Gabe Newell (president, not CEO) comes to mind

I really worry about what happens to Valve as a company after he steps down.

Hopefully they'd stop introducing gambling to children.

Steve Jobs was. Elon Musk is.

Outside of tech Warren Buffett seems popular.

I don't know what the baseline is for CEO popularity (I guess most people don't know that many CEOs by name?) but I'd be hard-pressed to call a 37/50 favorable/unfavorable ratio popular: https://www.natesilver.net/p/elon-musk-polls-popularity-nate...

Maybe he's no longer popular, but he had a cameo in Iron Man 2 and hosted SNL. That speaks to popularity.

Also, is favorable/unfavorable a good measure of popularity?