The Latest from Women in Banking

2021 was a year of transition for Julie Monaco, as her team expanded its strategic sovereign advisory business to address client vulnerabilities in food, energy, and security.

For Elif Zapparoli, the pandemic-era shift from in-person to remote work is similar to the trend she has seen in the financial services industry over the last 20 years.

Candace Browning, long a leading voice in investment research, added a notable area to the stable of sectors her team covers: digital assets. A research report, Digital Assets Primer: Only the First Inning, formally launched the bank's digital asset research practice last October.

In June 2021, Nadine Chakar, the three-decades long industry veteran, was appointed to lead State Street Digital, a new business division. The division is designed to help institutional investors, regulators, and State Street itself successfully transition into a modern digital economy.

Katy Knox began her career in 1986 at Fleet Bank in Boston. Unsurprisingly, she is a proud Patriots, Red Sox, Celtics and Bruins fan. With more than 35 years of experience in financial services, including commercial banking, corporate strategy, global treasury management and consumer banking, Knox has watched the industry change.

As a child, Lynn Martin nurtured her love of technology and coding on a Commodore 64 in her parents' home in Smithtown, New York. But it was not until her first job in coding that she felt the pull of Wall Street.

Adena Friedman started at Nasdaq in 1993 as an MBA intern. Outside of a three-year stint as the chief financial officer at Carlyle Group, Friedman has spent nearly 20 years at Nasdaq.

When Abigail Johnson, the chair and CEO of Fidelity Investments, was recently asked to advise those in the early stages of their career, she emphasized the core values that she and her firm have embraced for decades. "Don't doubt yourself. Keep at it. Stay looking ahead. Stay committed and stay true to yourself," she said.

When Thasunda Brown Duckett took the reins at TIAA in May 2021, she continued her run as one of the financial industry's most powerful and well-known African American women.

The team at JPMorgan Chase's asset and wealth management division crunched the numbers on diversity at the end of 2021 and found that portfolio managers who are women and/or people of color manage 60% of the unit's assets.