American Banker Magazine - May 2019

A rapidly changing workforce and the proliferation of public and shareholder activists have fundamentally reshaped the job of running a bank.

Get ready to meet 15 women — ages 40 and under — whose accomplishments and influence set them apart.

Overhauling Citi Private Bank's capital markets business in the Americas required finding someone who not only had expertise, but also had the ability to lead while growing revenue. The natural pick was Kristen Bitterly.

Rachel Bryant specializes in risk management, and she applies that framework not only to her job duties, but also to her career path.

As part of the continuing rebuilding effort in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, Banco Popular's nonprofit foundation has several startups working out of its main location in San Juan. For Camille Burckhart, it is part of a mission to help the island get back to normal.

Chantel Chase knows the value of efficiency, and her many ventures at Zions Bancorp. have depended on it.

"If you gathered the U.S.-based senior counsels of the major Chinese banks operating in the United States," said Joseph Loffredo, assistant general manager and chief financial officer at the New York branch of China Merchants Bank, "you'd find one outlier, a lady about half the age of most of the others."

April Frazer describes herself, forthrightly, as a very driven person. Which may explain how she became global head of banks at Wells Fargo before her 37th birthday.

Innovation is part of Emily Girsch's daily routine. That's why the chief financial officer at Lincoln Savings Bank in Cedar Falls, Iowa, spends a lot of time thinking about the need to modernize bank regulations for the digital age.

Jacqueline Howard's personal interest in helping close the wealth gap prompted her to steer Ally Financial toward a more concerted effort on this front.

Give Lindsay Lawrence a big job to do and she just might find a way to make it even bigger.

As chief operational risk officer, Carrie Lichter played a key role in bringing to life Fifth Third's high-tech war room, also known as the cyber fusion center.

Erika Marquez discovered an anomaly that was causing Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. to treat some loans as though they required significantly more regulatory capital than they actually did.

When M&T Bank was acquiring Wilmington Trust in 2011, it tapped into Abigail Mrozinski's deep understanding of its newly added wealth business to help the merger go smoothly.

Synovus converted all 26 of its separately branded community banks to its own name over the past two years — a major undertaking that allowed Jennifer Upshaw, senior director of marketing, to shine.

Over the past two years, Uma Wilson's strategy took a program that had been losing customers on a year-over-year basis and transformed it into the fastest-growing issuer of Visa cards in the region.

The investments that Rana Yared's team makes in startups help Goldman Sachs in two ways: Besides earning a profit, the company also uses a lot of the technology the startups develop as part of its internal digital transformation.

Profitability improved significantly last year for banks with less than $2 billion of assets, but not because of anything they did. Some troubling trends lurk beneath those big gains too.

The Canadian bank recently caught flak over an ad in one of its branches that was seen as a slight against the diverse Boston community of Dorchester. Here’s what other bankers can take away from the episode.

The Alabama bank’s artificial intelligence system ROSIE pulls information from hundreds of data sources to help employees suggest the best new product or service to offer a customer. It’s a good example of a regional trying to balance competitive pressures and cost control.

As banks push customers to digital channels, they are losing opportunities to help and connect with consumers, according to Rilla Delorier, an executive vice president at the Oregon bank.