Florence Pourchet's most valuable lessons were learned growing up in France.
"I was raised in a family where you needed to earn what you had," said Pourchet, head of corporate and institutional banking, Latin America, at BNP Paribas, where she leads 980 employees and helps manage nearly $2.6 trillion of client assets. "You need to persevere and you need to be very thankful."
Pourchet later emigrated to New York, with a husband and three children in tow, to become head of commodity structured debt in Latin America at BNP Paribas.
Today, as the French bank's highest-ranking female executive in the Americas, Pourchet continues to value perseverance.
Her duties include deciding the types of corporate and institutional clients to attract in BNP Paribas' Latin American region and ensuring the bank has the right teams and products to serve them. The sector covers six countries, each with its own rules determined by its own regulators.
Until recently, Pourchet also served as head of corporate social responsibility for the Americas, tasked with ensuring that BNP Paribas met its sustainability goals.
Pourchet said traveling opened her eyes to the needs of others, adding that she learned that most people take goods and services for granted that many live without.
In her spare time, Pourchet participates in Excelerator Global, an organization working with youth in underserved Latin American communities. At work, she's pivotal in promoting microfinance in the region, facilitating roughly $3 million in small-business loans since 2013.
Pourchet is also the executive sponsor of BNP Paribas' military employee resource group, a peer group connecting veterans with nonveterans, and champions the bank's diversity and inclusion programs.
"Giving back can take many forms. It's really not only money," Pourchet said. "It's time; it's looking after the kids. Helping women who don't have support."
While her humanitarian interests stem from childhood, Pourchet said her care for the environment grew from her appointment as head of CSR for the Americas in 2011.
"It really opened my eyes," she recalled. "I started focusing on the topic and what should be done."
Over the next decade, she led numerous innovative transactions in sustainable finance. Under her leadership, BNP Paribas supported the Mexican cement company Cemex in a $1 billion green subordinated perpetual bond in March 2023. It was the first green hybrid by a cement group and the first green bond from Cemex.
The bond's proceeds will fund projects that include pollution prevention and control and eco-efficient technologies.
Also under her management, BNP Paribas announced in May 2023 that it would stop financing projects to develop new oil and gas fields and completely withdraw from the coal industry by 2030.
Pourchet said it's important to support companies in high-emitting sectors that have actionable plans to transition into developing renewable energies.
"If there's no plan and you're just going to continue to produce the way you've done it without trying to improve, then that's a different story," she said.
