Most Powerful Women in Finance: No. 11, Julie Monaco, Citigroup

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2021 was a year of transition for Julie Monaco, as her team expanded its strategic sovereign advisory business to address client vulnerabilities in food, energy, and security. 

Monaco is the Global Head of Citi's Public Sector Group, leading an organization that provides a full range of banking advisory, treasury and trade solutions, and capital markets services to public sector clients around the world. Recently, her group has been focused on issues of sustainability, governance, debt restructuring, and helping sovereign governments attract financial investment to alleviate economic insecurities—many of which have become further complicated by a stronger dollar, rapidly increasing inflation, and rising interest rates. Together with her product partners throughout Citi, debt restructuring and ESG have been brought together to drive the production of ESG-oriented bonds and push sustainable financing into the mainstream. 

In an interview with Yahoo Finance earlier this year, Monaco discussed several of the challenges now faced by sovereign nations, "During the pandemic, you had a significant increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio….We ended 2020, started 2021, with the highest global debt-to-GDP ratio in the world since the end of World War II," she said.

Coming out of the pandemic, her team noticed an important trend: those governments that were highly digitized were better positioned to serve their populations over those who lagged in digitally transforming their economies. Her organization is now advising world governments on how to better digitize their economies to stem coverage gaps, especially in rural areas, and promote the equitable distribution of resources. Her recent contribution to Citi's report, Digitization of Governments, outlines many of the digital transformation challenges that her clients face in emerging markets. 

Monaco is co-chair of the International Women of Elliot (IW/E), a leadership group that she helped co-found and launch at George Washington University. In the face of a severe underrepresentation of women receiving master's degrees in foreign policy, the IW/E is committed to the career development and advancement of women in international affairs in both the public and private sectors. "When it comes to solving the biggest problems or conflicts in the world, studies show that when women have an equal seat at the table, the peace process is more long-lasting," said Monaco. 

The financial industry has changed for the better over the last 20 years, Monaco said. She noted that the number of women in Citi's senior ranks has increased dramatically—upwards of 40%—and the fact  that men have taken a more active role in raising families, which has resulted in more women staying in the workforce. "Younger men are willing to do things that the previous generation would have never done," she said.