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The Walt Disney Company has had eight chief executives, and Walt Disney was not one of them. Walt ran the studio as its president and then as board chairman, and he died in 1966 without ever carrying the title, which Disney did not use in his lifetime. The company’s current chief executive is Josh D’Amaro, who took the job on March 18, 2026.
What the list underneath actually records is a century of the same unresolved argument — whether Disney belongs to the showman or to the operator. It has almost never found both in the same person.
LIST OF WALT DISNEY CEOS & PRESIDENTS THROUGH TIME
Eight people have formally held the chief executive job at The Walt Disney Company, and because Bob Iger held it twice the table below runs to nine tenures. Walt Disney is listed first because every reader expects him there, not because he ever carried the title.
| Leader | As CEO | Other titles held | Remembered for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Walt Disney | Never held the title | President 1923–1945, chairman 1945–1960 | Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Disneyland |
| Roy O. Disney | 1929–1971, though the title came late | President 1945–1968, chairman 1964–1971 | Paying for Walt’s ideas, and finishing Walt Disney World |
| Donn Tatum | 1971–1976 | President 1968–1971, chairman 1971–1980 | First leader from outside the family |
| Card Walker | 1976–1983 | President 1971–1980, chairman 1980–1983 | Opening EPCOT in 1982 |
| Ron W. Miller | 1983–1984 | President 1980–1984 | The shortest tenure, and Touchstone Pictures |
| Michael Eisner | 1984–2005 | Chairman 1984–2004 | The Disney Renaissance, ABC and ESPN |
| Bob Iger | 2005–2020 | President and COO 2000–2005, chairman 2012–2020 | Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Fox, Disney+ |
| Bob Chapek | 2020–2022 | — | Shuttered parks, and a 33-month tenure |
| Bob Iger (again) | 2022–2026 | Senior advisor from 2026 | Coming back to choose a successor |
| Josh D’Amaro | 2026–present | Chairman, Disney Experiences 2020–2026 | Disney’s first chief executive since 2005 not named Bob |
PRESIDENT, CEO, OR CHAIRMAN? WHY EVERY DISNEY LIST DISAGREES
No two published lists of Disney’s leaders match, and the reason is that Disney ran three separate job titles on three separate tracks for most of its history. President, chairman and chief executive were different chairs, often occupied by different men at the same time, and the CEO title was applied to the early years retroactively.
Walt Disney was president from the company’s founding until September 1945, when he handed the job to his brother Roy to get out from under the paperwork, according to the Walt Disney Family Museum. He gave up the board chairmanship in 1960 as well and finished his career as a director and executive producer. He never wanted the administrative half of the company, and he arranged things so he never had to hold it.
Roy O. Disney is where the lists break apart. Wikipedia dates his CEO tenure from 1929; Disney’s own D23 archive gives him president 1945–1968 and chairman 1964–1971 and never calls him chief executive at all. The first Disney leader the company’s own materials describe in those words is Donn Tatum, in 1971. Both versions are defensible, which is why our table says 1929 and adds that the title came late.
The presidency then ran on its own track for decades — Tatum, Card Walker, Ron Miller, Frank Wells, Michael Eisner, Michael Ovitz and Bob Iger all held it, and two of them, Wells and Ovitz, never became chief executive. The title then sat empty from 2012 until Dana Walden took it on March 18, 2026 as president and chief creative officer, a role Disney created for her.
WALT DISNEY (FOUNDER OF DISNEY)
Walt Disney co-founded the studio in 1923 and ran it as president until September 1945, then as board chairman until 1960. He died on December 15, 1966, of circulatory collapse brought on by lung cancer, at 65. He was never Disney’s chief executive, because in his lifetime Disney had no such job.
What is Disney without Walt Disney?
Well, he wasn’t a CEO, but he was the primary co-founder of the Walt Disney Company. You can thank Walt Disney for pioneering the American animation industry and drawing a mouse that has outlived him by sixty years.
The guy was nothing but a creative genius.
He faced failures like going bankrupt early on. Still, Disney persevered with innovations like the first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie. He was a real grinder.
His drive to push creative boundaries led to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the first animated feature films.
Beyond animation, Disney expanded into live-action films, television, and theme parks, though projects like Disneyland were initially called “Walt’s Folly.”
The arrangement he left behind is the one the company has been re-staging ever since: Walt made the pictures, Roy found the money, and neither pretended he could do the other’s job.
ROY O. DISNEY (CO-FOUNDER OF DISNEY)
Walt’s brother apparently had better business sense.
Roy O. Disney co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with Walt in 1923 and spent the next forty-eight years running its business end. He became president in September 1945 and held the job until 1968, then chaired the board until his death. Most lists also credit him as Disney’s first chief executive, an honor applied to him years after the fact.
Though initially hesitant about Walt’s creative ambitions, Roy handled the business. He found ways to finance early Disney films and projects when banks refused. These were tough times for Disney.
His pragmatic support helped make Walt’s dreams like Disneyland possible and your next vacation of standing in lines all day a reality.
Roy oversaw Disney’s corporate growth for decades and deferred his own retirement to supervise the construction of Walt Disney World. More lines, why not.
After Walt died, Roy postponed his retirement again to lead the transition. He got Walt Disney World open on October 1, 1971, then had a stroke and died on December 20 that year, at 78. He had run out of reasons to keep postponing.
WHO TOOK OVER DISNEY AFTER WALT DIED?
Roy O. Disney took over, and after him the company left the family for good. When Roy died in 1971 the board reached past both bloodlines and handed the chairmanship and the chief executive job to Donn Tatum, an entertainment lawyer who had joined Disney in 1956 as a production business manager.
Nobody inherited Disney, because by 1966 there was nothing to inherit. Walt Disney Productions had been listed on the New York Stock Exchange since November 12, 1957, so control traveled through the boardroom rather than through anyone’s will, and no relative held a block of stock large enough to decide anything.
Walt’s son-in-law Ron Miller did eventually get the top job, in 1983. It lasted nineteen months. That is the closest the family came to reclaiming the company, and the way it ended is the reason no Disney has run Disney since.
Nobody owns Disney now in the way the question implies. Its 2026 proxy statement names exactly two shareholders above 5% — Vanguard at 8.5% and BlackRock at 6.9%, both index managers holding it on behalf of other people’s retirement accounts. Every director and executive officer at the company, all fifteen of them combined, holds less than 1%. No Disney appears in the tables at all. BlackRock, for its part, has had one CEO since 1988 — a longer run than any Disney chief since Walt.
DONN TATUM
Donn Tatum became Chairman and CEO after Roy O. Disney’s death in 1971, becoming the first non-Disney family member to lead Walt Disney Productions.
The board had a family option and passed on it. Roy’s son Roy E. Disney was in the building, Walt’s son-in-law Ron Miller was rising through production, and the directors handed the company to a lawyer instead.
Donn had been President and a key part of Disney management under the founders. Tatum joined Disney in 1956 as a production business manager and was made president in 1968, when Roy gave the title up. Tatum provided continuity during this transition period following Walt and Roy’s passing. There is nothing better than a steady hand.
He led the company for most of the 1970s as Disney’s films, theme parks, and other media grew globally. Yes, growth can be good.
Walt Disney World had opened eleven weeks before he took the chair, so Tatum inherited it rather than delivered it. What he owned outright was EPCOT — the planning, the budget, and the decision to build the thing at all. Love anything that sounds like an apricot.
Let’s say Tatum wasn’t as creative as Walt. While some criticize Tatum for a creative decline in Disney animation during this era, he maintained Disney’s business success. You have to keep the money flowing in somehow.
In 1976, Tatum passed the CEO title to Card Walker to focus full-time on Chairman duties before retiring in 1980.
He stayed on the board until 1992 and died of cancer on May 31, 1993, at 80. Within a decade of his retirement the company he had steadied was nearly taken apart by corporate raiders, which is a harsh verdict on a steady hand.
CARD WALKER
Walker had been with the company for a long time before taking over the reins. Esmond Cardon Walker started in the Disney mailroom in 1938, left for the Navy in 1941, came back, and became chief executive in 1976 — thirty-eight years from the post room to the top floor.
Walker provided operational leadership after serving as Disney’s President and COO throughout the 1970s. He also had business know-how during volatile economic conditions in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He was an operational marvel.
EPCOT opened on October 1, 1982, and it was Walker’s building in every sense — he pushed it through a decade of cost estimates that Walt had never lived to argue about. It finally opened. Disney’s own obituary for him credits him with three things: EPCOT, Tokyo Disneyland, and the Disney Channel.
Though some criticize Walker for allowing Disney’s animation quality and creativity to decline during this period, he maintained profitability. He expanded the theme parks and resorts division significantly. I’m sure Walt wouldn’t be happy, but hey, more money.
Walker stepped down as CEO in 1983 but continued serving as chairman until retiring later that year. Tokyo Disneyland opened that April, three months after he had handed the chief executive job to Ron Miller, and it opened on somebody else’s balance sheet — the park is owned and run under license by Japan’s Oriental Land Company, not by Disney. Walker died on November 28, 2005, at 89.
RON W. MILLER
The next man to take over was Ron Miller, who became CEO in February 1983. Let’s just say his tenure was short.
As Walt Disney’s son-in-law — he married Walt’s daughter Diane in 1954 — he rose up through the ranks to become Disney’s President in 1980.
However, Disney struggled creatively and financially through much of Miller’s presidency, damaging his standing despite efforts to boost feature animation and launch new ventures like Touchstone Pictures and Disney Channel. Creativity must not be genetic.
What finished him was a corporate raid. In March 1984 the financier Saul Steinberg began buying Disney stock at around $50 a share, and on June 11 the company bought him off — 4,198,333 shares at $70.83, or $297.4 million, plus $28 million toward his expenses. Steinberg walked away roughly $32 million richer for the trouble, Time reported. Disney had paid a stranger a fortune not to own it.
Miller resigned under board pressure in September 1984, weeks after Disney abandoned his $300 million bid for Gibson Greetings. He had been chief executive for nineteen months and was never chairman — that chair belonged to Raymond Watson, a name almost no list of Disney’s leaders includes. It had to be done.
MICHAEL EISNER
Brought in from Paramount in 1984, Eisner is widely credited with transforming Disney from a struggling studio into a thriving modern media conglomerate. This is the real OG before Bob Iger.
He became chairman and chief executive on September 22, 1984, and he did not arrive alone. Frank Wells came from Warner Bros. to be president and chief operating officer, and Jeffrey Katzenberg followed Eisner over from Paramount, where Eisner had been president and COO under Barry Diller. Disney had spent a year being hunted by raiders; it hired three people at once.
His first decade saw massive growth fueled by a string of hit animated films that composed the lucrative Disney Renaissance.
The creativity came back!
Eisner greatly expanded Disney’s media holdings with strategic acquisitions like ABC and ESPN in the 1990s while pioneering full-fledged movie sequels. This is how Disney got into the news and sports business.
By fiscal 2004 Disney was taking in more than $30 billion a year. That’s a lot of growth.
And this is where Steve Jobs shows up in the story. Disney’s animation declined in the 2000s amid increasing executive turmoil, with Pixar head Steve Jobs blaming Eisner’s micromanagement.
The unrest turned into a vote. At the March 2004 annual meeting, 43% of shareholders withheld their proxies from Eisner’s re-election to the board — a rebuke with no precedent at Disney. He lost the chairmanship on March 3, 2004, to the former senator George Mitchell, and stayed on as chief executive for another year and a half. Eisner left Disney on September 30, 2005, twenty-one years after he arrived.
THE MEN WHO ALMOST RAN DISNEY
Three men got close enough to the top of Disney to be remembered for not getting there. Their careers explain the company’s leadership better than the official list does, because each one changed who came next.
Frank Wells was president and chief operating officer from 1984 until his death, and he was the reason the Eisner years worked. Wells took the operations, Eisner took the pictures, and the arrangement lasted a decade. On April 3, 1994, Wells died in a helicopter crash in Nevada’s Ruby Mountains, coming back from a heli-skiing trip; the aircraft went down on takeoff and four of the five people aboard were killed. Eisner took the president’s title himself the following day, and never really replaced him.
Michael Ovitz was the Hollywood agent hired to try. He became president on October 1, 1995 and was gone about fifteen months later — fired, the Delaware courts later found, however politely it was worded. He left with roughly $38 million in cash plus three million options vesting immediately, a package the court put at about $130 million. Shareholders sued over the size of it and lost in 2005. Eisner ran the company without a number two for the eight years that followed.
Roy E. Disney, Roy O.’s son, never ran the company and twice decided who did. He quit the board in 1984 and helped force out Ron Miller; twenty years later he quit again and ran the “SaveDisney” campaign that produced the 43% no-confidence vote against Eisner. He was the closest thing Disney had to a conscience with share certificates.
BOB CHAPEK
Veteran Disney executive Bob Chapek was tapped as CEO on February 25, 2020, just as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted globally.
Bad times.
Facing unprecedented challenges, he oversaw temporary closures of Disney theme parks and delays of major films while also pushing the company’s streaming initiatives. And sad times.
However, Chapek drew criticism for public relations missteps amid controversy over Florida legislation, as well as frustration from employees over cost-cutting measures during the pandemic.
The earnings report on November 8, 2022 finished it. Disney’s streaming arm had lost $1.47 billion in a single quarter and $4 billion across the year, and the stock closed down 13% the next day — its worst day since 2001. The board met on Sunday, November 20, and replaced him that night with the man he had replaced.
Disney’s press release said Chapek “has stepped down.” The filing Disney sent the SEC the following morning said the company “exercised its right to terminate without cause the employment of Robert A. Chapek.” Both sentences describe the same evening. He had been chief executive for thirty-three months — not, despite the reputation, the shortest run in Disney’s history. Ron Miller still holds that.
BOB IGER
Bob Iger first became CEO on October 1, 2005, having impressively worked his way up from TV weatherman to head of ABC. The weather job lasted five months, in Ithaca, New York; he wanted to be an anchor and was not going to get there.
Now, that is impressive.
He quickly scored a significant win by negotiating Disney’s acquisition of Pixar, bringing its creative guru John Lasseter aboard to revive Disney animation. Great move.
This set the tone for Iger’s first 15 years as CEO, which were marked by major expansions into Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox, which vastly grew Disney’s intellectual property empire. This is how Disney gained the force.
Meanwhile, Iger spearheaded Disney’s critical entry into streaming media. He opened Shanghai Disneyland, Disney’s most significant foreign park investment.
Then he tried to leave. Iger stepped down as chief executive on February 25, 2020, handing the job to Bob Chapek and keeping the title of executive chairman, which is what a departure looks like when nobody quite believes it.
He was coaxed back as CEO on November 20, 2022 though, after perceived faltering progress under his hand-picked successor, Bob Chapek.
With the company facing uncertainty, Iger’s return signaled hopes he could guide Disney back to his earlier success.
The second term ran not quite three and a half years, and its real assignment was the one the first term had failed: choosing the next person. Iger left the job on March 18, 2026. He is still at Disney as a senior advisor reporting to the board, and he leaves for good on December 31, 2026.
JOSH D’AMARO
Josh D’Amaro became chief executive of The Walt Disney Company on March 18, 2026. Disney’s board voted for him on February 2 and announced it the next morning, ending a succession search that had been running formally since January 2023. He is the first Disney chief executive since 2005 who is not named Bob.
D’Amaro joined Disney in 1998 and spent twenty-eight years there before getting the job, almost all of it in the parks. He ran the Disneyland Resort, then Walt Disney World, then took over Disney Experiences in May 2020 — a division that brought in $36 billion in fiscal 2025 and remains the company’s largest. He is the first Disney chief executive who came up through the turnstiles rather than through a studio or a network.
The board looked at four internal candidates: D’Amaro, Dana Walden, Alan Bergman and Jimmy Pitaro. It came down to D’Amaro and Walden, and the vote was unanimous. Walden did not lose so much as get a new job invented for her — president and chief creative officer, a title Disney had not used in that form before, reporting to D’Amaro. Walt made the pictures and Roy found the money; a hundred and three years later Disney has arrived back at a showman and an operator, in that order.
Iger’s parting words on that stage were about the limits of the job he had held for twenty years:
“I’ve always believed that leaders don’t create the magic. The people who work for and with the leaders do.”
— Bob Iger, 2026 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, March 18, 2026
WHO WAS THE WORST DISNEY CEO?
Ron Miller and Bob Chapek are the two candidates, and the popular answer is usually Chapek, usually for the wrong reason. Chapek is not the shortest-serving chief executive in Disney’s history. Miller lasted nineteen months to Chapek’s thirty-three, and Miller’s ending nearly cost Disney its independence.
Against Miller: the company was weak enough under him that a raider could put it in play, and buying Steinberg off cost shareholders $325 million and Miller his job. For him: Touchstone Pictures was his, and it outlived him by decades.
Against Chapek: he mishandled the Florida legislation at both ends, staying quiet until his own staff revolted and then speaking up in time to draw a retaliation he could not win. For him: he took the job four weeks before a pandemic closed every gate Disney owned.
Neither man was given a fair run, which is the pattern. Two of Disney’s chief executives were pushed out outright, a third left under a shareholder revolt, and a fourth had to be brought back to repair the succession he had botched on his way out the first time.
DISNEY CEO HISTORY FAQ
Was Walt Disney ever the CEO of Disney?
No. Walt Disney was president of the company from 1923 until September 1945 and shared the board chairmanship from 1945 to 1960, but he never held the title of chief executive officer. Disney did not use the CEO title during his lifetime, and the company’s own archive first applies it to Donn Tatum in 1971, five years after Walt’s death.
How many CEOs has Disney had?
Eight people, across nine tenures, because Bob Iger held the job twice. In order: Roy O. Disney, Donn Tatum, Card Walker, Ron W. Miller, Michael Eisner, Bob Iger, Bob Chapek, Bob Iger again, and Josh D’Amaro. For a company founded in 1923, that is a remarkably short list.
Who was the Disney CEO before Bob Iger?
That depends on which Iger you mean, which is why the question keeps getting answered wrong. Michael Eisner preceded Iger’s first term, handing over on September 30, 2005. Bob Chapek preceded Iger’s second term, and was removed on November 20, 2022. Chapek is both Iger’s successor and his predecessor.
Why is Bob Iger no longer CEO of Disney?
Iger was not fired — he retired at the end of a planned handover. His contract ran to 2026, a board committee had been searching for a successor since January 2023, and Josh D’Amaro took the job on March 18, 2026. Iger stayed on as a senior advisor and board member through the end of 2026.
