Co-head of Global Capital Markets
As co-head of Global Capital Markets for BofA Securities, Elif Bilgi Zapparoli has no shortage of issues competing for her attention. The 850 bankers working for her operate across a vast business landscape, including equity capital markets, investment-grade capital markets, leveraged finance, rates and currencies solutions, and debt advisory.
As such, she oversaw many of the highest-profile deals to hit the market last year, including multiple tech IPOs.
But even as she steered BofA’s capital markets operations through the economic crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, Zapparoli has found herself increasingly drawn to the potential applications of blockchain technology and cryptocurrency assets.
It’s not just the prospect of creating more efficient ways to deliver services to clients that appeals to her. When Zapparoli looks at the emergence of this new technology, she sees a sector unencumbered by the traditional structures that have historically made it difficult for women to advance in finance.
Women, Zapparoli said, are natural change agents. That “can be especially advantageous as our industry continues to evolve with fintech and digital technology opportunities,” she said. “In many ways, the emerging focus on crypto assets and blockchain technology is generating new constructs for delivering financing to clients — along with a new approach to jobs, services and products. In doing so, they also are giving women new constructs for establishing ourselves as the leaders in an emerging industry.”
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It’s no surprise that Zapparoli sees opportunities for other women in the same field where she sees opportunities for the $2.9 trillion-asset Bank of America itself. Throughout her 29-year career, she has advocated a strategy of “reaching back and pulling up,” to make sure that, as she advanced through the ranks, she made space for other qualified women to rise along with her. The blockchain and crypto sectors are simply the next step.
“Given these fintech and digital sectors are so new,” she said, “women have nothing to lose and everything to gain by embracing the learning, pushing for opportunities and making ourselves the experts and leaders of this next generation of financial services and banking.”
