For the first 16 years of her banking career, Sandy Pierce never shared her upbringing with colleagues. Pierce's parents owned and operated a bar in Detroit, and she and her nine siblings lived above it. She was the only one of her siblings to attend college. She worked part time while attending Wayne State University, first as a cashier in the college bookstore and then as a teller at National Bank of Detroit.
"I never talked about where I came from or how I grew up because I thought that it would hold me back," she said.
When she graduated with a degree in marketing and minor in accounting, she applied for the branch manager training position at National Bank of Detroit, but was turned down.
"The recruiter told me that I'd never make it in management because I was too nice," she recalled. "So I said that I'd like to work in marketing until I can have a reputation for doing more than teller work. And so that's what I did."
While working in marketing at NBD, Pierce realized two things about the top executives at the bank: They were all white men and they were all commercial lenders. "So I decided that I've got to be a commercial lender."
She asked to join the bank's commercial loan training program, but was initially turned down because she didn't have a master's degree. "I told them, just let me in and I'll get it while I'm in the program," she said. Pierce said that the bank "begrudgingly" allowed her to join, and she was the only woman in the 55-employee training program.
Pierce excelled at the training program, and discovered that she really loved commercial lending. "I loved helping businesses that were starting out or that were growing. It was so rewarding to help companies reach their North Star."
She rose up the ranks at the bank and when she was 37, she became the second female at NBD to become a senior vice president. It was then that she had an epiphany about disclosing her upbringing. "I realized my success was because of how I grew up, not despite it," she said. "At that moment, I decided that whenever I had a chance, I was going to tell my story. Everybody's got one, and it really defines who you are and what drives you."
Pierce spent 27 years of her four decadeslong career at NBD and its successor banks. In 1995, NBD merged with First National Bank of Chicago, which was acquired and merged three years later into Bank One.
At the time of the merger, Pierce had just given birth to her third child, Tommy. While she was recuperating, she received a call from her new Bank One boss. "He said, 'We're going to announce your new job tomorrow, and just wanted you to know that we are really excited about it, and you're going to be in charge of 17 states, all of the small businesses and 8,000 employees.' And I said, 'Can I call you back?'"
"So the next morning — I thought it was only fair since he called just after I'd given birth — I called him at 5 a.m., and I gave him three names. And he said, 'What is this?' And I said that every single one of these colleagues would be tremendous in that job, because I'm not taking it. I was really scared because I had just had a baby, and my girls were 11 and 14 years old. These banks were merging, and I knew I could be out of a job. And I was nervous, but at that moment I had to make a decision, and have enough confidence in myself that I would land somewhere. As it turned out, I landed at that same bank in an even better job, but I didn't know it at the time."
In 2004, JPMorgan Chase acquired Bank One. After the merger, Pierce spent one year at JPMorgan running the Midwest retail division for the bank.
She reported to Charlie Scharf, who was then the CEO of retail financial services for the bank. She left in December of 2004 because she said that the bank had gotten too big. "I felt I had so little in terms of my impact. They didn't want me to leave, which was really nice, but I just wanted to be able to have an impact," she explained.
The following month, Pierce joined Charter One Bank, Michigan as its president and CEO. Charter One was a division of the Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS imploded in 2008 and Pierce left Charter One four years later when a former JPMorgan colleague recruited her to join FirstMerit Corp. as its vice chair and CEO of FirstMerit, Michigan.
In August 2016,
When
On a typical day, Pierce said she'd split her time between her lines of business, her revenue segments and her regions. "I spent a lot of time with customers because you develop relationships over the years. I went on a lot of customer calls, helped to negotiate deals where I could be helpful with all facets of leading the bank. Even though I wasn't the CEO, I was one of the leaders," she said.
Pierce has been active on multiple boards throughout her career. She's on the board of Penske Automotive and American AXA, and is the chair of both the Henry Ford Health Foundation and the Detroit Economic Club. Last January, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer appointed Pierce to the board of Michigan State University, and last August, Pierce joined Renaissance Venture Capital Management's advisory board. The venture capital firm invests in Michigan companies and startups.
Looking back
Looking back on the early days of her career, Pierce said that women were less supportive of one another than they are today. "When I was growing up in banking, there were very few women. And there were so few women that they actually competed with each other because they didn't want each other to get ahead. And I wanted to get ahead, but I just would never play that game. I just decided that that wasn't going to be who I was. But what I see today is a lot more women in leadership roles. They collaborate and I feel like they help each other and they work well together. That's different from 40 years ago," she said.
But she noted that since Citi's Jane Fraser is the only female CEO of a major bank, more needs to be done to elevate women to the C-suite. "We hold her up as the CEO of Citigroup, which I am so happy for her, but it shouldn't be just one discrete female CEO. We don't talk about the men that are CEOs because there's so many of them.
"Women need to be at the table, and not just the board table. They need to be at the CEO table. So that's the work that we still have to do. And women need to help other women get there," she added.
Over the years, Pierce said that one of her biggest regrets was not learning earlier in her career that there's no such thing as work/life balance. "When I had my girls, I tried to balance my personal and professional lives. And I always over promised and under delivered — always. And what that means is that I would say to the girls that I would be at their swim meet, knowing I had a customer dinner. They would be disappointed when I didn't show up and I would have a meltdown."
By the time she had her son, she had come to the realization that achieving balance is impossible. "I learned from a very good friend of mine how to integrate. She said to sit down on Sunday, you know your schedule for the week ahead by then, and know that you can only fit 100% into your schedule — you can't fit another 20%, so don't over promise. You have to sometimes say 'no' to work when your kids have something really important, and you sometimes have to say 'no' to your kids when work is the priority."
Looking forward
Pierce, who retired on Dec. 22, is confident that
At the same time, we're being very prudent about making sure that we're investing not only in our traditional markets, but in growth markets. So I feel really, really optimistic about
While in retirement, Pierce plans to stay on her boards, but she hasn't decided what else she may be doing. "I'm fortunate, I've been offered some things. So what I'm really thinking through is something that keeps me grounded in Michigan because I was traveling constantly. But for now, I am really, really taking a breather."
