Even though there has been some progress over the last eight years, men continue to hold many more board seats and jobs on executive teams than women, according to a recent report from DBRS Morningstar.

Speakers at American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking gala acknowledged that many women have made it to high positions, but the number of female CEOs is still tiny.

When Peetz joined Citi in 2020, she was returning to work after three and a half years of retirement from a career that included leadership positions at Bank of New York Mellon, where she led the financial markets and treasury services group, and at JPMorgan Chase, where she had a variety of commercial lending, sales, and management positions.

Over the past year, Jane Fraser, Citi's first female CEO in the firm's history, completed a strategy refresh at the world's most global bank. Despite an implausibly volatile geopolitical environment, she steered Citi to robust first quarter 2022 earnings—returning $4 billion to shareholders, while commanding 200,000 employees globally, and serving millions of consumers and businesses across 95 countries.

Maria Hackley, managing director and global co-head of industrials, banking, capital markets and advisory at Citi, understands how crucial it is for bankers to create strong, original content to distinguish themselves during client presentations.

Ida Liu became head of Citi's North American private bank in 2019 and then went on to beat her projections by 12% in 2020 despite the pandemic. That helped her get a promotion last year to global head, running 50 offices across the globe and overseeing more than $500 billion in client business.

For much of last year, Titi Cole wore multiple hats. She was head of operations and fraud prevention for Citi's consumer bank, where she launched new fraud-detection capabilities, strengthened risk controls with enhanced governance oversight for issue and third-party management, and invested in controls automation and digital monitoring.

TD Bank, the U.S. unit of the Canadian bank, has hired Christopher Fred as its new head of U.S. credit cards and unsecured lending. The bank's retail partners include Target and Nordstrom.

Corporations are navigating shifting geopolitics, and M&A bankers are advising them as they consider selling off faraway units and focusing more on assets closer to home or in friendlier countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of complex global supply chains. Bankers say they are hearing from more U.S. clients who want to change that by moving manufacturing and supplier operations closer to home.