The Most Powerful Women in Banking: Performance, Resilience and the Changing Dynamics of Leadership

October 7, 2025 9:57 AM

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Banks went into 2024 already juggling seismic change. Throughout the year and into 2025, executives were forced to prioritize trade-offs between growth, innovation-fueled transformation and safety in their strategic decision-making, capital allocation and appetite for risk.

Several economic and market factors directly influenced how bankers framed their growth strategy—higher-for-longer interest rates that raised deposit costs and pressured borrowers, growing concerns over consumer credit quality, and new interest in "alternatives" to banks increased competition.

At the same time, financial executives had to contend with President Trump's return to the Oval Office, with his tariff strategy and pro-business, pro-crypto deregulatory agenda creating complexity for executives seeking to effectively manage through it.

The industry has also been confronted with new business realities—all driven by innovation, from the launch of spot Bitcoin and Ethereum exchange-traded funds to the growing issuance of stablecoin payments to the rise of agentic AI.

These are indeed extraordinary, somewhat chaotic times. But if wide-ranging industry shifts and chaos are "the ultimate proving ground for resilience and reinvention," as former Intel CEO Andy Grove believed, then who is leading financial institutions and how they are doing so requires significant adjustments to meet this unprecedented moment.

For leaders in The Most Powerful Women in Banking™ 2025, success this year lay in flexibility and agility. There remain only two CEOs in the top 50 U.S. institutions by assets, Citi's Jane Fraser at #1 and U.S. Bank's Gunjan Kedia at #4—a doubling of the number since last year when only Fraser held the title. (This marks the fifth consecutive year that Fraser has been ranked in the top spot.)

JPMorganChase has a majority of the Banking list's top five spots, with Jennifer Piepszak, Marianne Lake and Lori Beer coming in at #2, #3 and #5, respectively.

What follows is a deeper look at the 25 top-performing executives whose management styles, strategic thinking and bold moves reflect the changing dynamics of leadership in an industry that powers the global economy.

Jane Fraser, Citigroup

CEO

Five years ago, Jane Fraser was at a gas station in Idaho with her husband when she received a surprise message asking her to call her boss. It was the Friday before Labor Day, and the couple was driving from their house in Wyoming to Montana for a weekend of fly fishing.

Fraser made the call and shortly thereafter, she and her husband turned around and drove five hours back to Wyoming to talk in person to Michael Corbat, the CEO of Citigroup and Fraser's boss. The subject to be discussed: Corbat's pending exit and Fraser's next big assignment.

Fraser, of course, became Citi's CEO, formally succeeding Corbat in 2021, about six months after he called her back from her trip and told her that he would be retiring. The promotion made her the first woman to run Citi and the first, and still only, woman sitting atop a Wall Street bank.

Read more about Fraser's leadership.

Jennifer Piepszak, JPMorganChase

COO

Jennifer Piepszak stepped into a firmwide role at the largest bank in the U.S. during one of the fastest-evolving times for the industry in years.

After more than three decades in various leadership positions across JPMorganChase's divisions, Piepszak took on the chief operating officer role in January. Now, she oversees various pillars of the $4 trillion-asset bank's strategy, including the technology modernization agenda, corporate initiatives, efficiency streamlining and talent development.

The move has been "a lot of fun," said Piepszak, who previously served as co-CEO of the commercial and investment bank and spent nearly 20 years in the investment banking business.

(American Banker's methodology requires that a woman be in her role for at least one year, so Piepszak is ranked based on her performance as co-CEO of the commercial and investment bank and not her current position as COO.)

Read more about Piepszak's work.

Marianne Lake, JPMorganChase

CEO, Consumer & Community Banking

Growing up, Marianne Lake always wanted to be a movie star.

Well, the CEO of JPMorganChase's Consumer & Community Banking efforts may not have made it to the silver screen—yet—but she is certainly a star in the banking world. The 56-year-old is often mentioned on a shortlist of contenders for the throne of legendary CEO Jamie Dimon.

Perhaps not surprising, since Lake—solo in her current role since early 2024—has stewarded a critical division through volatile times. It's a perch she rose to after more than a quarter century at the bank, with stints as CFO and CEO of Consumer Lending along the way.

Learn more about Lake's journey.

Gunjan Kedia, U.S. Bank

President and CEO

Spoiler alert: Gunjan Kedia's 2024 performance as president of U.S. Bank was strong enough that she was granted the CEO title as well in early 2025, taking over in April from longtime leader Andrew Cecere. (American Banker's methodology requires that a woman be in her role for at least one year, so Kedia is ranked based on her performance as president of U.S.Bank and not her current position as president and CEO.)

The new CEO has said publicly that she does not plan to buy another bank, or sell her own Minneapolis-based company. Why not jump into the growing bank M&A boom? It's only been a few years since U.S. Bank bought MUFG's Union Bank unit, a deal that closed in December 2022. The integration was completed in June 2023, just as the banking crisis was roiling regional banks. Between that acquisition and its own growth, U.S. Bank is now the fifth-largest commercial bank in the country, Kedia said.

Instead, she's leaning on partnerships like a tie-up with St. Louis-based brokerage firm Edward Jones, another Midwestern company with a similar physical footprint, which is slated to go live at the end of 2025. "Their culture is very similar to our culture," Kedia said.

Learn more about Kedia's leadership.

Lori Beer, JPMorganChase

Global CIO

Lori Beer's team recently wrote an open letter to third-party suppliers, asking them to step up their efforts on security and compliance. The letter mentioned concentration risk, a growing concern to bank regulators as banks gravitate toward the cloud-based services of tech behemoths like Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

One antidote to concentration risk that her bank, JPMorganChase, has embraced is working with smaller vendors.

"Engaging with smaller providers is definitely important," said Beer, who is global chief information officer at the $4 trillion-assets bank, the country's largest. "We actually have a team dedicated to helping us ensure that we are engaging with emerging tech companies in addition to the big hyperscalers."

Wendy Stewart, Bank of America

President, Bank of America Global Commercial Banking

The incoming questions from Wendy Stewart's middle-market corporate banking clients this spring was universally similar. Across industrial, marketplace and geographical settings, companies were asking about strategies surrounding trade, tariffs, inflation, interest rates and even immigration, in the wake of recessionary worries ramping up across both Wall Street and Main Street.

"I'm hearing a lot of things that start with a 't' or an 'i'," said Stewart, the Atlanta-based president of Bank of America's Global Commercial Banking unit. "We started off the year expecting to go in one direction, and it clearly went in a very different direction."

But under Stewart's direction, the bank's commercial banking services continued to attract and maintain American businesses' confidence, gaining 8% year-over-year growth in middle-market loans and a 15% gain in deposits to over $600 billion. This follows similarly strong results in 2024 that saw 4% annual growth in loans and 6% t in deposits, from companies in 115 U.S. and Canadian cities (plus another 15 international markets) with between $50 million and $2 billion in yearly revenues.

Holly O'Neill, Bank of America

President, Consumer, Retail and Preferred

Holly O'Neill got a big promotion this year. But after 30 years at Bank of America, she's used to big promotions.

O'Neill started her career at BofA in 1996, when she was a trainee and then a credit analyst. By 2021, she was president of BofA's retail business. And on April 1 of this year, her purview grew to include consumer and preferred banking, which serves mass-affluent clients and small business owners. Effectively, the promotion put O'Neill in charge of all consumer banking at the nation's second-largest bank. (She was ranked on her 2024 title of president of retail banking.)

"Huge opportunity," she told American Banker. "It's been an incredibly busy few months but a really positive transition, and I'm really excited about it."

Teresa Heitsenrether, JPMorganChase

Chief Data and Analytics Officer

It's been about a year since Teresa Heitsenrether's team started rolling out LLM Suite, a proprietary abstraction layer through which large language models like OpenAI's GPT-4 are swapped in and out, across the bank's entire employee base.

"We now have about 232,000 people who are entitled to the tool, and more than half of those people actively use it," Heitsenrether told American Banker. "It's become very much a part of the mainstream of how people do their work every day."

As JPMorganChase's chief data and analytics officer, Heitsenrether sets the firm's data and AI strategy, delivers firmwide data and AI technology and develops and maintains standards for responsible and controlled AI adoption. She reports jointly to Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer Piepszak; she leads 6,000 employees and has 1,500 direct reports.

Learn more about how Heitsenrether is deploying AI at the bank.

Kate Danella, Regions Bank

Head of Consumer Banking Group

As the head of consumer banking at Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Financial, Kate Danella directs the bank's largest business. Last year, the consumer unit produced $3.9 billion of revenue, or 53% of the company's total. Its $1.2 billion of pretax income was 45% of the bank-wide amount.

But when Danella was asked about her biggest accomplishment in 2024, she didn't point to any financial metrics. "Customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction," she wrote in an email.

In the American Customer Satisfaction Index's 2025 finance and insurance study, which was begun last year, Regions finished as the No. 1 traditional bank in customer satisfaction, Danella noted.

Read more about Danella's leadership.

Jennifer Taylor, Citigroup

Chief Compliance Officer for Citibank, Banking & International

Jennifer Taylor's workday spans continents, often beginning in, say, Australia and ending somewhere in Latin America. It's a rhythm that perfectly captures the global scope of her role as Citi's chief compliance officer for banking and international.

With oversight and responsibilities across 160 markets and a physical presence in over 90 countries, Taylor's work puts her at the forefront of international risk management during one of the most transformative periods in financial services.

"I genuinely, really enjoy the challenge of our global footprint," she said. "I find that fascinating."

Learn more about Taylor's international career.

Kristin Lesher, Truist Financial

Chief Wholesale Banking Officer

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Kristin Lesher knew a lot about Truist Financial long before the bank recruited her to join the bank.

For years, while Lesher was working as Wells Fargo's head of middle market banking, she competed against Truist and its two predecessor banks. She was also friendly with some of Truist's commercial bankers, who reported a positive working environment and a strong culture.

When Lesher got the chance to join the Truist, she was drawn to the opportunity to be part of the C-suite and drive the bank's strategy.

"I knew that Truist had a lot of great capabilities, all of the products and solutions and groups you'd want to have to go out and cover clients effectively, and I knew it had the opportunity to grow faster," Lesher told American Banker. "There was a really interesting challenge there."

Learn more about Lesher's responsibilities.

Amy Brady, KeyBank

CIO

As chief information officer at KeyBank, Amy Brady has guided the bank to high talent retention rates within the company's technology, operations and services (KTOS) organization. In a highly competitive market for technical talent, this stability is a significant strategic advantage.

The division, which includes 4,524 employees, had a voluntary annualized attrition rate of 6.8% in 2024. Technology employees had attrition as low as 3.78%. These figures, which are below industry averages according to the bank, reflect a culture that minimizes disruption, preserves institutional knowledge and reduces the high costs associated with recruitment.

This success in workforce stability is a direct reflection of Brady's focus on employee engagement and professional growth. She advocates for empowering her employees to be the "CEOs of their careers," a philosophy supported by internal development programs that she said goes beyond typical training, fostering critical skills like adaptability, digital fluency and complex decision-making.

Learn more about Brady's leadership.

Jennifer Doyle, Wells Fargo

Global Co-Head of Structured Products Group

When Jennifer Doyle landed a temp job on the First Union trading floor in Charlotte, North Carolina, after graduating from college, she felt like she'd won the lottery.

At the time Doyle didn't know much about Wall Street or investment banking, or sales and trading. But as a former college tennis player, she relished the fast pace and competitive nature of the work.

"It was truly right place, right time," she said.

Doyle parlayed her temp job into a 25-year career starting at First Union, its successor Wachovia and then Wachovia's acquirer, Wells Fargo. For the last three years, Doyle has been co-head of the structured products group at the San Francisco-based bank, a role that continues to engage her competitive spirit.

Read more about Doyle's career.

Carolyn Booth, BMO Financial Group

Head of U.S. Personal & Business Banking

Two weeks before its most recent U.S. merger closed, BMO Financial Group made a big bet: It splashed its name on a five-year-old soccer stadium near downtown Los Angeles.

For the Canadian bank, the naming-rights deal made sense on a couple of levels. Soccer was already at the center of its marketing strategy; in Toronto, BMO Field was home to the city's Major League Soccer franchise.

Perhaps more importantly, BMO needed to establish its brand in California. Though the bank had operated in the nation's most populous state for more than 160 years, it had never run a branch network there.

In January 2023, when BMO put its name on the new soccer stadium, it was on the verge of taking over more than 200 California branches that were previously operated by San Francisco-based Bank of the West.

Read more about Booth's leadership.

Jill Castilla, Citizens Bank of Edmond

CEO and President of Citizens Bank of Edmond and Chairman of Citizens Bancshares

Jill Castilla knows what success looks like.

Castilla took the helm as CEO of Edmond, Oklahoma-based Citizens Bank of Edmond in 2009, when the bank was reeling from the still-unfolding global financial crisis. In the intervening years, Castilla has not only turned the bank back from the brink of failure, but also expanded its size and profile into a stable and successful bank with more than $416 million of assets.

But success can be defined in a number of different ways, Castilla said, and many of the ways that bankers traditionally measure success may not capture some of the initiatives that make a difference for customers. As a privately-owned and primarily employee-owned business, Castilla faces less pressure for quarterly earnings results than many of her publicly-traded peers, which she says helps her focus less on short-term profits and more on long-term goals, such as securing inexpensive deposits to make loans. The bank's core deposits grew 35% between November 2023 and May of this year.

Learn more about Castilla's leadership.

Hope Dmuchowski, First Horizon Corp.

Senior EVP and Chief Financial Officer

Hope Dmuchowski may be the top financial officer at First Horizon, but the narrative she tells clients and investors has been as important as the numbers as she guides the regional bank on its path.

Her communication efforts over the last year inspired confidence in First Horizon's stability following the termination of its merger with TD Bank and the regional banking crisis that marked 2023. First Horizon's stock surpassed the KBW Bank Index in 2024 by 33%.

"This was no small feat, and we continue to see these types of outcomes and forward momentum as we move through 2025," said Dmuchowski, who has been chief financial officer of the $82 billion-asset bank for nearly four years.

Read more about Dmuchowski's career.

Stacey Friedman, JPMorganChase

EVP and General Counsel

As the top lawyer at JPMorganChase, Stacey Friedman thinks "it's a super interesting time to think deeply" about the rule of law in the United States.

Friedman, the executive vice president and general counsel of the nation's largest bank, navigates a legal and regulatory landscape on a global scale. She leads a group of more than 2,000 lawyers in multiple jurisdictions around the globe. What may be a headwind in one country could be a tailwind in another, she says.

"The front windshield is really quite big and I can watch and participate and learn," Friedman said. "At the end of the day, I'm super hopeful for America, for humanity, for the institution, and for the rule of law."

Learn more about Friedman's career.

Hope Holding Bryant, First Citizens Bank

Vice Chairwoman

Hope Holding Bryant commands nearly half of First Citizens Bank's balance sheet.

Last year, the North Carolina-based financial institution increased general bank loans by $3.9 billion, a 6.3% year-over-year growth. As of Q4 2024, general bank loans accounted for $66.8 billion – 48% of total loans. On the other side of the balance sheet, last year general bank deposits grew $9.4 billion to $73.1 billion, which accounts for 47% of total bank deposits.

Holding Bryant, the vice chairwoman, attributes this success to serendipitous acquisitions over the past few years. In April 2019, First Citizens acquired Biscayne Bank. In January 2022, First Citizens merged with CIT Group. And in March 2023, the bank acquired Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.

Read more about Byrant's role at the bank.

Jill Gateman, TD Bank

Co-Head of U.S. Commercial Banking

Sports analogies are rife when talking about business, but when Jill Gateman describes the middle market as a team of quarterbacks, you listen. That's because Gateman has spent the better part of the last two decades shaping the middle market offering of industry leaders such as PNC. While she takes on a broader remit in her new role as co-head of U.S. commercial banking, her experiences working with the middle market still drives her thinking.

"If you're familiar with middle market, I look at them as almost like the quarterback. They bring the whole bank to all of our clients and prospects," Gateman observed. Her new role has given her a different perspective on how it fits into the larger commercial bank offering.

That role focuses on TD's national corporate and specialty businesses, including middle market, sponsor-backed and fund finance, institutional commercial real estate, asset-based lending, franchise finance, healthcare, municipal, non-profit and higher education. (Until September 2024, Gateman was head of corporate banking and specialized finance, the role on which her 2025 ranking is based, as per American Banker's methodology requiring a full year of performance.)

Julieann Thurlow, Reading Cooperative Bank

President and CEO

Julieann Thurlow, president and CEO of Reading Cooperative Bank, successfully merged her bank with a neighboring one in a deal that brought the asset size of the Massachusetts-based mutual bank past the $1 billion mark this year.

However, this wasn't your average bank M&A deal. Since both institutions are mutual banks there were no price negotiations, even though the merger co-mingled the two banks' assets to a combined $1.23 billion. Instead, Thurlow focused her negotiations around relationship building and aligning the mission and goals of each institution to ensure a smooth transition for their members.

Thurlow told American Banker that a mutual bank merger allows each bank to do more for their communities working together with a combined asset size than they could do separately.

Learn more about Thurlow's leadership.

Tasnim Ghiawadwala, Citigroup

Global Head of Commercial Banking

For the last few years, Tasnim Ghiawadwala has overseen a global expansion of Citi's commercial banking business, an effort that culminated with the launch of operations in Japan in 2024.

The expansion, along with investments in digital platforms, is starting to pay off for Citi in the form of higher average revenue per client and greater productivity for its commercial bankers, Ghiawadwala said.

"We're doing more with clients, acting more globally with clients, helping them in more countries, helping them with more products and solutions," said Ghiawadwala, who has been Citi's global head of commercial banking since 2021. The unit generated roughly $4 billion in revenue in 2024.

Pam Habner, Citigroup

Head of Branded Cards and Lending

Citigroup's Pam Habner is leading her bank into the fiercely competitive and lucrative high-end credit card market against giant competitors like American Express, Capital One and JPMorganChase.

"I've been in financial services for more than 30 years and the competition has always been fierce but today it is at a new level," said Habner, head of branded cards and lending for Citigroup, noting the rush of new and relaunched premium cards that are entering the market.

Habner played a major role in the launch of Strata Elite, Citi's first card for high-end consumers in four years. This comes as Chase recently refreshed its Sapphire card with new travel, fitness and experience perks, and higher fees, and Amex plans a refresh of its Platinum card for 2025. Strata Elite has an annual fee of $595, less than Sapphire's $795 and Platinum's $695.

Learn more about Habner's leadership.

Jennifer Barker, BNY

Global Head of Treasury Services and Depositary Receipts

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As a technology consultant at Accenture early in her career, Jennifer Barker learned to assess her corporate clients' wide-ranging needs and concluded that technology can resolve most, if not all, business problems. As the global head of treasury services and depositary receipts at BNY since May 2022, she continues to apply that experience, delving into clients' treasury-related needs and providing them with the latest tech solutions.

The bank's Digital Employee artificial intelligence agent, for example, is one of 10 AI solutions already in production. It autonomously corrects failed payments and performs other business tasks, interacts with internal systems, and communicates with employees through tools including Outlook and TEAMS. BNY estimates that another AI-enabled solution for check-processing has reduced manual efforts by an estimated 75%, while its Wire Investigation agent summarizes complex transactions and case histories to determine the best resolution actions.

Bridgit Chayt, Fifth Third Bank

EVP, Head of Commercial Payments and Treasury Management

With digital commerce growing rapidly, it's important to pick up the pace of development, Bridgit Chayt says.

"Last year has shown a lot of progress in the way we work," said Chayt, executive vice president and head of commercial payments and treasury management. "We have been able to onboard at the 'speed of fintech' rather than the 'speed of banking,' which is gratifying."

Chayt was pivotal to Fifth Third's acquisition of Rize Money in late 2023 and the subsequent launch of Newline, the bank's embedded payments business. Embedded payments refers to payment products that are integrated into software or a platform. Consumers or businesses use embedded payments to complete a transaction without leaving an app or website. Embedded payments are often grouped with embedded finance, which refers to the delivery of banking services via relationships with third parties, another strategy that is a big part of Fifth Third's business.

Learn more about Chayt's work.

Kim Posnett, Goldman Sachs

Co-Head of Investment Banking

Kim Posnett's career has long been on the rise at storied Goldman Sachs. So it was fitting that to mark her two decades at the firm, she ascended to even more rarefied territory: co-head of investment banking.

But before that January 2025 crowning, it was her previous role as head of global technology, media & telecommunications group that groomed her for the even bigger chair. That put her at the center of major events like Twitter's $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, and Silver Lake's $25 billion taking-private of Endeavor. High-stakes deals like that helped cement the firm's status as the #1 advisory in worldwide, announced and completed M&A for the year. (Posnett is ranked on her prior role of Global Head of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group, per American Banker's methodology requiring that a woman be in her role for at least one full year.)

Read more about Posnett's ascent.