The 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking

Karen Peetz has myriad responsibilities as president of the world's largest custody bank, not the least of which is managing relationships with Bank of New York Mellon's 500 largest clients. It's a hugely diverse group, ranging from Fortune 500 corporations to government agencies to sovereign wealth funds. Peetz frequently surveys and meets with these clients to gauge how well BNY Mellon is doing in meeting their needs.

Some of the feedback she has received lately is that clients love the bank's people, but they sometimes sense a lack of coordination between the many departments that touch their businesses. Many also do not view BNY Mellon as being particularly innovative, despite its history as an innovator — it was the first institution to use the Internet to process transactions, for example — and the fact that it has set up six innovation labs across its footprint.

Peetz is now leading the effort to change these perceptions and improve the way the bank interacts with these blue-chip clients. The initiative has many moving parts, but a key component is fostering greater collaboration across multiple business lines, primarily through intense training and coaching of the most senior executives. Another component is educating client-facing employees about the bank's innovation efforts so that they can keep clients up to date on the various initiatives.

This "cultural transformation," as Peetz calls it, is still a work in progress, but early results are encouraging. Internal surveys have shown that clients have a more positive perception of the bank's ability to innovate and, anecdotally, Peetz said clients are reporting higher levels of engagement from BNY Mellon employees.

"The biggest reaction we are getting from clients is, 'Why weren't you doing this earlier?' Peetz said. "We were doing it in pockets ... but now we are doing it across the company. It's a cultural change."

This ability to identify problems and lay out substantive solutions is among the reasons why Peetz — the Most Powerful Woman in Banking for the second time — is viewed as such an effective leader. Whether it is taking the lead on improving the bank's risk culture or spearheading an effort to improve career advancement opportunities for women, Peetz has inspired a generation of colleagues with a relentless focus on actionable plans and bottom-line results.

"Having a strong sense of accountability and a commitment to follow through is big part of leadership," Peetz said. "People see through [leaders] who don't step up and say 'That was my thing to do.' "

Perhaps the best example of Peetz stepping up came outside of the bank, when she was serving on the board of Penn State University, her alma mater. It was early 2012, and the school was embroiled in a sexual abuse scandal involving longtime assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky. Peetz had joined the board two years earlier and when the chairman opted not to run for re-election, she took the initiative to chair it during the most tumultuous time in the school's history. True to form, she ushered in a series of changes designed to make the board more transparent, including opening the meetings to the public and creating committees that included students, alumni and faculty. She stepped down from the post after she was promoted to president of BNY Mellon in 2013.

Apart from overseeing relationships with BNY Mellon's most important clients, Peetz is responsible for the bulk of the bank's activities abroad, helps set regulatory policy and heads its corporate social responsibility efforts.

Before being named president, Peetz ran the bank's treasury services business, where one of her top managers was Susan Skerritt, now a high-ranking executive at Deutsche Bank. Skerritt said that before she joined BNY Mellon, she had tried to come across as a leader who was tough, even though it didn't feel natural. Then she saw Peetz in action and admired how effective she was by being authentic — and listening more than she talked.

"I saw her naturally being herself, and I realized that it was possible to do that," Skerritt said. "When you are talking to Karen you feel as though you are the only person in the world."

Marianne Lake has come up with a simple formula to mentor rising stars.

During American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking gala last year, Lake laid out the "30-5-1" challenge. She asked those in the audience each week to spend 30 minutes having coffee with a talented junior woman, five minutes congratulating a woman on a recent success and one minute talking up that woman to another senior peer.

The initiative has now become a firmwide phenomenon at JPMorgan Chase, injecting new energy into the movement to support women across the company. During Women's History Month in March, Women on the Move, an internal initiative launched in 2013 to encourage senior women globally to advocate for female co-workers, hosted a "30-5-1" day at JPMorgan's headquarters.

Lake also co-sponsored a pilot program that aims to support parents who are about to go on or return from leave. The effort is expanding to include a dedicated program manager and an online portal that helps to match expectant parents with mentors who have already taken parental leave.

Lake has been chief financial officer since 2013 and her influence at the nation's largest bank has grown steadily since, particularly with the investment community. She is now an active participant on quarterly earnings calls and investor road shows, and last year she led a number of group and one-on-one meetings with major shareholders.

Under Lake, the finance department is investing heavily in robotics technology that, once perfected, would allow robots to perform certain labor-intensive activities so that employees could focus on "higher-value activities."

JPMorgan Chase spends about $9 billion a year on technology.

A lot of what Cathy Bessant knows about directing a team can be traced back to her days as patrol leader of her Girl Scouts troop.

"That was the first leadership role I ever pursued," said Bessant, who was in the scouts as a tween growing up in Jackson, Mich. "You get to wear a special cord, but your power isn't positional. It is relational and that is exactly what I do every day. I work with our board. I get groups to get work done. You can draw a straight line between the work I do today and the things that began in girl scouting."

This Girl Scout connection is also helping Bessant solve a systemic problem in today's workplace: a shortage of women with degrees in computer science. In 2000, 28% of college degrees in computer science went to female graduates. By 2008, it was down to 18% and remained there through 2013, according to a study by the American Association of University Women.

So when a member of Bessant's team suggested pitching the Girl Scouts Hornets' Nest Council of North and South Carolina on the idea of a "women in technology" badge, Bessant put the support of Bank of America behind the initiative. The badge, which bears the Bank of America logo, launched last year and can be earned one of two ways. There is a cybersecurity track, where the scouts learn cybersecurity lingo and either get to do a role-playing activity or a read-and-discuss activity. (They tend to pick the role-playing one.)

Alternatively, they can learn banking basics, including how to use ATMs and what to do in other banking scenarios.

So far, 58 girls in 19 troops have gone through the cybersecurity program, and 50 girls in 18 troops have gone through the banking basics course. Councils in Delaware and Dallas have adopted the women in technology badge. Bessant joined Bank of America in 1982 and over the years she has run some of the bank's most important business units, including global corporate banking, global treasury services and marketing. In her currrent role of chief operations and technology officer, Bessant is responsible for a workforce of nearly 100,000 people in 35 countries and an annual budget of $16 billion. Her division oversees technology and operations for all the bank's business lines.

Another trait the Girls Scouts helped galvanize in Bessant is an appreciation for diversity. At Bank of America, she is leading the development of its LGBT Pride Global Ally program. The company launched an LGBT Pride program in 2009 and expanded it to include LGBT allies in 2013. Now 15,000 employees are involved across the organization.