How The Most Powerful Women to Watch bet on their futures — and won

October 21, 2024 3:30 PM

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Many of this year's honorees for The Most Powerful Women to Watch ranking took a chance on their future careers by asking questions, jumping into unknown markets and believing in their ability to get the job done. Now, they're cashing in on their bets.

Those featured on this year's list were asked to choose one thing they did to advance their career that paid off for them in the end.

Below are responses each women shared on what tactic they used to move their careers forward, how it paid off and how the next generation of female professionals can do the same.

Other honorees from The Most Powerful Women in Finance and The Most Powerful Women in Banking lists weighed in on what advice they had for their younger selves when it came to improving their career paths and what skill sets are most valuable for rising talent.

Honorees are not listed in rank order.

What is one thing you did to advance your career that paid off for you?

Hope Holding Bryant

Vice Chair
First Citizens Bank

For Hope Holding Bryant, current vice chair of First Citizens Bank, accepting the job to lead Ironstone Bank as its president was a pivotal moment in her career.

"Because it was separate, it really gave me a completely different platform to learn financials, operations and sales strategy," Bryant said. "What was unique about it was that [the strategy] was not really understood."

This, Bryant said, was a crucial part of her uncle's strategy for expanding the company.

"The fact that we did it de novo, not through acquisition — we were losing a lot of money and people were scratching their heads about why would we even want to go to the West Coast. ... It was taking a big risk," she said.

Learn more about how Bryant helped First Citizens with the SVB acquisition.

Melissa Stevens

Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Corporate Communications and Enterprise Workplace Services
Fifth Third Bank

In 2007, Stevens was at Citigroup where she proposed redesigning the company's website. Her ambition was followed up by a pact with a senior Citi executive to "meet with me every other week for an hour and just give me feedback on what I am doing."

Though her website proposal was not used, Stevens said that possessing "the curiosity and courage to lean in" drove her to become inspired by the executive and confident in her web skills.

Those biweekly meetings also taught her to balance drive with "having the patience to realize when something was not ready."

Learn more about Stevens' plans for branch expansion and digital marketing.

Florence Pourchet

CEO of Corporate and Institutional Banking, Latin America
BNP Paribas

Florence Pourchet knew 19 years ago that coming to the U.S. from Europe with her husband and young kids was a risky move. But the chief executive of corporate and institutional banking for BNP Paribas' Latin American markets has always held that taking risks leads to greater progress.

"American culture is a bit different, and the job I took in the U.S. was bigger and more challenging, but going outside my comfort zone paid off," she said. "I was recognized as someone who could adjust and perform with bigger teams and implement strategy for the group."

Her accomplishments were due in no small part to the support network backing Pourchet all the way.

"My husband was ready and willing to support and he managed to land on his feet," she said.

Learn more about how Pourchet's upbringing influenced her career.

Megan Graper

Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Debt Capital Markets
Barclays

"Fortunately, I made the decision to stay on through the financial crisis," Graper said.

She was working at Lehman Brothers in 2008 when the bank collapsed and filed for bankruptcy, and she moved to Barclays when it acquired Lehman. At the time, many of her peers in the industry decided to leave their jobs and go to business school to build their credentials for future leadership positions.

"The takeaways and lessons learned — originating, debt offerings, trading commercial paper during that time — laid a very strong foundation," Graper said. "Staying connected to primary markets in a time where it was incredibly challenging to do so was probably a turning point in my career."

Learn more about Graper's career trajectory.

Lori Heinel

Global Chief Investment Officer
State Street Global Advisors

Despite never thinking of herself as a risk taker, Lori Heinel's path to success is paved with a healthy amount of risk.

"I never really thought of myself as a risk taker, but as I look back on my career, there are many times I took risks to take on things that I didn't think I knew how to do," she said. "Pretty much throughout my career, I've been willing to try something new, to always be learning and to step out of my comfort zone."

The global chief investment officer for State Street Global Advisors stressed not to be afraid of learning new things or taking on tasks that seem too cumbersome.

"Those are the ways that you can really grow as a professional and keep yourself ahead of the curve," Heinel said.

See more about Heinel's advice to women in the industry.

Ann Fogarty

Head of Global Delivery
State Street

"I worked to always understand and connect," Fogarty said. "I was very diligent about learning and understanding the business [and] that's what really has paid off for me: Being the person eventually that folks would say: 'You want to know really? If you ask her, she knows.'"

Learn more about Fogarty's role in shaping State Street's operations.

Cassandra McKinney

Executive Director of the Retail Bank
Comerica

"It really is about being intentional, and I wish I could say I started out that way because I didn't," McKinney said. "But hopefully along the way I became more intentional to manage my career, recognize that that was my responsibility — not someone else's — and recognize that there were choices that I was creating by either the job opportunities that I had the ability to select or not select, as well as the development path that I took and, importantly, the mentors I sought along the way."

Learn how McKinney revamped bank's lineup of digital products and services for small businesses.

Liz Wolverton

Head of Consumer Banking and Brand Experience
Synovus

An openness to changing career paths. Wolverton had envisioned becoming a CFO, and not the consumer-facing work that has become her passion.

"The willingness to step out of finance," she said. "That exposure put me in places I would have never expected."

See more about how Wolverton helped Synovus' customers during a challenging year.

Debbra Schoneman

President
Piper Sandler

Early on in Debbra Schoneman's career, she "embraced the difference between just being responsible for something and truly holding myself accountable for the work I was being asked to do." For her, that meant giving it everything she had and embracing the end results come what may.

"As I look back at my career, it was the times when I chose to hold myself accountable for things that weren't even my responsibility that made the biggest difference and were the most impactful," she said. "These involved working to drive efficiencies, connecting people and finding solutions for things that I knew could be improved even though they were beyond my role at the time."

Schoneman felt that her natural curiosity and "desire to solve problems" fueled this trend.

More importantly, this was "noticed by leaders across the organization, which led to an expansion of my responsibilities over time," she said.

Learn more about what Schoneman looks for in a leader.

Krista Snelling

President and CEO
Santa Cruz County Bank

Being an "obsessive networker" might not work for everyone, but it has been a key component of Krista Snelling's success.

"I put a lot of effort into networking, making sure I connect and stay in touch with people, leaving jobs on the best of terms and sending thank-you notes. ... That's paid off for me," Snelling said.

When giving the closing keynote at the American Bankers Association Women Lead virtual conference, where she showed the "meandering path I took from one job to another and talked about the connections between them," every job she's ever had, except for her present role, "has come from networking," she said.

See more about Snelling's strategies for growing the bank.

Bonnie Lee

President and CEO
Hanmi Financial Corp.

"When I find challenges, I try to focus on finding and executing a strategy," Lee said. "Professionally, that has been rewarding for me."

Lee emphasized that "whatever you do, do it with your style [because] when you try to be somebody else, that's when you have challenges," she said.

"Believe in yourself, put in the necessary hours and don't think about shortcuts," Lee said.

See more about Lee's career trajectory.

Christina Mohr

Vice Chair of M&A, Investment Banking
Citigroup

When reflecting on what was one thing that she did to help advance her career that paid off, Mohr identified her practice of immersing herself in the client's problems and measuring herself by their success. She recalled CEOs calling her early in her career, stating that her advice changed their prospects, which motivated her to keep moving forward.

Learn more about how Mohr is positioning her team to succeed in a restructured Citi.

Laura Lee “Laurie” Stewart

President and CEO
Sound Community Bank

Stewart said this stage of her career has been more about the journey than the destination. And what has been most important to her lately is mentoring the next generation of C-suite leaders both for her bank and the industry as a whole.

See more about how Stewart built the company's post-pandemic culture.

Kim Posnett

Head of Global Technology, Media and Telecom Group
Goldman Sachs

Posnett said that each advancement in her career was propelled by her natural interest and curiosity in people. She would advise young bankers to "ask questions, be interested in people and listen carefully when others speak."

Learn about how Posnett is championing the use of A.I. at Goldman.

Wendy Cai-Lee

Founder and CEO
Piermont Bank

Wendy Cai-Lee, founder and CEO of Piermont Bank, said the most important thing has been keeping an open mind about opportunities and not prejudging them based on their perceived value or desirability. Every meeting with someone new, she added, is an opportunity to learn something new and connect with someone who could be helpful down the road.

Learn more about how Cai-Lee supports women in the industry.

Zewditu Tizu Menelik

Executive Managing Director, Corporate, Specialty & Government Banking
Huntington National Bank

A series of lateral moves and promotions early in Zewditu Tizu Menelik's career were crucial to her advancement within the industry.

"Diversifying my career experience was the breakthrough," she said. She also taught herself how to relate to clients from different perspectives and "understand how the bank funds itself."

Learn more about Menelik's work to beef up the divisions she leads.

Barbara Mariniello

Global Co-Head of Debt Capital Markets
Barclays

"I've always put clients first," Mariniello said. "When you have a client-centric approach you can help move the business forward and stay focused."

Discover how Mariniello navigates a volatile debt capital market.

Jeane Vidoni

President and CEO
Penn Community Bank

For Jeane Vidoni, moving between jobs early on instead of picking a specialty was a risky move for the now-president and CEO of Penn Community Bank — but it paid off.

"I changed jobs a lot," Vidoni said, "It helped me connect the dots."

Learn more about how Vidoni is guiding growth at the bank.

Kristy Fercho

Head of Diverse Segments, Representation and Inclusion
Wells Fargo

"For me, it's problem-solving," Fercho said. "Always trying to be cued in, no matter what job I was in, to what were the big challenges that the company was trying to solve and then out of these, how to be a part of finding the solutions to solve them."

Earlier in her career, during a decade-long stint at Fannie Mae, she developed a reputation for taking on nebulous, hard-to-solve problems. She said her colleagues would say: "'Oh, give it to Kristy; she'll figure it out.' I got that reputation of being able to solve complex problems and find tangible, realistic solutions that we could move forward on."

See more about Fercho's and Wells' commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Lisa Oliver

Chair of the Board, President and CEO
The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod

Throughout her tenure in the banking industry, Lisa Oliver has held that trusting oneself enough to take risks "requires an innate trust in our abilities to succeed," and can be a boon to success.

"Career risk can include a positional move from single contributor to leader, a business unit change from operational to revenue ownership, for example, or a geographic move," Oliver said. "I jumped into a leadership role early in my career which led to two cross-country moves with my husband and children and ever-larger geographic and national business unit opportunities."

Oliver highlighted the trust she had in her "knowledge, ability to engage senior leaders for guidance and direction and [ability to learn] from failures" at the core of her confidence that greater levels of success would come to her.

See how Oliver and the bank is bolstering the community in Cape Cod.

Kimberly Moore-Wright

Chief Teammate Officer and Head of Enterprise Diversity
Truist

Moore-Wright said it was being open to opportunities that were not necessarily on her radar. She moved from learning and developing at Truist into a marketing role, which gave her greater insights into the business and skills that were transferable back to HR.

See how Moore-Wright helped employees and executives navigate job losses at the bank.

Maria Tedesco

President and Chief Operating Officer
Atlantic Union Bank

Throughout Maria Tedesco's entire career, she has been focused on her network.

"I worked tirelessly to get to know my peers, senior leaders and other teams within my organization and industry, [and] I'm in my current role because I networked with Atlantic Union Bank CEO John Asbury 20 years ago," Tedesco said. "We both served on the Consumer Bankers Association, and it was one of the first places I began networking within the industry."

Today, her network is made up of countless advisors, mentors and allies.

"I am where I am today because of them," she said.

Learn more about Tedesco's leadership at the bank.

Cristin Reid

Chairman and CEO
Capitol National Bank

One tactic that Cristin Reid attributes her career successes to is the art of asking good questions.

"I was taught by my father, who was a trial lawyer, that the most important indicator of success was to be the most prepared person in the room," Reid said. "When walking into an important meeting, if you know the material better than anyone else you will be in a better position to respond, analyze and create the best outcome."

Preparation is a combination of putting in the time and asking the right questions, Reid said.

"Asking questions creates strength and is not an indication of weakness. ... I work to encourage my team and board to ask questions [and] when they do, it allows us to identify flaws in our analysis, or generate confidence in our direction," she said.

Learn more about Reid's leadership at the community bank.

Beatriz Castellví

Chief Security Officer
Popular

"If I have to pick one thing that made a difference in my career, it would be the courage to be my own champion," Castellví said. "Claiming space, making sure I was heard and staying prepared have empowered me to take on new opportunities and, importantly, I recognize that you don't do it alone."

For the chief security officer of Popular, "investing in a team that supports you and has your back makes all the difference," she said.

Learn more about how Castellví protects the bank against cybercrime and fraud.