A chance encounter during a family vacation set the course of Katherine Weislogel's career in banking.
During college, Weislogel interned at a PR firm and intended to be a copywriter when she graduated. But the economy had softened, so the firm wasn't going to be hiring any of its interns.
A month or so after graduation, Weislogel went to Hilton Head, South Carolina, for a planned family vacation. At the time, the family of one of her high school friends was staying at the same island resort. One day, Weislogel was at the pool with her friend and her friend's family. When asked about her plans, Weislogel said she had gotten engaged the night before graduation but had no idea what she was going to do for work. So her friend's father, who happened to be George Schaefer, the CEO of Fifth Third Bank, told her that he could get her a job as a teller at the bank. "I said, 'I'm sorry, but I went to Miami [University] for four years, and worked really, really hard, so I'm not going to start at the teller level,'" Weislogel recalled.
Schaeffer laughed and told her that the bank had a management trainee program and he'd pass her resume on and get her an interview. But after that, he told Weislogel, she was on her own. She aced the second interview and joined Fifth Third as a management trainee.
"I never would have put myself in banking, nor was it anywhere on my radar. But I was in the right place at the right time, and I've never once thought about leaving," she said.
She started as a retail associate at Fifth Third and spent the next 20 years working her way up the ranks and through different divisions. She was a retail branch manager and a retail brokerage platform development manager before she set her sight on working in treasury sales. While Weislogel loved the sales management part of running the bank's retail brokerage, it eventually became more of a compliance-based role, which she wasn't crazy about. "I remember going to my boss at the time and saying, 'Listen, I'm a salesperson in my blood, and this isn't for me," she recalled.
There was an opening in treasury management, so she went to the head of the department and asked to have a shot. "He asked why he should hire me over somebody from JPMorgan with treasury experience. I said it's because I've run sales management, I have a proven history [of success] and I have the core skill sets required for the role," she said.
Weislogel attributed her ability to take on different roles throughout her nearly 31-year career to having the right skill set for each position. That is why, she noted, within one year in treasury management, she ended up being No. 1 in sales revenue at Fifth Third.
In the spring of 2014, Wells Fargo approached Weislogel to build its treasury management business for the bank's commercial middle-market clients in Ohio. "I loved Fifth Third, but I was ready for an expanded role," she said.
After just two years at Wells, BMO tapped her to build out a treasury management sales strategy and run the sales team on the East and West coasts. It was a bigger role, and it allowed her to stay in Columbus, Ohio, where she and her husband were raising their children. "I thoroughly enjoyed that job and learned a ton. And it was my first experience working with a foreign-based bank, and it was great to be able to understand how that all worked," she said.
What she really loved about the job, Weislogel said, was finding new talent, building out the teams and watching them grow and succeed. But after a few years, Weislogel once again got the itch to challenge herself in new ways. "I was on the sales strategy and the sales side, but I wanted to have influence on the product side. And it felt like something I was missing in my career."
In the spring of 2019, a recruiter who was working for
Weislogel currently has three main P&L responsibilities: core treasury services, international banking solutions and the commercial card business. "When I started five years ago, we had a failing international business, we had a commercial card business that wasn't mature at all, and we had a treasury business that was more of an afterthought," she said.
Weislogel had to put together an infrastructure that would align with the bank's five-year strategy; assess the current staff and see where they would fit in that structure; hire new staff; create training and sales materials; and evaluate the solution sets that were available to support each of the three lines of business.
Over the past five years, Weislogel's staff has grown from 59 to 130, and she is constantly adding new focuses within these business lines such as a money services business, a new revenue line that her team built from scratch to drive liquidity and transaction revenue.
Small versus large
Having worked for large banks, Weislogel said she's come to appreciate the experience of working at a smaller bank. "There are less layers," she said. "I report to the CEO so that immediately helps me to be able to have a strong voice and affect change faster. And it makes us more nimble, so we can move more quickly to bring a solution to the market."
On a personal level, Weislogel said that it's given her career development opportunities she didn't have at larger banks. For instance, she's been able to speak to the board of directors at
Building a diverse team
Weislogel said treasury has always been predominantly female. At
She meets with her team leaders every quarter to check in on their recruiting efforts. "I do quarterly business-line reviews, and one of the requirements is that they have a page of their review that talks about their star performers and 'storms' — meaning those that we have to figure out how we're going to coach up or out. And then the next page is about who you're talking to and what your hit list looks like," Weislogel said. And to ensure they are talking to a diverse set of candidates, they have to include a photo of the person along with their resumes or LinkedIn profiles.
She is also cognizant of the images used in promoting the bank: "If you just have white males on all of your social media campaigns, you're really not going to attract diversity into your team."
Characteristics of an effective leader
Being a visionary who has a clear purpose and direction is one of the top qualities that a good leader should have, said Weislogel. "If you don't know who's driving the ship and where that ship is going, that's a really big problem."
It is also important that a leader is honest and transparent. "I have the most respect for leaders that can have a difficult conversation to your face even though it's not going to be received well," she said. "And don't put me in a position where I'm constantly trying to figure out what's going on. Just be honest."
And finally, given the way the industry is rapidly changing, a strong leader needs to be resilient. "When you have an evolving industry, like we do, and you are moving at such a fast pace, it's not going to always be perfect. There are going to be bumps in the road and systems are going to go down. Things are not going to work and people are going to quit. But the most resilient leaders that I have worked with get into the trenches with you and get in there with their sleeves rolled up and help everyone through it," Weislogel said.
