Just six months after Kourtney Gibson was promoted from chief institutional officer to CEO of TIAA Retirement Solutions, global stock markets crashed in response to jitters over U.S. trade tariffs. For Gibson and the nearly 900-employee retirement solutions business, the market volatility represented a pressing challenge.
"During April 2025's significant market disruption, our clients faced tremendous uncertainty with regards to their retirement plans," said Gibson, who became CEO last October. "It was essential our teams remained calm and confident, particularly while call volumes spiked, and were agile enough to pivot with our clients' changing needs." (Gibson was ranked on her 2024 title of Chief Institutional Client Officer.)
Amid the market turbulence, TIAA clients poured money into the company's flagship fixed annuity, TIAA Traditional. This, according to Gibson, demonstrated investors' growing interest in guaranteed asset classes as part of a diversified portfolio.
Under Gibson's leadership, another TIAA offering — RetirePlus — has also gained traction, growing to more than $60 billion in assets and over 750,000 accounts. RetirePlus marries the simplicity of a target-date fund with the option for a client to convert some or all of their savings into guaranteed lifetime income when an optional TIAA Traditional annuity is included. Gibson said RetirePlus addresses a "critical market gap at exactly the right time," as 83% of retirement plan participants remain in default investments that often lack lifetime income protection.
More than simply directing investors toward guaranteed asset classes, Gibson believes plan providers, employers, policymakers, and workers must collaborate to simplify enrollment, encourage savings, and offer in-plan lifetime income options, among other actions. This January, TIAA and Nuveen's next-generation, target-date lifetime income program surpassed 1 million accounts, doubling in less than a year.
As head of TIAA's $955 billion retirement business, representing almost 60% of the company's $1.4 trillion in AUM as of December 31, 2024, Gibson worries about America's current and future retirees — especially the multitrillion-dollar savings gap they confront.
"We're facing a perfect storm in retirement security," said Gibson, who manages relationships with TIAA's more than 15,000 retirement plan sponsors. "Defined benefit plans have plummeted from 70% of private sector workers having access to a plan in 1975 to just 12% today, Social Security recipients could face a 20% benefit cut by 2033, and nearly half of private sector workers can't adequately save because they lack access to employer plans."
In an April 2025 Gallup survey, 40% of U.S. adults reported that they didn't have a retirement plan such as a 401(k), 403(b), or IRA, either on their own or with a spouse.
"This isn't just a gap," added Gibson, who joined TIAA in 2022 after more than 23 years at investment bank, brokerage, and advisory firm Loop Capital. "It's a chasm threatening millions of Americans' financial futures."
