This is not encouraging for the future of Louisville business. According to a 2024 Fortune report, 9.5% of CEOs are now considered “super commuters” meaning they live hundreds of miles away from their headquarters and typically fly in to the office a few days a week. The image at the top from Louisville Business First offers a few examples of top executives at Louisville companies who live elsewhere. Click the link for a more detailed account on the people in the map. According to LBF:

Louisville’s business community is experiencing a leadership vacuum at its highest levels.

The CEOs of several of the city’s most well-known and fastest-growing companies don’t actually live in Louisville, despite their companies being headquartered here. 

David Gibbs, the CEO of Yum Brands Inc., is based in Texas. Todd Penegor, CEO of Papa John’s International Inc. — which has dual headquarters in Louisville and Atlanta — is based in Georgia. CEO Matt Hawkins of Waystar, which counts Louisville as one of its two headquarters, is based in Utah. 

Even Humana has a hub of executives based in Washington, D.C. 

CEO Jim Rechtin, a Kentucky native, was given the choice to live in Louisville or the nation’s capital when he was hired last year — he chose D.C. 

At the time of his hiring, he was living in Denver, and his LinkedIn profile still shows Denver as home.

As for why the trend may be occurring more in Louisville than in other cities, Catlett pointed primarily to Kentucky’s state income tax (which is 4% this year and dropping to 3.5% in 2026) as an issue that can keep away high-income CEOs — especially when other states such as Texas, Florida and Tennessee have no state income tax.

Other issues include the city’s limited air service compared to larger metros and lack of amenities, such as professional sports and upscale shopping.

For the past decade, I’ve also been a super commuter, working in D.C. and San Francisco, but maintaining my home and family in Louisville. I would come home for long weekends and major holidays, but the bulk of my working career involved living in those remote cities.

The income tax excuse is lame, given that these CEOs are multimillionaires and can afford to contribute to the tax coffers of the Derby City. In terms of the “other amenities,” D.C. and S.F. have plenty of professional sports, and upscale shopping is common. That didn’t stop me from maintaining a Louisville address, paying taxes and voting here.

The other reality in this work situation is that if you aren’t in the same city as the top guy (and it almost always is a guy in these cases), you are considered off in obscurity and won’t get a fair shake at landing the bigger jobs because you haven’t had any face time with top brass, unlike the folks who reside in the same city as the C-suite.

That’s the excuse they’re currently giving for forcing people to work in the office after years of tolerating remote work. If that’s what they’re doing to people who live in the same cities as the top bosses, you can be sure they’re screwing over the folks who are working remotely hundreds (or in my case) thousands of miles away.