0). Report errors to support@palanor.com.
Related: [Entity Screener](/help/modules/entity-screener)