Below is our list of the most notable career crashes of 2024, organized in alphabetical order. We have also compiled a list of the most notable career comebacks (read the full list here) featuring business leaders who, thanks to political alignments, stock comebacks and multimillion dollar investments are once again, back at the top. Readers may recognize names like Adam Neumann, who made our 2019 career crashes list, and Elon Musk, whose failure in leadership has earned him mentions in both the 2022 and 2023 lists.
Joe Biden
After one term, the 82-year-old president will soon be moving out of the White House. Despite his enviable economic track record and impressive stock market performance, President Biden’s re-election bid was mired in controversy as both voters and members of the Democratic party called for him to step down. A dismal performance in the year’s first presidential debate marked the beginning of the end for Biden. This led to Vice-President Kamala Harris stepping up as the Democratic presidential nominee and losing decisively.
Dave Calhoun
When Dave Calhoun testified in front of lawmakers in June over safety problems with the airplane maker’s fixture 737 Max, he started off by apologizing to the families of those killed in Boeing airplane crashes, before detailing the safety failures in its manufacturing process and admitting company whistleblowers were retaliated against. The 68-year-old CEO had by then already announced he’d be stepping down by the end of the year, but by July a new CEO, Kelly Oterberg, was already in charge.
Calhoun, who started his career at Boeing as a director and rose to be non-executive chairman, was brought in as CEO in 2020 to turn things around at Boeing following two deadly crashes that killed 346 people. But the company has continued to struggle with safety and manufacturing issues. During the first half of this year alone, a Boeing 737 Max 9 plane door blew open mid-flight in January, sparking Senate hearings, grounded flights and a Federal Aviation Administration audit that found that Boeing failed to comply with quality control requirements. A company whistleblower was found dead in March. By July, Calhoun had announced he would be retiring by years-end and the company pled guilty to one charge of defrauding the American government over safety issues in the 737 Max, though the deal was rejected by a Texas federal judge. Boeing’s woes have continued. Last weekend one of its 737-800 passenger jets operated by South Korea’s Jeju Air crashed as it was attempting to land.
Sean Combs (P. Diddy)
Hip-hop mogul Sean Combs’, a.k.a. P. Diddy’s, career has crashed following a slew of sexual abuse and sex trafficking claims. Combs was first arrested in September after he was federally charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution in New York City. He pleaded not guilty, and appealed the decision multiple times. But Combs spent this Christmas in a federal jail in Brooklyn, where he will remain until his May trial date.
Just last year, the three-time Grammy-winner won MTV’s Global Icon Awards. At his peak, rap superstar Comb’s professional portfolio included the record label Bad Boy Records and several lifestyle businesses, including fashion and fragrance lines, a Ciroc vodka partnership and a TV network. All in all, Forbes estimated him to be worth $740 million in 2019. As of June, after paying for legal fees and the reputation hit to his brands, Forbes estimates his worth at $400 million.
Matt Gaetz
Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, 42, was poised to be the top law enforcement officer in the country when president-elect Donald Trump nominated him for Attorney General of the United States. It was a big step-up for the former congressman, if short lived. His nomination was overshadowed by an ongoing House Ethics investigation over claims he had sex with a minor and illegal drug use. A week after, he withdrew from the nomination. The scandal didn’t stop there – the ethics committee released its report on Gaetz on December 23, where they found he paid underage girls for sex and bought illegal drugs. Gaetz resigned from the House last month after Trump’s nomination, and has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Yet as much as his political career has crashed, Gaetz is now looking beyond Washington D.C. He’s getting his own show on the conservative One America News Network, a weeknight talk show starting in January.
Claudine Gay
The former Harvard University president announced her resignation on January 2 after facing mounting pressure from lawmakers and university donors to step down or be fired. Gay’s handling of antisemitism on campus came under heavy fire during a tense congressional hearing on campus antisemitism in 2023, when a group of 72 House Republicans and two House Democrats demanded Harvard fire her “immediately.” Billionaires Bill Ackman and Len Blavatnik joined in on the call for her resignation, with Blavatnik putting a pause on his donations to the school. Gay also faced criticisms over allegations of plagiarism when conservative scholar Carol Swain accused Gay of stealing her work without an appropriate citation.
Gay––who was Harvard’s first Black president and only the second Black woman to lead an ivy league institution––took office two days after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action for college admissions. Gay’s appointment itself was marred with allegations that she got the job because of her skin color. Despite the criticism she received, prominent activists came to Gay’s defense.
Emad Mostaque
Emad Mostaque’s Stability AI was an early juggernaut, but thanks to mismanagement including wild overspending, Mostaque has lost virtually all control over the company he founded in 2019––Mostaque resigned as CEO in June and was bought out from being the majority shareholder in October.
Mostaque rose to fame after the company’s Stable Diffusion, a generative AI model that creates images, videos and even music out of text, became an early hit with AI users. But his startup’s rise was built on a series of exaggerations and misleading claims that continued after he raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation for Stability Diffusion. Employees and investors lost confidence in Mostaque’s leadership after a series of failed promises to build bespoke AI models for nation states, false claims that it had special deals with companies like Amazon and a disastrous meeting with Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. Plus, there was also what former employees called his lax approach to preventing the tool from producing such things as child sexual abuse imagery. Ultimately, his start-up ran out of money and key researchers tendered their resignations.
Pat Gelsinger
After 3.5 years of continued underperformance, Pat Gelsinger is out as Intel’s CEO. While Intel’s chipmaker rivals Nvidia and AMD have cashed-in on the artificial intelligence boom, Intel has been lagging behind. In October, during what would turn out to be Gelsinger’s last earnings call, the company reported a staggering $16.6 billion in net loss, much higher than the $1 billion analysts forecast and its largest quarterly loss ever. Gelsinger also oversaw Intel’s worst day on Wall Street in 50 years, when it suspended its dividend and announced a 15% workforce reduction over the summer.
To make matters worse, analysts are projecting Intel to report its first annual loss since 1986 this year, and a group of Intel shareholders are now suing Gelsinger over mismanagement of Intel Foundry, the chipmaking unit the company spun-off into a subsidiary in September, and are demanding three years of salary backpay.
Karen Lynch
One of the most powerful women in American business is out. The former boss of CVS was also the highest-ranked female CEO of a Fortune 500 company, measured by sales, and was ranked 6th on Forbes 2023 list of Most Powerful Women. But declining sales, a struggling health insurance business and slowing retail pharmacy purchases have caused the stock to hit an over 10-year low. Wall Street investors were already losing confidence in Lynch’s leadership by August, following a period of consistently downgrading earnings expectations. By October, Lynch had stepped down as CEO. She’s been replaced by pharmacy benefits executive David Joyner.
Lynch’s leadership skills and hiring expertise have also taken a hit as seven C-suite executives, all of whom she brought on in Februrary 2021 upon taking the helm of CVS, left in the spring of 2023.
Dan Schneider
Nickelodeon producer Dan Schneider came under heavy criticism after a March docuseries by Investigation Discovery, “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,’’ revealed a number of allegations over a toxic workplace culture. The show interviewed former child stars and crew members who allege the producer behind hit shows like “Zoey 101” and “iCarly” ran a toxic workplace and was inappropriate with young actors. Schneider apologized for his behavior, but has since sued Warner Bros and the producers of the film for defamation, stating that the documentary’s analysis of the workplace were a “hit job” and had falsely stated or implied that he “sexually abused the children who worked on his television shows.” Schneider’s latest piece of work––a movie based on the Nickelodeon TV series he created “Henry Danger”––is set to come out on January 17th, but he’s not announced any new projects.
Carlos Tavares
The former Stellantis CEO abruptly resigned in December over differences with his board, according to his departure announcement. Tavares had been head of the Italian-American automaker, which owns key brands including Jeep, Ram and Chrysler since January 2021, when he led a merger with French automaker PSA Group and Fiat Chrysler. Tavares admits he made “arrogant mistakes” during his tenure in the U.S. market, including cost cuts and hiking Jeep and Citroen base prices. Tavares was criticized by executives, partners and his own employees for being too focused on short-term profit margins to the detriment of relationships with suppliers, unions and dealers, according to CNBC.
Tavares’ profits-first focus led to multiple workforce reductions and a strained relationship with its unionized workers. In September the United Auto Workers union threatened to strike, alleging the automaker was not fulfilling terms of its 2023 labor contract, a move which the company denied. Stellantis has cut at least 2,500 jobs this year, including letting go of 400 facility workers in Detroit, 2,450 in Michigan and offering voluntary buyouts to its salaried workforce. Shortly before resigning, Tavares announced Stellantis would lay off 1,100 Ohio Jeep plant employees, a move that has since been rolled back by the company.