Richard Gonzalez

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Richard Gonzalez

Age: 60

Occupation: Chairman and CEO, AbbVie

What a way to start your first CEO job: with revelations from Crain’s that you never earned a master’s or even a bachelor’s degree, despite claims to the contrary on your employer-disseminated bio. (A spokesperson called the misstatements the result of a “clerical error.”)

But bang-up results have a way of making people forget. AbbVie, the company created in January 2013 when Abbott Laboratories spun off its pharma development business, reported that the arthritis drug Humira rang up $10.7 billion in sales last year. AbbVie now boasts a bigger market cap than Abbott’s ($75.9 billion versus $56.2 billion). But one thing can’t be quantified: the power to ease millions of people’s pain.