The 25 Women to Watch
September 22, 2015 1:00 AM
1. Jane Fraser
CEO, Latin America, Citigroup
Corruption, a slow-growing economy, her own rusty Spanish — those are just some of the obstacles Citigroup's Jane Fraser faces as she takes on perhaps the biggest challenge of her banking career.
Fraser, the former chief executive of Citi's consumer and commercial banking operations, took over as CEO of Latin America in June. She is responsible for all of the company's operations in the region, including Mexico, where Citi has owned and operated Banco Nacional de México, or Banamex, since 2001.
Among her top priorities will be instilling a more U.S.-like culture at Banamex, which is the target of a money-laundering investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. While no wrongdoing has been found, Fraser acknowledges that corruption in Mexico's financial system is an issue.
"Part of it is about choosing your clients and knowing who you are and who you do business with and who you don't," she says. "You do have to worry about money laundering and fraud and all those things, but as a U.S. bank, one of the things we have to do is set the tone for responsible finance."
Fraser notes that while long-term prospects for growth in the Latin American market are good, the near-term situation is daunting. "Four percent growth is the new 10%," she says. "All the countries in Latin America are facing the reality of a strengthening U.S. dollar, weak exports and lower commodity prices. But aside from Brazil and Venezuela, we're still seeing positive growth."
Fraser, a strong advocate for women in banking, says achieving the goal of equality feels a longer way off in Latin America, where machismo reigns.
"I am the only woman on a number of the boards I sit on in Latin America," says Fraser, a native of Scotland.
Still, she fully expects to have her voice heard and to fit in comfortably. "My plan is to be myself," she says with a laugh. "There's no point in trying to out-machismo the men in senior management. I can also be feminine, though, and I'll use that as a strength."
She adds that "one advantage of being a new person" — not to mention the boss — "is that you can surround yourself with experts from inside and outside the organization, without worrying whether they know more than you."
Female executives are in short supply at Citi's units in the 24-country region Fraser manages, and she says she plans to deal with that shortage both by bringing people in from abroad, including talented Latina women working in the United States, and by making sure that high-performing women in the local ranks are getting opportunities.
But a bigger need is getting more young women into the pipeline. Toward that end, she plans to work through public forums. "It's clear to me that I'll have to use myself as a role model for women in their 20s and 30s," she says, "by talking honestly about my own challenges as a working mum: 'If I could do it, so can you.'"
2. Maria Tedesco
Managing Director of Retail Banking and Customer Experience, Santander Bank
When Maria Tedesco joined Santander Bank as its head of retail banking in April 2014, customer attrition was high and the bank was losing deposit share in such cities as Boston, New York and Philadelphia.
Tedesco, a 30-year banking veteran, was hired away from rival Citizens Financial Group to reverse these trends and position the $83 billion-asset Santander as the regional bank of choice in all of its key markets. It's not there yet — it ranks No. 4 in deposit share in Boston, No. 12 in Philadelphia and No. 16 in New York — but under Tedesco, it's making headway.
Last year core deposits increased by 7%, checking production by 10%, and consumer and small-business lending by 8% and 19%, respectively. Santander's customer base also increased for the first time in five years.
Tedesco has been driving retail growth by investing heavily in technology — particularly mobile banking and ATMs — and hiring like crazy. Over the last 16 months, she has overhauled much of Santander's retail banking operations, hiring seasoned executives from BMO Harris, Webster Financial, JPMorgan Chase and her former employer, Citizens, to oversee areas such as consumer banking, customer experience, mortgages and small-business lending.
She also turbocharged the bank's pursuit of the mass affluent, increasing the number of branches offering its so-called "Santander Select" services from three to 14 over the past year. With mass affluent customers now accounting for roughly 40% of the revenue for its retail operations, the bank plans to expand these services to more branches.
Tedesco says her job overseeing 700 branches, 2,100 ATMs and all of the digital channels is not nearly as important as the jobs of those who deal directly with customers. Her philosophy is that she works for the retail bank's 6,000 employees — not the other way around — and her biggest responsibility is simply to provide them with the tools to do their jobs better.
So far it's working.
3. Kathy Rogers
Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer, U.S. Bancorp
Up until this year, Kathy Rogers worked mostly behind the scenes at U.S. Bancorp. As head of business line reporting and planning, Rogers was responsible for compiling the company's annual financial plan and helping develop its stress-testing models, and her boss, Chief Financial Officer Andrew Cecere, was the public face of the finance group.
Now that Cecere has been promoted to chief operating officer — putting him in line to possibly succeed Richard Davis as CEO — it's Rogers' turn to step up. A 27-year U.S. Bancorp veteran who was elevated to CFO in January, Rogers now sits on the company's 15-member management committee and participates in its quarterly earnings calls, alongside Davis and Cecere. The unit she runs employs more than 900 people and oversees such critical functions as corporate development, corporate treasury and investor relations.
It was a well-deserved promotion. In her prior role, Rogers served on a host of important internal committees, including the asset/liability committee, the economic scenario committee, the incentive compensation committee and the Basel steering committee — giving her input into many big decisions.
She also was in charge of the stress-testing process. On her watch the $419 billion-asset company has never received an objection to its capital plan and this year it was one of only two large or regional banks to show positive net income under severely stressed economic conditions.
Apart from running the financial operations for the nation's fifth-largest commercial bank, Rogers sits on the board of the Talbert House, a Cincinnati-based nonprofit that focuses on improving social behavior and helping individuals with behavioral issues reintegrate into society.
4. LeeAnne Linderman
EVP, Retail Banking, Zions Bancorp.
LeeAnne Linderman is always up for a challenge.
Just weeks after starting a new job running retail operations for all of Zions Bancorp., Linderman in early February took on an assignment to co-chair the search for a new chief executive at one of Utah's biggest nonprofits, the United Way of Greater Salt Lake.
It was an intimidating task given the stature of many of her board colleagues, but Linderman saw it as an important test of her leadership skills. Linderman serves on several nonprofit and corporate boards and believes strongly that the more engaged she is as a board member, the better leader she will be at Zions. When the months-long search ended in the spring, Linderman felt it had been one of the most rewarding experiences of her entire career.
In her new role, Linderman is tasked with overseeing retail banking across the $54 billion-asset company's seven banking subsidiaries in 11 states. Previously she ran retail banking at Zions' lead bank, the $19 billion-asset Zions First National Bank.
Among her chief objectives is rolling out to the holding company's entire 460-branch footprint a promising new branch design that she piloted.
The promotion also earned Linderman a seat on the holding company's 21-person executive management team.
Long term, Linderman aspires to join more corporate boards. She's passionate about creating opportunities for women, minorities and the disadvantaged, and believes that, outside of holding elected office or heading a major corporation or nonprofit, the only way to effect real change is to serve on more boards. She also believes that more women in boardrooms will lead to more women in C-suites.
"I'd like to have the ability to have an impact as other women have had for me," she says.
5. Michelle Van Dyke
President, Fifth Third Mortgage, Fifth Third Bancorp
Michelle Van Dyke is out to make Fifth Third a household name in mortgage lending. Fifth Third currently ranks 37th among the nation's largest mortgage lenders, but Van Dyke, who took the helm of the mortgage unit a year ago, believes it can crack the top 15 within five years through outstanding customer service.
For loan officers, that means communicating regularly with customers throughout the loan process and being there for the closing of the loan in case any issues crop up. It also means being available to those clients — not just closing the loan and moving on to the next deal — should they need other financial products and services.
"We want to keep the customer at the center of everything we do," Van Dyke says. "If we do that, we win."
The mortgage unit has a ways to go before joining the industry's upper echelons, but it's making significant progress. Through early August, applications were up 11% year over year and loan volume was up 14%, according to Van Dyke.
Van Dyke is highly regarded within the company for her ability to drive results and develop talent. In 2004 she was named chief executive of its Western Michigan affiliate and within a year she was running operations in the entire state. Bigger assignments followed and by mid-2014, she was overseeing eight of the company's 17 geographic regions, representing nearly half of its net income.
Here's another impressive statistic that's reflective of her leadership: between 2010 and 2014, nearly 500 employees in the markets Van Dyke oversaw moved on to larger jobs in the company.
Van Dyke believes strongly that business leaders should devote time to board service — as long as they don't spread themselves too thin. At one point in her career she served on as many as 12 boards, but she's since pared it to a more manageable three. Her advice to others considering board service: "Don't serve because you think you have to, serve because you want to."
6. Amy Brady
Chief Information Officer, Technology and Operations Executive, KeyCorp
Amy Brady's work at KeyCorp has gone a long way toward transforming the Cleveland company.
Since joining KeyCorp from Bank of America in 2012, Brady and her team have more than doubled mobile traffic, playing a key role in reshaping customer trends by enhancing online bill pay and launching a new tablet application. Ongoing efforts both internally and with outside vendors have led to improvements in how Key complies with the Bank Secrecy Act and anti-money-laundering laws. Cybersecurity, another major part of the technology budget, exceeded $600 million this year.
When modernizing Key's digital channels, Brady's team decided against the typical industry practice of replacing the company's core banking system. Instead, Key kept the existing system and worked with outside providers to update the framework built around that system. As a result, Key claims that it can introduce products quicker than most competitors, and with less risk.
A large number of corporate pilot programs are run with Brady's oversight, including testing of a new customer relationship management application. That program, piloted with 20 of Key's corporate banking clients, received enough favorable feedback to justify a full launch later this year.
A member of KeyCorp's executive committee and board, Brady works closely with Chief Executive
7. Stacey Friedman
Managing Director and General Counsel, J.P. Morgan Corporate and Investment Bank, JPMorgan Chase
Stacey Friedman's big job at the nation's largest bank is about to get a lot bigger. Friedman has run the legal department at J.P. Morgan's corporate and investment bank since 2012, but early next year she takes over as general counsel for all of JPMorgan Chase, replacing Stephen Cutler, who will become a vice chairman.
Cutler recruited Friedman from the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and reportedly had been grooming her as his successor for the past 18 months by including her in meetings with regulators and all of the company's major cases. The investment banking unit has had its share of legal troubles in recent years and Friedman has been instrumental in negotiating settlements with regulators for issues ranging from currency manipulation to the sale of shoddy mortgages.
In her new role, Friedman will become the third woman on the 10-person operating committee for JPMorgan Chase, joining Chief Financial Officer Marianne Lake and asset management Chief Executive Mary Callahan Erdoes.
Friedman also will be the only female general counsel at any of the nation's large banks, which is fitting given how passionate she is about diversity in the workplace. She is the executive sponsor of the company's legal diversity committee and, in this role, oversaw the development of a program to recruit more women and minorities to the legal department.
Friedman also gets that women — and men — sometimes need to leave the corporate world for a while, so last year she helped launch a program that provides training to legal professionals who have been on a hiatus for at least two years.
8. Diana Reid
EVP and Head of PNC Real Estate, PNC Financial Services Group
Few women's organizations are as exclusive as the Committee of 200; to even apply for membership in the networking group, a woman must own a business that generates at least $25 million in annual revenue or run a business line that has annual net income of $250 million or more.
Diana Reid, the head of real estate for PNC Financial Services, is among its members. The business line she runs is among the 10 largest commercial real estate lenders in the country, with more than $30 billion of loans outstanding.
Celebrating the accomplishments of women is part of the fun, but the main mission for the Committee of 200 is to support and nurture future generations of female entrepreneurs — a longtime passion of Reid's.
Throughout the year, the group hosts forums at leading universities in which committee members like Reid share their insights with MBA candidates and college undergraduates. Its charitable foundation, of which Reid is a board member, provides scholarships to women who aspire to lead businesses and sponsors a program that provides mentoring and training to women-owned companies.
Reid has been equally active supporting both PNC's female clients and employees. As co-chair of the Women in Business steering committee, she implements strategies to deepen relationships with female customers based on better understanding their needs.
Reid is also executive sponsor of PNC Women Connect, an employee research group dedicated to advancing the careers of female staff.
9. Diane Morais
President and CEO, Ally Bank
Ally Bank is an online deposit-gathering powerhouse that aspires to be more well rounded. Diane Morais is charged with leading that transformation, which will include adding loan products and successfully cross-selling them to depositors.
She is just at the start, having become president and chief executive following the resignation of Barbara Yastine. But Jeffrey Brown, the new CEO of the bank's parent company, expressed confidence when announcing Morais' promotion in March. "Her expertise in deepening customer relationships and banking product development will be critical in the next stage of Ally's evolution," Brown said.
Morais joined the bank as its deposits executive in 2008, when it was still GMAC Bank. In her six years in the role, in which she oversaw the development, pricing and marketing of deposit products, deposits more than doubled, to $61 billion at March 31, as the rechristened Ally won over consumers with its quirky ads.
Still, Ally basically just takes deposits to fund the auto loans that continue to be the bulk of its business even after jettisoning the GMAC name.
Morais' immediate task is to cross-sell deposit products to car loan customers, and vice versa. Longer term, Brown is counting on Morais to drive revenue growth by introducing more products, including a broader range of car loans and perhaps even mortgages and credit cards.
Before joining Ally, Morais spent 12 years at Bank of America in a series of roles, including head of customer experience for consumer and small-business banking and head of deposit and debit products. While she was there, the deposit team implemented the groundbreaking "keep the change" savings program in which debit purchases are rounded up to the nearest dollar and the difference is transferred into a savings account.
10. Janet Garufis
President and CEO, Montecito Bank and Trust
Ask Janet Garufis her proudest accomplishment over the past year, and she's just as likely to say running the Paris marathon as anything to do with the performance of her bank.
"I set a goal to run a marathon by my 60th birthday and reached it a year early," says Garufis, the president and CEO of Montecito Bank and Trust, who completed in the event with her son ("the endurance runner"), daughter-in-law and friend.
Though it was her first endurance run, she is determined it will not be her last. "I've got the bug now," she says.
Garufis cites becoming an athlete as the biggest positive change she has made in her life lately and the most fun she has had all year. "I'm healthier, happier, more focused, more fit, and I have more stamina."
After nine years under Garufis' leadership, the privately held Montecito has only gotten better too. Operating in California's affluent and highly competitive Santa Barbara and Ventura counties, Montecito has increased its deposit share to just below 4% from 2.6% in 2007. It is now the largest community bank in a $22 billion market.
Garufis, who previously held senior positions at Bank of America and Security Pacific National Bank, runs Montecito conservatively. Its loan-to-deposit ratio was 61% as of June 30, well below the 83% average for banks of comparable size nationally. Its Tier 1 capital ratio was 12%, in line with the peer group.
Hence, Montecito's return on equity doesn't stand out; in 2014 it was a modest 6.88%. But Garufis' cautious stewardship paid off well in the Great Recession. Montecito navigated the downturn without a net loss, and profits have been solid the past two years, totaling $13.2 million in 2013 and $13.1 million last year.
And Garufis has implemented some significant changes. In recent years, she has expanded into wealth management, overhauled the core technology platform, and strengthened enterprise risk management by creating chief risk officer and chief audit officer positions.
The success of Montecito, an S Corp bank founded in 1975 by prominent Santa Barbara developer Michael Towbes, is beginning to translate into added clout for Garufis. She served as chairman of the Western Independent Bankers Association from 2013 to 2014 and this year she was named chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's community depository institutions advisory council.
Garufis is likewise raising her profile in the community, taking leadership roles at several major Santa Barbara nonprofits. She serves as chairman of the Sansum Clinic Foundation, co-chair of the Santa Barbara Children's Library Campaign and president of the Santa Barbara Scholarships Foundation, among other activities.
Garufis encourages volunteerism among Montecito employees, which she says benefits the bank and the community. So she feels the need to lead by example.
"I have a responsibility to serve, so active board service is, for me, non-negotiable," Garufis says. "It's also been a great gift. There is no greater reward than the enrichment I've received by making even a small difference in the community."
11. Thasunda Duckett
CEO, Chase Auto Finance, JPMorgan Chase
Opportunity knocked for Thasunda Duckett when she was six months pregnant with her second child.
It was 2009 and Duckett, then JPMorgan Chase's director of affordable lending, was asked to assume the role of regional sales executive for the Northeast, overseeing a staff of more than 800 mortgage lenders and managers. It was a big promotion at a time of monumental change in the mortgage industry and Duckett had her doubts about managing such a large business while raising two small children.
Ultimately, she decided to accept and spent the weeks leading up to her maternity leave working with her management team to develop a business plan and set sales targets. She was promoted again two years later, to retail sales executive for the mortgage unit, and in March 2013 to CEO of Chase's automobile financing division.
Duckett now oversees a business unit that has nearly $60 billion of assets and relationships with more than 75% of the nation's franchised automotive dealers. Chase is the nation's No. 1 noncaptive auto lender to prime customers and, with Duckett in charge, moved up one notch to become the nation's fourth-largest auto lender overall.
Duckett says it was that 2009 decision to accept the mortgage sales job that gave her the confidence to lead large teams and take on more complex challenges. She has relayed her story to thousands of Chase employees, hoping to inspire them to overcome doubt and become more comfortable with taking risks in their careers.
Duckett also inspires others by giving back. She has served on roughly a dozen nonprofit boards in her career and in 2013 she started her own charity in north Texas. The Otis and Rosie Brown Foundation, named after her parents, focuses on improving children's academic performance, boosting high school graduation rates and increasing college attendance.
12. Helga Houston
Chief Risk Officer, Huntington Bancshares
More is expected of all chief risk officers these days given the heightened regulatory scrutiny across the industry. But Helga Houston's responsibilities extend beyond those of most CROs.
Case in point: Houston chairs the committee that evaluates new products and services at Huntington Bancshares. Her job is to ensure whatever products Huntington plans to introduce are consistent with its risk appetite and its philosophy to treat customers fairly.
Houston also helped create a new customer advocacy team. Its goal is to facilitate quick responses to complaints and improve the customer experience.
"Since joining Huntington in 2011, Helga has focused on continuously improving our risk management results through her involvement in practically every issue that can affect Huntington's mission and reputation," Chairman and Chief Executive Stephen Steinour says.
Houston also has more familiar duties, such as running Huntington's enterprise risk management program and overseeing its annual stress tests.
The results speak for themselves. This year the Columbus, Ohio, company showed a lower level of cumulative loan losses than any of the 16 other regional banks required to undergo the stress tests.
On the customer front, Huntington has ranked No. 1 in its region for customer satisfaction for two years running, according to J.D. Power. It also enjoys a strong reputation, our annual Survey of Bank Reputations shows.
13. Bita Ardalan
Managing Director, Head of U.S. Middle-Market Banking, MUFG Union Bank
Bita Ardalan is MUFG Union Bank's go-to executive for starting and building new business lines or turning around existing ones — with good reason.
In 2010 she was asked to head a nascent specialty-lending division and by 2013 it was the fastest-growing commercial lending unit at the bank. In mid-2013 she was charged with combining a group of underperforming commercial lending units throughout the Western states into a single division and, in her first full year at the helm, the unit's assets, revenues and deposits all grew by double digits, while expenses decreased 10%.
Now Ardalan has a new title: head of U.S. middle-market banking. The San Francisco-based MUFG Union aims to become more of a national player and key to that strategy is building its base of middle-market clients.
Colleagues say Ardalan, who joined the bank as a management trainee in 1986, is consistently given the most challenging assignments because she has a unique ability to quickly size up a situation and put the right people in place to execute on her vision. Her immediate boss, commercial banking head Michael Stedman, says Ardalan also strives for "continuous improvement" by seeking out new revenue opportunities and finding creative ways to improve efficiency.
Ardalan's stature at MUFG Union has grown to the point where she is now in on strategy planning at the highest levels. Last year she was one of 22 executives selected to help find revenue enhancements at the bank and, more recently, she was invited to Tokyo to participate in the parent company's prestigious Global Leadership Forum. The forum brings together select senior executives from across the Japanese banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to identify global business opportunities and brainstorm solutions to its most pressing problems.
14. Susan Skerritt
Head of Global Transaction Banking Americas, Deutsche Bank
Susan Skerritt is intent on advancing the careers of women. When she joined Deutsche Bank as head of global transaction banking for the Americas two years ago, the business unit's executive committee was made up of five men and one woman. As part of a broader plan to break down silos and improve communication across the bank, she expanded the executive committee to include representatives from human resources, finance and global technology, and now that committee has far more gender balance: six women and five men.
Skerritt also created a senior women's leadership group within Deutsche Bank North America. The first-of-its kind group is made up of 12 high-ranking women and its mission is to improve diversity within male-dominated business lines at the bank.
Skerritt was recruited from the Bank of New York Mellon to improve the transaction banking unit's performance, and she has certainly done that. Thanks largely to a cross-selling campaign she implemented early on, revenue was up for 2014. Perhaps more notably, her unit generated a larger share of Deutsche's transaction banking revenue worldwide in the first quarter than it did a year earlier.
Skerritt's stature has risen sharply since joining Deutsche. She regularly gets invited to deliver keynote speeches at major industry conferences and at times even represents Deutsche Bank at The Clearing House, The Financial Stability Board, and the IMF Conference. Her commitments outside of work include serving on the boards of trustees for the Brooklyn Hospital Center and for Hamilton College, her alma mater.
15. Barb Godin
Chief Credit Officer, Regions Financial
Barb Godin has some simple advice for ambitious female bankers looking to advance in their careers: "Don't just let life happen."
Godin began her banking career in her native Canada in the early 1980s, but always wondered if she could "make it" in the U.S. banking industry. So in the late 1990s she made the bold decision to relocate her family to Ohio, where she spent five years as KeyCorp's chief consumer credit officer. In 2003 she moved on to AmSouth, which later merged with Regions.
She often shares this story with women she mentors to illustrate the importance of having a game plan. Some promotions are a surprise, but more often than not, opportunities come to those who actively seek them out, Godin says. Women in particular are reluctant to be proactive about career moves and Godin believes that it's the responsibility of senior executives like herself to nudge them along.
"You have to stand up and be counted," she says. "You have to put your hand up and say, 'This is what I want out of life.'"
Godin also strongly believes that women have an important role to play on boards. Over the years she has served on several corporate and nonprofit boards on which she was the only female, and she says the lack of diversity hurt those boards. "It was an issue for overall governance," she says. "Females can bring different views to a board."
16. Begonya Klumb
CEO, UMB Healthcare Services, UMB Financial
It's easy to see why UMB Financial recently appointed Begonya Klumb to lead its fast-growing healthcare services division: she gets things done.
Since joining the Kansas City, Mo., company in 2003, Klumb has built two divisions — investor relations and mergers and acquisitions — from the ground up and, in the past 20 months, she has spearheaded its largest-ever capital raise and has overseen the largest acquisition in its 103-year history.
She's just as much of a rainmaker outside of the $18 billion-asset UMB. When a high-achieving inner-city charter school needed to expand to meet demand, Klumb stepped in to co-chair its first-ever fundraising campaign. The campaign went on to raise $3.5 million, enough to build a new building with six classrooms that will educate 120 more students each year.
The healthcare services unit at which she became chief executive in June is one of UMB's most important business lines. The unit has more than $1 billion of assets and deposits and manages more than 600,000 health savings accounts and 4.2 million multipurpose benefits cards. It also provides a wide range of payments services to health care providers.
Klumb says that while "greatness has no gender," she recognizes that her 7-year-old son might have an easier time in life than her 9-year-old daughter. It's a big reason why she continues to take on new challenges at UMB and pursue board posts at nonprofits.
"I recall vividly that women made up half of my MBA class at Yale. Some of us went on to Wall Street and investment banking, but when we arrived we found that only about one in 10 managing partners were women," she says.
By sharing her own successes and failures with other women, she hopes to help them make wise choices, not only for themselves, "but also to help smooth the path for my daughter and others who follow."
17. Liz Dukes
Chief Strategy Officer, Synovus Financial Corp.
In her 13 years with Synovus Financial, Liz Dukes has yet to enjoy a lull.
A new challenge always seems to appear the moment the last one clears, from her early days helping implement the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, through charter consolidations, cost-cutting programs and capital raises, to her work leading regulatory fixes after the financial crisis.
"It seemed like Synovus was always doing something big," Dukes says.
When the Columbus, Ga., company repaid the Troubled Asset Relief Program last year, jettisoning its last baggage from the crisis, she thought there might be a breather at last.
"There was a very brief celebration — about 30 seconds," Dukes says. "Now we have to grow."
Dukes is at the center of that effort as the $26 billion-asset company's first chief strategy officer, a job she took on last year. She helped craft a five-year growth plan and is now leading its implementation, making sure that "the left hand knows what the right hand's doing" across the company.
It's a complex role that involves working with the head of each business line to shape strategy, then directing resources where they need to go.
But she's had more than a decade working with the company's senior staff. Her exposure to top-level strategy early in her career made her realize that "I wanted to do more than accounting," she says.
It wasn't always so for Dukes. Her high-school yearbook quote was "I'm going to be a CPA someday" — "I wasn't a nerd at all," she says, smiling — and she worked for Ernst & Young after graduating from college. She went on to manage the finances for a concert venue in South Carolina, before moving to Georgia to be close to family.
"Then I made the natural transition from the entertainment industry into banking," she deadpans.
Her career with Synovus took a big step forward in 2010, when the company created a role for her as senior director of banking that spanned across all of its divisions. A little later, Chief Executive Kessel Stelling picked her to lead the company's relations with its regulators.
Doing both jobs at once was a big-time commitment, particularly for a single mother of two daughters. "Forty hours a week I worked one, and 40 hours a week I worked the other," she says of the two roles at Synovus.
But, she says, "apparently I didn't do a terrible job." The company was freed from two regulatory orders in 2011, setting it up for its growth push.
Dukes is glad to help direct the next stage of the company's evolution. "We are maturing as an executive group, and to be responsible for helping direct that is a huge challenge," she says.
18. Cate Luzio
Head of Global International Subsidiary Banking Client Coverage, Global Commercial Banking, HSBC
Cate Luzio takes a local approach to international banking, and believes in hiring bankers who know their markets — Nigerian bankers in Nigeria, Turkish bankers in Turkey, Brazilian bankers in Brazil.
But she also takes pains to tie them into a larger network — including groups for women workers. At her last job with JPMorgan Chase, she led the establishment of eight new branches of the bank's women's network, including in countries across the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Partly through her efforts, JPMorgan Chase became the first international bank with a women's group in Saudi Arabia — a real achievement in a country where women's rights are limited.
Luzio's assessment of the finance industry's diversity — gender, ethnic, cultural — is blunt. "We're making progress on having different faces around the table but we need to do more," she says.
Luzio herself has become a new face around the table in an unusually short time, despite having no formal background in finance when she entered the industry a dozen years ago. She was tapped last month to coordinate HSBC Group's work across the globe with the affiliates of multinational corporations it banks, a job giving her oversight over the bank's operations in 62 countries.
Luzio calls the job a huge challenge but a great fit. She has made a specialty of connecting far-flung locations during her relatively short career in finance. She's held similar roles overseeing North and South America for HSBC and Europe, Africa and the Middle East for JPMorgan Chase.
Joining HSBC last year brought the New Jersey native home after seven years in London. But she's traveling more than 80% of the time as she helps spearhead a massive new undertaking for HSBC. The London bank is going through a strategic shift toward international corporate banking, and Luzio has the chance to build from the ground up, by picking new country heads and banking teams across the globe.
It's a process she's been through before, though on a much smaller scale. Two other experiences at international startups — or quasi startups — set her career in motion. The first was in China, where a (literal) startup sent her shortly after college to hash out partnerships with local telecom companies, despite her unfamiliarity with the country and its language.
"It set my career on fire a little bit," she says. "One, I was very young, and two, I was a female in a country and a culture where that wasn't the norm" in business.
Her entrée to finance took place in Mexico City, where the credit-card issuer MBNA sent her to help build a partnership with a Mexican bank. She got to learn the industry from the bottom up — from staffing to financials to dealing with regulators.
Now at HSBC, she works to mentor young female bankers at the same place in their career that she was then.
"The younger women coming into financial services are craving leadership," she says. "They like to see women who are successful, whether you're 39 or 59. It's also great for me to learn from the challenges they're facing."
19. Wendy Breuder
Co-General Manager, Head of Midwest General Industries, U.S. Corporate Banking Division, MUFG Union Bank
MUFG Union Bank did an exhaustive review of its operations last year, and Wendy Breuder was one of just 22 business heads at the Japanese-owned bank selected to lead the effort.
Breuder also had perhaps the most complex assignment of all: identifying cost savings across six business lines spanning eight countries.
Though cultural differences complicated her work, Breuder — whose primary job is overseeing a division that banks large multinational clients — more than delivered. She found millions of dollars of cost savings, reducing annual expenses by 20% and winning her effusive praise from Masashi Oka, MUFG Union's executive chairman.
Most of the businesses Breuder had to evaluate were headed by Japanese executives, and she says, it can be career-ending in Japan for a younger person to question someone more experienced. But her careful strategy proved successful.
"She managed an artful orchestration of harmony between senior and grassroots constituencies and delivered a disproportionately positive result," Oka wrote in a letter.
Breuder is used to getting results. In 2013, the unit she runs increased revenue by 40% over the prior year — handily beating projections — and its return on equity was among the highest of any business line in the company. The unit had another banner year in 2014, posting a 50% increase in funded loans and a 40% gain in net income.
As one of the highest-ranking women at MUFG Union, Breuder takes a special interest in cultivating the careers of other women. She is a founding member of the Women's Initiative Network, an employee resource group, and serves on the internal Diversity and Inclusion Council. She also has demonstrated a strong commitment to gender balance in the business she oversees. Nearly 50% of its employees are women, an unusually high figure for the corporate banking sector.
20. Jill Castilla
President and CEO, Citizens Bank of Edmond
For the chief executive of a bank with just $253 million of assets, Jill Castilla has an outsized influence on the banking industry.
She's a highly visible and vocal advocate for community banks, serving on the boards of the Oklahoma Bankers Association and the Community Bankers of Oklahoma and holding leadership roles at the Independent Community Bankers of America and the American Bankers Association.
She's a technology innovator, working with local businesses to create affordable video ATMs for her branches and using Twitter to engage customers on a more personal level. (Castilla has nearly 7,000 followers.)
She's also a sought-after speaker for industry conferences and is frequently quoted in the press because of her knowledge of public-policy issues.
Castilla's credibility stems largely from her prowess as a community banker. Citizens Bank of Edmond was reeling when she joined in 2009 — it lost close to $8 million that year, mostly on soured real estate loans — but she engineered its recovery and turned it into a top performer.
Grassroots marketing is part of her formula for success, from the "Heard on Hurd" festival she initiated to help bring more people to downtown Edmond, Okla., to YouTube videos of bank employees spoofing popular songs. A "Cash Mobs" program she created — in which employees are given cash to spend at a local business en masse — has generated goodwill in the community and a lot of positive press. All of these efforts helped position Citizens as accessible and earn Castilla an award from the Oklahoma City chapter of the American Marketing Association.
When Castilla is not out promoting the bank or fighting for her industry, she's likely volunteering in some capacity. She's on the board of trustees for two foundations and serves as a director for Peppers Ranch, a home for children in the foster care system.
21. Nandita Bakhshi
North American Head of Direct Channels, TD Bank
Since moving to Albany, N.Y., from Calcutta, India, 28 years ago, Nandita Bakhshi has seemingly been everywhere and done everything. She lived and worked in more than five cities and four countries, and pivoted from retail banking to payments to bank product management.
Through those changes, she has learned how to read any room and tailor her management style accordingly.
"What it allows you to do is, it gives you the ability to read and respond to cultures," she says. "You can walk in and understand the culture, understand what works here, because not everything works everywhere."
But proving herself to those around her has been one of the greatest career challenges. The disadvantage of such constant change is "that people don't know who you are," she says.
Bakhshi is the North American head of direct channels at TD Bank, a position in which she oversees digital, telephone and ATM banking. Previously, she was head of consumer banking.
She began her banking career as a teller, soon after moving from India with her husband, who now helps lead Ericsson's telecom strategy in Africa and the Middle East.
"What I liked about it — and I really feel passionate about it — is to serve the customer," Bakhshi says. "So whether you serve the customer on the front lines, or you create the products to serve the customer, the challenge is providing legendary service across all channels."
Bakhshi started at the former Bank One, and followed her boss to a company on the West Coast. Then a fellow board member of MasterCard's Maestro debit network offered her a position at Fleet Financial running products and channels. When Fleet was purchased by Bank of America, First Data hired her as managing director of its mobile solutions business unit, working out of Europe. She later moved to the former Washington Mutual in Seattle to run consumer deposits and payments before coming to TD in 2009.
Bakhshi's background in payments led her to what she calls one of the best jobs she has ever had — as a volunteer helping microfinance organizations in India lend to women. Now she's exploring how TD can do microfinance in North America.
The key to establishing herself as a good leader, she says, has been her ability to balance "EQ and IQ." Relationship-building skills are essential to advance, as letting the work speak for itself is not enough.
"After a point, everybody's smart, everybody works hard, it becomes table tennis," she says. "Your ability to relate to people, to inspire people, to motivate them, to bring them along is what differentiates you from another colleague of yours who is just as smart if not smarter."
22. Kirsten Garen
Chief Information Officer, Bank of the West
Bank of the West is widely viewed as a product innovator and much of the credit goes to Kirsten Garen.
With Garen as its chief information officer, the $72 billion-asset bank became one of the first in the country to adopt online account opening and to allow customers to pay bills by snapping a picture of them. It was also first to launch a mobile app that allows customers to check up to five account balances at once without logging in. The app, called Quick Balance, won the bank a product innovation award last year and has since been copied by other banks.
Garen joined Bank of the West in 2011 after about two years with Visa and more than a decade with Charles Schwab. Among the biggest decisions she has made as CIO was bringing many of the bank's technology functions in-house, a restructuring she says allows the company to respond more quickly to industry challenges and improves its regulatory reporting. Working with the digital channels group, Garen's team — which has added dozens of staffers over the last several years — also overhauled all of its digital platforms, with a goal of speeding up delivery and simplifying the user experience.
23. Yvette Hollingsworth Clark
Chief Compliance Officer, Wells Fargo
As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau takes an especially data-driven approach to regulating banks, Yvette Hollingsworth Clark has had to recruit new kinds of talent to help Wells Fargo comply.
"This is the first time in my career that I've had to hire PhDs in quantitative analysis for compliance," says Clark. "I'm finding that we need more engineer types and quants than we've ever needed before."
Since joining Wells in 2012, Clark has increased overall staffing levels in compliance by more than 300%.
One of the factors driving the need for more data-analysis whizzes, she says, is that many customers now bank exclusively through online channels. "It raises the risk profile a little bit because you have to be concerned about cybersecurity and data breaches, and you need to make sure you have a compliance program that can detect where there are potential vulnerabilities," she says.
Clark has some experience on the regulatory side of the industry. After graduate school, she spent almost 10 years at the Federal Reserve, before leaving in 2004 to follow one of her bosses to Citigroup. She served as head of anti-money laundering there, until a 2008 move to Barclays to oversee compliance and risk management.
Clark chairs Wells Fargo's regulatory compliance risk management committee and is a member of the enterprise risk management committee. Outside of work, she is also on the board of INROADS, a nonprofit focused on mentoring young people.
24. Diane D'Erasmo
North America Regional Head of Retail, Corporate Banking, HSBC
Diane D'Erasmo says that 2014 was one of the most challenging years of her career.
With HSBC undergoing a massive restructuring in an effort to rein in costs, D'Erasmo wound up with new responsibilities on top of managing the U.S. investments of overseas clients. They included overseeing the middle-market business in the Northeast and planning an initiative to capture more trade business across the U.S., Mexico and Canada.
She also had a new boss who came from outside HSBC and was unfamiliar with the business D'Erasmo managed.
"My approach was to stay focused and positive," says D'Erasmo. "Change is unsettling to a lot of people and I believe my leadership, technical and people skills allowed me to handle all of the projects I was asked to."
Even as her duties mounted, the multinational business unit she ran thrived, generating 24% revenue growth in 2014 compared with a year earlier.
D'Erasmo is now in a new role, managing the business that provides banking services to retail, apparel, diamond and jewelry companies in the United States and Canada. These are core industries for the global HSBC in two of its most important growth markets.
Outside of HSBC, D'Erasmo is a board member with the Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City. A fundraising event she chaired for the organization last year took in $225,000, exceeding its goal by $25,000.
25. Laura Lee "Laurie" Stewart
President and CEO, Sound Community Bank
Laurie Stewart's impact as a banker extends far beyond the footprint of her Seattle-area community bank.
With 25 years of experience as a small-bank CEO, Stewart has emerged as a leading advocate for community banking in her home state and nationwide. She has served on an advisory council to her state's banking regulator, was one of just 14 bankers appointed to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s inaugural advisory council on community banking when it was formed in 2009 and serves on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's community bank council.
Perhaps most notably, Stewart chairs the American Bankers Association's flagship committee, the government relations council, where she was instrumental in drawing up a public policy agenda for community banks that's starting to gain some momentum in Congress. The agenda covers a range of issues - including leveling the playing field with tax-exempt credit unions and limiting banks' liability in security breaches - but its overriding aim is to reduce the regulatory burden on small banks post-Dodd-Frank.
Stewart is also highly visible in the communities served by the $500 million-asset bank, chairing the board of the Woodland Park Zoo and volunteering as a Court Appointed Special Advocate working with families and children in contentious custody disputes. The latter role, in which she serves as the voice of the children, is particularly demanding, requiring her to do mounds of research in preparation for making her case. The executive director of a Seattle family law center says that Stewart "deserves a superhero cape" for helping bring stability to the lives of children in turmoil.
When not running a bank, advocating for her industry or bettering her community, Stewart is likely exercising or preaching the benefits of healthier living. Stewart has lost more than 90 pounds in recent years through a combination of running, walking and healthier eating. Inspired by her own reinvention, Stewart created a wellness program at Sound Community Bank that rewards employees for making better lifestyle choices. The effort has been so successful that it allowed the bank to adopt a less-costly self-insurance program.
