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Most Powerful Women in Finance 2023

The Most Powerful Women in Finance 2023

By Editorial Staff
September 27, 2023 8:10 AM
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Women lead some of the largest and most influential financial institutions in the U.S. Once again, first on the list of the 2023 Most Powerful Women in Finance is JPMorgan Chase's Mary Callahan Erdoes, who heads the asset and wealth management division of the country's biggest bank. Near the top are several CEOs, including Abigail Johnson of Fidelity, Thasunda Brown Duckett of TIAA, Jenny Johnson of Franklin Templeton, and Adena Friedman of Nasdaq. Rounding out the list are other top executives from asset managers, securities exchanges, wealth management firms, and investment banks.

Also be sure to check out:

The Most Powerful Women in Banking
The Most Powerful Women to Watch
Top Teams
The Most Powerful Women in Banking: Next

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Mary Callahan Erdoes

CEO, Asset and Wealth Management
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
When the banking industry is at its worst, business is at its best for JPMorgan Chase's asset and wealth management division.

After the 2007-2008 financial crisis, wealthy clients flocked to JPMorgan for the stability its blue chip reputation promised. This past spring, they poured even more money into the New York-based company's wealth management business after a spate of regional bank failures.

Read her full profile.
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Abigail Johnson

Chairman and CEO
Fidelity Investments
For Abigail Johnson, chairman and CEO at Fidelity Investments, family and business are inextricably entwined.

Her grandfather founded the Boston-based mutual fund in 1946, some 30 years before her father took over the business and grew it into one of the world's largest financial services firms. Today, Fidelity has $4.5 trillion in client assets.

Read her full profile.
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Thasunda Brown Duckett

President and CEO
TIAA
Thasunda Brown Duckett is well into her second year as president and CEO of TIAA, the financial services giant with $1.3 trillion assets under management, more than 4.7 million individual customers and more than 12,000 institutional clients.

As part of TIAA's mission, Duckett is doubling down on her efforts to ensure that Americans save enough for retirement.

Read her full profile.
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Jenny Johnson

President and CEO
Franklin Templeton
In a career spanning 35 years, Franklin Templeton's Jenny Johnson has been a key force behind the company's growth into one of the world's largest investment managers, with approximately $1.5 trillion in assets under management.

Read her full profile.
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Adena Friedman

Chair and CEO
Nasdaq
Under Adena Friedman, Nasdaq is poised to take the biggest step yet in the company's evolution.

In June, Nasdaq announced a $10.5 billion deal to buy Adenza Inc., which develops software for risk management and regulatory compliance.

Read her full profile.
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Suni Harford

President
UBS Asset Management
Suni Harford was handed one of the most challenging tasks of her career in early 2023 when UBS took over the ailing Credit Suisse in a $3.2 billion deal brokered by the Swiss government.

The transaction added $400 billion in assets under management to UBS Asset Management, the unit she leads as president, bringing it to around $1.6 trillion.

Read her full profile.
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Donna Milrod

Chief Product Officer
State Street
Last November, after State Street announced it was not moving forward with its acquisition of Brown Brothers Harriman investor services business, Donna Milrod, who had been the lead integration executive, took on a new role: chief product officer.

Read her full profile.
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Hanneke Smits

Chief Executive Officer, BNY Mellon Investment Management
BNY Mellon
It's been an interesting year for Hanneke Smits, who has been chief executive officer of BNY Mellon Investment Management with its $1.8 trillion in assets under management since October 2020.

As CEO, she leads the efforts of eight specialist investment firms: Insight Investment, Mellon, Dreyfus, Newton Investment Management, Walter Scott, Alecentra, ARX and Siguler & Guff. Taken together, these companies offer investment solutions across every major asset class. 

Read her full profile.
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Lynn Martin

President
New York Stock Exchange Group
Since being named president of the world's largest stock exchange at the end of 2021, Lynn Martin has found herself in charge of a business whose very name stands for the equity markets and the flow of capital. It's a big responsibility, one that has her thinking about where to take the exchange next: "How do we build the NYSE for the next 231 years?" asked Martin, nodding to the exchange's last birthday this May. "By continuing to lead the way with advocacy, with doing what's right for markets globally, for the future."

Read her full profile.
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Katy Knox

President, Bank of America Private Bank
Bank of America
Katy Knox is president of Bank of America's private bank, which keeps growing even amid market jitters.

Private bank revenue climbed 9% to $3.6 billion in 2022. And in the first six months of 2023, revenue nudged up 2% to $1.8 billion.

Read her full profile.
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Sharon Yeshaya

Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Morgan Stanley
When she became Morgan Stanley's chief financial officer in mid-2021, Sharon Yeshaya knew that her mandate was prudence in times of uncertainty.  She counts herself lucky that the first 9 months of moderate uncertainty — and record profits for the bank — bought her enough time to learn the ropes before Russia invaded Ukraine, the Fed began a course of interest rate hikes and "true uncertainty" set in. 

Read her full profile.
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Elif Bilgi Zapparoli

Managing Director, Co-Head of Global Capital Markets
Bank of America Securities
A changing global market has compelled Elif Bilgi Zapparoli to diversify her client's investments.

The era of liquidity is over, Zapparoli said, and the rest of the 2020s will likely carry greater risk for investors, who must contend with geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation and interest rates both higher and more susceptible to change.

Read her full profile.
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Teresa Heitsenrether

Chief Data & Analytics Officer
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
In 1987, when Teresa Heitsenrether was starting her journey with JPMorgan Chase, artificial intelligence was largely limited to rudimentary zero-value tasks, such as chess playing and primitive language processing.

Read her full profile.
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Penny Pennington

Managing Partner
Edward Jones
Penny Pennington has been managing partner at Edward Jones since 2019, and is the first woman to hold that position in the company. During her tenure thus far, she has led the St. Louis, Missouri-based financial services firm through a pandemic, navigated a volatile stock market and weathered a regional banking crisis.

Read her full profile.
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Gunjan Kedia

Vice Chair, Wealth, Corporate, Commercial and Institutional Banking
U.S. Bank
A year of growth and change for U.S. Bank meant a promotion for Gunjan Kedia.

In June, Jim Kelligrew stepped down from his position as vice chair of corporate and commercial banking. Kedia was tapped by bank CEO Andrew Cecere to replace Kelligrew, while at the same time retaining her position as vice chair of wealth management and investment services.

 Read her full profile.
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Kara McShane

Head of Commercial Real Estate
Wells Fargo
Kara McShane is the head of Wells Fargo's commercial real estate business, an integrated platform serving commercial real estate owners, investors, developers and operators across the U.S., Canada, Ireland and the U.K.

Under McShane's stewardship, Wells Fargo continues to command a substantial market share, holding down the top positions in almost all CRE capital markets industry rankings as it maintains an unbroken 14-year streak as the #1 CRE lender in the United States.

Read her full profile.
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Anu Aiyengar

Global Head of Mergers & Acquisitions
JPMorgan Chase
This January Anu Aiyengar broke a glass ceiling when she became the sole head of global mergers and acquisitions at JPMorgan. She had previously shared the role with Dirk Albersmeier, who stepped aside to focus on client work, for three years. This makes her the only woman to currently lead M&A at a major Wall Street bank.

Read her full profile.
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Ida Liu

Global Head, Citi Private Bank
Citigroup
As global head of Citigroup's Citi Private Bank for the past two and a half years, Ida Liu's job is all about juggling the multigenerational needs of the private bank's client families.

That means thinking about clients' family trees and helping them plan legacies, inheritances and business successions. Working with multiple generations is at the core of the strategy. "We're in the midst of one of the biggest wealth transfers in history," Liu said.

Read her full profile.
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Michal Katz

Head of Investment & Corporate Banking
Mizuho Americas
As other bankers wait out a volatile stock market, Michal Katz's dealmaking team is keeping busy and rapidly growing.

Katz, who works out of Mizuho's New York office, has headed investment and corporate banking for the Americas arm of the Japanese firm since 2019. In that time, she has grown the division's revenue by 40%, according to the bank.

Read her full profile.
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Anna Marrs

Group President, Global Commercial Services and Credit and Fraud Risk
American Express
In her travels around the world meeting small-business owners, Anna Marrs, head of Global Commercial Services for American Express, has found they share one trait in common: "Whether they're running a media company in New York, a construction company in Seattle or manufacturing water bottles in Malaysia … entrepreneurs are "wonderfully, contagiously optimistic."

Read her full profile.
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Samara Cohen

Senior Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer of the ETF and Index Investments
BlackRock
When Samara Cohen was applying for her first job out of college, she interviewed at BlackRock, an organization in which three of its 15 senior partners were women – a rare occurrence in the financial industry in 1993. She became inspired to follow in their footsteps and seek their mentorship.

Read her full profile.
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Doris Meister

CEO and Chairman
Wilmington Trust
Doris Meister arrived at Wilmington Trust in 2016 armed with a mandate for change.

Originally founded as the du Pont family office, the Delaware-based company had a reputation for great customer service. But after running into legal problems stemming from bad loans, Wilmington Trust was purchased in 2011 by M&T Bank in Buffalo, New York. The new owners were hoping to boost growth for the bank's wealth management business.

Read her full profile.
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Meghan Graper

Co-head of Debt Capital Markets
Barclays
This April, Meghan Graper became global co-head of debt capital markets for London-headquartered Barclays, where she shares leadership responsibilities with Barbara Mariniello.

The promotion came after Graper headed Barclays's U.S. investment grade syndicate team for nearly a decade, frequently flying to Europe, Asia and Australia in order to build relationships with clients interested in U.S. markets.  

Read her full profile.
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Barbara Mariniello

Global Co-head of Debt Capital Markets
Barclays
Barbara Mariniello has driven some of the largest debt offerings in recent history. This includes a deal that helped bring Discovery to the finish line in their merger with Warner Bros.

Last March, Mariniello's Barclays' team was the book runner in Discovery's $30 billion bond issuance, which Mariniello called the largest offering ever for a U.S. company with a BBB credit rating.

Read her full profile.
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Candace Browning

Head of Global Research and Vice Chair of Bank of America Institute
Bank of America
Under Candace Browning's leadership, Bank of America's global research team has continued to do what it does best: collaborating with colleagues across regions and asset classes to bring clients thoughtful, timely insights.

Read her full profile.
Editorial Staff
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