JPMorgan's leading ladies: Crain's published its biannual list of the 50 most powerful women in New York, with two JPMorgan Chase heavy hitters from our own Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance rankings in its top five CFO Marianne Lake (2nd) and the CEO of the asset management division, Mary Callahan Erdoes (4th). Others on the list from the financial services realm include Edith Cooper, Goldman Sachs' global head of human capital management, Cathy Engelbert, the CEO of Deloitte; Barbara Novick, BlackRock's vice chairman; Lynne Doughtie, KPMG's U.S. chairwoman and CEO-elect; and Deanna Mulligan, Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America's CEO and president. Citigroup apparently needs to up its game. It was notably absent from the list.
What women want:What Wall Street needs are stay policies, not leave policies. Banks are improving their diversity, but women climbing to middle management positions aren't continuing through to the top. There's the notion that they leave in their 30s to start families, but according to a study of 25,000 Harvard MBAs, it's more likely they see little opportunity to advance and find it in other fields offering them more of a life (like former Morgan Stanley CFO Ruth Porat who defected to Google earlier this year for $70 million). This Bloomberg story highlights three women who are in striking distance of the CEO role: Karen Peetz, president of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Avid Modjtabi, Wells Fargo head of consumer lending, and one of those Crain's NY power picks, Mary Callahan Erdoes, CEO of asset management at JPMorgan Chase. All three women say at their level, there's really no more work-life balance. (This calls to mind a study we wrote about looking at why women get stuck in middle management. One reason: power loses its luster for women a lot faster than for men, because of the trade-offs required.)
An Ally for improvement: Ally Bank has worked to capitalize on what other banks were doing wrong in retail ever since it launched. Now its newly departed CEO, Barbara Yastine, offers some advice to her fellow bankers on how they can do better. Most importantly: focus on customers not regulators and put your energy to something more than "just pushing back." Digital banking needs to get simpler for customers, she said, and bankers need to be honest with themselves about how in sync the elements of customer experience are.
A saintly reputation: In an interview about Huntington's rising reputation, Chief Marketing Officer David Clifton had high praise for Mary Navarro, senior executive vice president for retail and business banking. Huntington landed in the top 10 among customers and noncustomers in our 2015 Survey of Bank Reputations, and Clifton said it's partly because many people at Huntington are passionate about resolving customer concerns, especially Navarro. "I refer to her as 'the Mother Teresa of banking,'" Clifton said. "I swear she is a saint on earth." Navarro was eighth in the American Banker Most Powerful Women in Banking rankings for 2014 and 2013.
#WomenOnQuarters: Why stop at the $10 bill? Following the news that a woman will appear on the new $10 bill in 2020, a petition has begun circulating asking the U.S. Treasury to create a set of 50 quarters featuring prominent American women from each state, much like the 50 States Quarters program. The petition has more than 12,300 signatures as of Thursday morning and seeks to reach 13,000 before it gets sent to the Treasury, Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee and U.S. Mint.
Role Call
Blythe Masters has joined the advisory board of the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a Bitcoin trade association created to ensure the industry's interests are represented in Washington. The JPMorgan Chase alum is often credited for helping invent credit default swaps. Now Masters sits at the helm of blockchain technology startup Digital Asset Holdings, where she became the CEO in March. Last Friday the company announced its acquisition of two more such firms, Hyperledger and Bits of Proof.
C1 Bank in St. Petersburg, Fla. has named Diane Bailey Morton its chief human capital officer and general counsel. She previously worked as the general counsel for the Tampa Firefighters and Southwest Florida Police Benevolent Association and as an assistant state attorney.
South Shore Bank in South Weymouth, Mass., has promoted Pamela O'Leary to COO and chief technology officer. She had been the bank's chief information officer since 2004.
In Case You Missed It...
Wells Fargo's ad-itude: Wells Fargo has come under fire from social conservatives for its TV advertisement featuring a same-sex couple adopting a child, but the bank'schief marketing officer, Jamie Moldafsky, has no regrets. She said the ad part of a larger campaign that embraces the demographic reality of its customer base and reflects Wells Fargo's own values."Diversity and inclusion is something we live internally very strongly," Moldafsky said.
Advice from a Wall Street vet: Carla Harris who has been on our Most Powerful Women list multiple times spoke about strategies for thriving in the workplace at the CFA Institute's inaugural Women in Investment Management conference early last month. The Morgan Stanley managing director and vice chairman of global wealth management shared five of "Carla's pearls," encouraging women to get comfortable with risk and take responsibility for how others perceive them.
Money insights: An Ellevate Network infographic says 86% of its members feel the financial services industry does not meet their needs well. The women's professional organization, which is owned and chaired by Sallie Krawcheck, surveyed thousands of its members about their attitudes toward money and how they manage it.
Beyond banking
A new ERA: Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep personally wrote a letter to each member of Congress asking them to resurrect the Equal Rights Amendment of 1972, which would make equal rights for women part of the U.S. Constitution. She argued that we have encouraged other countries like Afghanistan to make such changes to their constitutions, yet we haven't done so ourselves.
Who's the leader of our club?: The Walt Disney Co. has made Christine M. McCarthy its first female CFO. Previously, she was its treasurer. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger called McCarthy "highly respected in the finance sector" in a statement. Her promotion comes shortly after Iger made Leslie Ferraro the only woman to lead or co-lead a Disney division by naming her president of consumer products.
