Top 20 LinkedIn Creators on Thought Leadership (2026)

#20 · Ryan Holiday, 261 median likes per thought leadership post

Ryan Holiday is the author of Discipline Is Destiny, The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy.

At 54 words on average, his posts are the second-shortest among the top-20 creators we hold writing data for, and a number shows up in 40% of his hooks, the highest rate in that group.

His readers like far more than they reply: 19 median comments, the second-lowest count in this top 20.

"Marcus Aurelius never claimed to be a Stoic." His most liked thought leadership post of the year opens on a claim about the best-known Stoic, then sources it to a translator of Meditations: 419 likes and 23 comments. Read it

#19 · Jyoti Motwani, 266 median likes per thought leadership post

Jyoti Motwani builds personal brands for enterprise founders and chief executives, as a done-for-you service, from Dubai. Her 0.99% engagement rate leads our thought leadership pool among accounts of 20k followers and more.

She is also #7 on lead generation and #16 in our UAE ranking.

"The founders preaching 'write it yourself for authenticity' have the most GENERIC voices on this entire platform." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year takes the other side of a common piece of LinkedIn advice, from someone whose business is writing for others: 511 likes and 94 comments. Read it

#18 · Carina Cunha, 277 median likes per thought leadership post

Carina Cunha wrote First Principles of Persuasion and advises on capital strategy at Statera. Her 23 thought leadership posts are the second-most in this top 20, after Sibel Terhaar's 30, and they land 1% under her overall median.

She is #5 in our sales enablement ranking and #18 on sales. At 262 words on average, her posts are the second-longest among the top-20 creators we hold writing data for.

"You are clearly reading this because you are bored or trying to avoid something else." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year calls out the reader's scroll before proposing a game, and drew about one comment for every two likes: 602 likes and 316 comments. Read it

#17 · Ryan Yockey, 285 median likes per thought leadership post

Ryan Yockey coaches high performers who want to build a business on LinkedIn, and writes a newsletter for founders. His thought leadership posts earn 27% less than his overall median.

His best post earned almost nine times his median, the widest gap on this page. He is also #5 on business development and #9 on work culture.

"I turned down $250K because of what Charlie Munger taught me." His most liked thought leadership post of the year puts a refused sum and a famous investor in the same first line: 2,478 likes and 202 comments. Read it

#16 · Nikolett Jaksa, 295 median likes per thought leadership post

Nikolett Jaksa ghostwrites for founders and chief executives on LinkedIn and coaches them, from Serbia. Her readers reply: she is second in the comments cut below, with 266 median comments against 295 median likes.

She is also #10 in our ranking of LinkedIn ghostwriters, which counts everything she posts.

"One of my 2026 goals was to get featured in Forbes. Yesterday, it happened." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year settles the goal in two lines, then tells how the news arrived: 1,017 likes and 787 comments, nearly eight comments for every ten likes. Read it

#15 · Nehha, 311 median likes per thought leadership post

Nehha works on strategic storytelling for chief executives and founders, from the United Arab Emirates. Thought leadership fills 14% of her feed, the highest share in this top 20.

Her 0.89% engagement rate is third in the efficiency table, and she is #13 in our UAE ranking. Her best post earned less than twice her median: her rank rests on consistency.

"Someone less capable than you is becoming the obvious choice in your market. They may simply be easier to describe." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year opens on the reader's rival rather than on the reader: 524 likes and 94 comments. Read it

#14 · Emma Shad, 334 median likes per thought leadership post

Emma Shad runs Emellex and the AI Leadership Hub, and builds visibility for founders, executives and investors. Her thought leadership posts earn 35% more than her overall median.

She is third in the comments cut below, and #15 on AI ethics.

"One LinkedIn post. 235,105 impressions. Three days." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year leads with its own reach figures, before any lesson: 698 likes and 484 comments. Read it

#13 · Kelly Mizell, 344 median likes per thought leadership post

Kelly Mizell is a group manager and the San Antonio market leader at JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle). She posted 769 times in 12 months, the most in this top 20, and thought leadership is 2% of it.

Her thought leadership posts earn 11% more than her overall median. She is also #10 on storytelling.

"You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have." Her most liked post tagged thought leadership by our classifier is a Maya Angelou line, posted with the attribution and nothing else: 815 likes and 60 comments. Read it

#12 · Victor Trieu, 411 median likes per thought leadership post

Victor Trieu left a banking executive career and now helps senior leaders leave theirs, from Australia. His 0.98% engagement rate is second in the efficiency table, a hundredth of a point behind Jyoti Motwani's.

He makes the list on exactly 10 thought leadership posts, our floor, and they earn 34% less than his overall median. He is #4 in our Australia ranking.

"You keep waiting to be discovered. Nobody's coming to find you." His most liked thought leadership post of the year speaks to the reader in the second person from its first word: 1,121 likes and 130 comments. Read it

#11 · Sahil Bloom, 478 median likes per thought leadership post

Sahil Bloom (see the data biography) is a New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur and investor. With 715k followers he is the third-biggest account in this top 20, and his 0.07% engagement rate is the lowest in it.

His thought leadership posts earn 63% less than his overall median of 1,294, the steepest discount here, level with Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey's. His best post earned almost six times his median.

"Major life hack: Quiet progress." His most liked thought leadership post of the year names its idea in two words, then lists what to do without: 2,750 likes and 385 comments. Read it

#10 · Dr. Reza Hafiz, 554 median likes per thought leadership post

Dr. Reza Hafiz is a manager, jurist and physician, on the board of the Institute for HealthCare Management at the University of Marburg, from Germany. His thought leadership posts earn 16% more than his overall median.

A number appears in 2% of his hooks, the lowest rate among the top-20 creators we hold writing data for. His best post earned more than four times his median.

His most liked thought leadership post of the year, in German, belongs to a series he titles Wie ich die Welt sehe (How I see the world); its opening lines are that label and an invitation to follow: 2,569 likes and 83 comments. Read it

#9 · Jaya Kishori, 576 median likes per thought leadership post

Jaya Kishori is a motivational speaker, from India. Thought leadership is 13% of her feed, the second-highest share in this top 20, and she posted 79 times in 12 months, the fewest here.

Her audience likes and rarely replies: 11 median comments, one for every 52 likes, the lowest ratio on the page. Her best post earned 1.3 times her median, the smallest gap in the top 20.

"वो यहाँ तक लेकर आया है, तो आगे भी लेकर जाएगा" Her most liked post tagged thought leadership by our classifier is a devotional couplet in Hindi, about trusting the one who has brought you this far: 760 likes and 10 comments. Read it

#8 · Jordan Murphy, 645 median likes per thought leadership post

Jordan Murphy is a six-time founder whose firm, Brain Apes, builds go-to-market systems for expert-led companies. He writes the longest posts among the top-20 creators we hold writing data for, 396 words on average.

His thought leadership posts earn 37% more than his overall median. He is also #10 on coaching.

"Her Strategy Was Good. His Visibility Made It Better." His most liked thought leadership post of the year then stages a party game with blindfolds and ping pong balls to make the point: 1,274 likes and 356 comments. Read it

#7 · Marcos Ruiz, 883 median likes per thought leadership post

Marcos Ruiz runs The Birdhouse, which builds personal brands on LinkedIn, X and Threads. Our data lists 5k followers for the profile, by far the smallest account in this top 20, which puts his engagement rate at 17.20%.

That account size sits under the 20k floor of the efficiency table. He ties Jade Bonacolta on 883 median likes, and his thought leadership posts earn 25% more than his overall median.

"Pavel Durov got fired, fled his own country, and built a 1 billion user platform that no government has been able to shut down. With 30 employees." His most liked thought leadership post of the year is a founder story told in the third person, with the headcount held back for a line of its own: 1,756 likes and 113 comments. Read it

#6 · Jade Bonacolta, 883 median likes per thought leadership post

Jade Bonacolta (see the data biography), formerly at Google, founded The Quiet Rich and posts daily on personal growth. Her thought leadership posts earn 1% more than her overall median, so the theme barely moves her.

A number appears in 34% of her hooks. She also ranks on personal development (#10), wellness (#15) and personal branding (#16).

"The calmest people aren't lucky. They just have better systems." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year is those two lines and a sign-off that introduces her to new readers: 2,733 likes and 172 comments. Read it

#5 · Murat Aydin, 923 median likes per thought leadership post

Murat Aydin co-founded Kaizuno, which works on business challenges with a five-step method and coaches, from Belgium; his headline lists an EFQM Global Excellence Award. He is #1 in our Belgium ranking, and his thought leadership median sits one like under his overall median.

His 0.77% engagement rate on 120k followers is the highest in this top 20 for an account over 100k.

"Rare clip that explains the genius behind Apple's 'Think Different' campaign" His most liked thought leadership post of the year shares a 1997 Steve Jobs clip rather than an argument of his own: 2,827 likes and 107 comments. Read it

#4 · Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey, 1,019 median likes per thought leadership post

Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey is a National Geographic Explorer and a strategic advisor to chief executives on navigating uncertainty. Her thought leadership posts earn 63% less than her overall median of 2,791, the steepest discount in this top 20, level with Sahil Bloom's.

She has the second-highest median comment count here (589), and her best post earned more than six times her median. She is #1 in our ranking of LinkedIn consultants.

"The pressure to be everywhere is real. Post more. Speak louder. Fill every gap." Her most liked thought leadership post of the year then makes its case with a car brand that skips television advertising: 6,321 likes and 692 comments. Read it

#3 · Justin Welsh, 2,712 median likes per thought leadership post

Justin Welsh writes The Saturday Essay for more than 200,000 readers who live and work on their own terms. With 891k followers he is the second-biggest account in this top 20, and his 837 median comments are the highest count in it.

Thought leadership is 2% of his feed, 10 posts out of 466, and those posts earn 16% less than his overall median. Our profile of Justin Welsh covers the rest of his numbers.

"Reputation compounds faster than salary. Don't chase the wrong one." His most liked thought leadership post of the year sets a $10K raise against what coworkers say behind closed doors: 7,071 likes and 911 comments. Read it

#2 · Sibel Terhaar, 3,108 median likes per thought leadership post

Sibel Terhaar is an author and the founder and chief executive of Minnesota Kind Magazine, LeadershipUp Magazine and Chasing Kindness. Her thought leadership posts earn 88% more than her overall median, the largest premium in this top 20.

Her 30 thought leadership posts are the most here, and she leads the total-likes table below by a wide margin. Her posts average 4 words of text, by far the fewest among the top-20 creators we hold writing data for.

"Wow, Amen!!!" Her most liked post tagged thought leadership by our classifier, two words of caption, is the biggest post on this page, 38 likes ahead of Steven Bartlett's best: 13,942 likes and 517 comments. Read it

#1 · Steven Bartlett, 5,753 median likes per thought leadership post

Steven Bartlett (see the data biography), founder of Steven.com, the company behind FlightStory and FlightCast, and host of The Diary Of A CEO, tops this ranking with 5,753 median likes per thought leadership post, 115 times the typical thought leadership post we measured.

With 3.2 million followers, he is also the biggest account in this ranking.

His 10 thought leadership posts, all from 2026, earn 45% more than his overall median. He also leads five other theme rankings of this edition, among them entrepreneurship and content marketing, and our UK ranking.

"I love making the show, love the audience. Love my team." His most liked thought leadership post of the year is about the podcast itself, and drew the most comments of any best post on this page: 13,904 likes and 963 comments. Read it

Where do these cards come from? We computed every figure on this page from public posts with MagicPost's LinkedIn analytics: median engagement per theme, share of feed, premiums and engagement rates, across 150 thought leadership creators and 8,836 of their posts. It works on your profile too, including a side-by-side with anyone on this list.

Which thought leadership creators just missed the top 20?

Five names sit right behind the cut, all within 56 likes of number twenty:

Gary Vaynerchuk, at #21, holds 6.1 million followers, almost twice Steven Bartlett's audience, and posted 1,850 times in 12 months. Thought leadership is 1% of that, and those posts earn 30% less than his overall median. Our profile of Gary Vaynerchuk has the wider picture.

Jon Brosio (#23) is the only one of the five who earns more on the theme, 32% more; Ike Singh Kehal (#24) earns 46% less. Mariam Gogidze (#25) has the most thought leadership posts of the five, 25.

Which LinkedIn thought leaders have the highest engagement rate?

Raw likes flatter the largest followings, so divide by reach: engagement rate on thought leadership posts, median likes divided by followers (20k followers and over).

Jyoti Motwani (#19) leads, a hundredth of a point ahead of Victor Trieu (#12), and four of the five sit in this top 20. The fifth, Nikita Singh, ranks outside the top 25 on 197 median likes.

Three of the five are based in the United Arab Emirates, and all five hold under 50k followers.

One smaller account falls under the 20k floor: Marcos Ruiz (#7), whose 5k followers in our data put his rate at 17.20%.

Above 100k followers, the best rate in this top 20 is Murat Aydin's 0.77%. For how this theme compares with other subjects, see our study of LinkedIn engagement rate by topic.

Which thought leadership creators get the most total likes on LinkedIn?

One more cut counts the total likes on thought leadership posts over 12 months, where frequent posters gain ground:

Sibel Terhaar leads with 127,453 likes on 30 posts, more than twice Steven Bartlett's total on 10. Daniela Luque Díaz comes seventh on volume alone: 64 posts, by far the most in this table, without making the top 25. She is #3 on education.

The other seven are the first six of this top 20, plus Sahil Bloom (#11).

Which LinkedIn thought leader gets the most comments per post?

This cut divides comments by likes. The record in our thought leadership pool belongs to Dmitry Pavlotsky, who writes LinkedIn content for clients, from the Netherlands: 115 median comments against 103 median likes, more comments than likes.

Nikolett Jaksa (#16, about nine comments for every ten likes) and Emma Shad (#14, about seven for every ten) complete the podium (counting creators with 100 median likes or more). The typical top-20 creator gets about one comment for every four likes; Jaya Kishori (#9) gets one for every 52.

Dmitry Pavlotsky ranks outside the top 25. Among the top five, Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey (#4) comes nearest the podium, with about six comments for every ten likes.

Do the top LinkedIn thought leaders post about thought leadership full time?

No. Of the 150 creators who post on thought leadership consistently, only 1 gives it at least half their feed, and that creator is not in this top 20. The highest shares here are Nehha's (14%) and Jaya Kishori's (13%).

At the other end, Justin Welsh and Kelly Mizell (2% each) and Sahil Bloom (3%) touch the theme only now and then. In our data, thought leadership is a kind of post more than a beat: the label lands on a few posts in many feeds.

Focus does not predict the premium. Sibel Terhaar gives the theme 4% of her feed and earns 88% more on it; Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey gives it 6% and earns 63% less.

The list mixes authors (Ryan Holiday, Sahil Bloom, Carina Cunha, Sibel Terhaar), a podcast founder at number one, and speakers and advisors (Jaya Kishori, Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey, Dr. Reza Hafiz).

Six more build personal brands or a LinkedIn presence for founders and executives: Marcos Ruiz, Emma Shad, Nehha, Nikolett Jaksa, Jyoti Motwani and Ryan Yockey.

Many best posts on this page borrow someone else's authority:

• Steve Jobs (Murat Aydin)

• Maya Angelou (Kelly Mizell)

• Charlie Munger (Ryan Yockey)

• Marcus Aurelius (Ryan Holiday)

• Pavel Durov (Marcos Ruiz)

Others rest on the writer's own record: a Forbes feature (Nikolett Jaksa), the reach of a post (Emma Shad).

Twelve of the twenty are based in the United States and two in the United Arab Emirates, then one each in the United Kingdom, Belgium, India, Germany, Australia and Serbia. Country by country rankings: the United States, the United Kingdom, the UAE, Belgium, Australia, the full series.

And if showing up in these creators' comment sections is part of your plan, an engagement feed keeps it to a five-minute daily habit.

How does thought leadership compare with leadership and personal branding on LinkedIn?

Each of our theme rankings counts only the posts tagged with its own theme, so the pools differ. Thought leadership is the smallest pool of the three and has the lowest typical post:

Three creators of this top 20 also rank on leadership: Steven Bartlett (#3 there), Justin Welsh (#5) and Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey (#9). Five rank on personal branding, led by Justin Welsh (#1 there) and Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey (#2).

The theme moves the same creator a long way: Dr. Elizabeth Lindsey's median is 3,355 likes on leadership posts and 2,902 on personal branding, against 1,019 on thought leadership.

The executives ranking linked at the top works differently. It takes the 698 people our classification files as executives, with 30 posts or more, and ranks them on median likes across everything they post; Satya Nadella leads it. None of this top 20 makes that list.

These rankings show who gets read on the subject. Building that authority on your own profile is a separate job: our guide to LinkedIn thought leadership covers what builds it and how to keep posting it.

How we ranked the top LinkedIn thought leadership creators

All of this is MagicPost's own research. We went through 8,836 thought leadership posts from the last 12 months and ranked 150 creators by median likes on their thought leadership posts.

Only creators with at least one post in the last 60 days are ranked. The method:

• Floors: at least 5,000 followers and 10 thought leadership posts in the window; deleted posts excluded.

• Median rather than average: no single viral post can buy a place.

• Thought leadership posts only: each post gets a theme from our own classification, and only those posts count.

• Thought leadership posts analyzed: the posts our dataset holds per creator, sometimes fewer than they published.

• Per creator: share of feed, premium over their own median, engagement rate and comment ratio.

Seventeen of the top-20 medians rest on 20 thought leadership posts or fewer, four of them on exactly 10. Rankings refresh as the data does. No placement here was sponsored; every rank comes straight from the median.

Study them, then study yourself. With MagicPost you can analyze any thought leadership creator the way we just did (median engagement by theme, share of feed, premiums, engagement rate) and benchmark your own profile against the pool. The data on this page is the product.