Thasunda Brown Duckett is well into her second year as president and CEO of TIAA, the financial services giant with $1.3 trillion assets under management, more than 4.7 million individual customers and more than 12,000 institutional clients.
As part of TIAA's mission, Duckett is doubling down on her efforts to ensure that Americans save enough for retirement.
Last year, TIAA launched its "Retire Inequality" campaign, aimed at raising awareness of retirement-savings gaps and closing them. "The truth is, 40% of all Americans run out of money at retirement. And so this is a crisis. Women retire with 30% less than men, and 54% of Black Americans won't have enough savings to retire. And so when we think about the opportunity and what this campaign is all about, first it's about heightening the awareness, making sure that we all understand that this is a crisis and it's one that we should all be focused on closing," she said.
As part of her efforts to focus on TIAA on retirement, on Aug. 1, the financial services company completed the sale of the $36.8 billion-asset TIAA Bank to a group of investors including Warburg Pincus. TIAA will continue to hold a non-controlling stake in the now-renamed EverBank.
"We have a phenomenal asset management company called Nuveen, and our focus is to continue to make sure that Nuveen continues to grow, not just here in America, but globally," Duckett said about the divestiture. "And we know that the cornerstone of ensuring that Americans can have a secure retirement is advice, so we're continuing to build out our wealth management business."
Duckett, who came to TIAA following a nearly five-year stint as the CEO of Chase consumer banking, knows all too well the challenges facing Americans who struggle financially.
Duckett's father, Otis Brown, was a warehouse worker and truck driver. He and his wife, Rosie, often struggled financially while raising Duckett and her two brothers. She often publicly recalls the day she sat down with her father to plan his retirement. While he had a pension, he went 20 or more years without establishing a 401(k) and once he did, he didn't contribute the maximum amount because he didn't know he was eligible. "I had to tell my dad that it wasn't enough," she said. "And my father did everything that he knew how to do, but the message did not get to the person in the warehouse."
During her tenure as the CEO of Chase consumer banking, Duckett led a business unit with more than $600 billion in deposits and launched Chase's five-year plan to open 400 branches in new markets across the U.S. In that role, she continued to advocate for financial literacy as well as the need for the industry to push harder for more diversity in its ranks. She launched a financial literacy campaign in partnership with Essence called "Currency Conversations" to promote greater financial acumen and knowledge for communities of color — and for young Black women in particular.
She was the executive sponsor of the bank's Advancing Black Pathways program, which promoted apprenticeships and post-graduation roles at Chase for Black students' education opportunities, as well as professional development programs for younger African American executives recruited to the bank.
As one of only three female Black CEOs to ever run a Fortune 500 company and the first female CEO of the more than 100-year-old TIAA, Duckett is committed to promoting diversity and inclusion efforts not just within her company, but within the industry as a whole.
"We have to believe that talent is created equally, opportunity is not. And if we believe that, then we can acknowledge that there's more work to do. Secondly, it's about disaggregating the data, looking throughout our organization and encouraging others to do the same, to say, where do we see that we don't have the full aperture of talent in particular areas of the business," she said.
"Thirdly, it's about looking at our policies and practices. Is there anything that's getting in the way that's not enabling the acceleration of women or people of color so that we can really make sure there's structural things that we can do better to improve? And then lastly, what gets measured gets done. We know that with talent, the job is never done. And so it's something that we have to continue to stay focused on."
Outside of the office, Duckett serves on a handful of boards including Nike, National Medal of Honor Museum and Economic Club of New York. And in honor of her parents, she founded the Otis and Rosie Brown Foundation, whose mission it is to highlight people and organizations who use ordinary means to impact their communities in extraordinary ways.
