The Most Powerful Women in Finance, No. 6, Adena Friedman, Nasdaq

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In her eight-year tenure as Nasdaq CEO, Adena Friedman has led a massive transformation of the iconic stock exchange into a global financial services technology powerhouse. Nasdaq has diversified beyond its core listings and index business into a business partner for banking and capital markets, expanding its reach into treasury, risk and compliance management and regulatory reporting. 

Anchored by a $10.5 billion acquisition of software giant Adenza in 2023, Nasdaq under Friedman's leadership has most recently built a suite of compliance and anti-financial crime services used by most globally systemic institutions through AI-driven models for areas such as AML due diligence or sanctions assessments. 

Nasdaq this year has signed double the number of financial crimes management clients as it did throughout 2024, as the anti-crime services push aided the company's 12% second-quarter organic net revenue growth as well as a 24% rise in non-GAAP diluted EPS. The solutions segment of recurring revenue from fintech, risk management, regulatory and index business contributed to $991 million of the $1.3 billion in 2Q revenue. "Since Adena Friedman became CEO in 2017, Nasdaq has been far more effective in its investment strategy, and we view its transition efforts favorably," noted a Morningstar equity analyst report in July. 

Friedman's Adenza buyout came with high debt risk ($5.9 billion) but was driven by necessity. Nasdaq's exchange business has been steadily losing market share to new platforms in the expanding global equity exchange business. (A Texas-based stock exchange takes off in 2026, for example).  But Friedman and her team maintain focus on securing growth in the capital access platform business, which was responsible for 42% of 2024 revenues, according to Morgan Stanley. 

Nasdaq remains a top magnet for IPOs, as its diverse index and corporate services business lines offer "tangible reasons" for new IPOs to opt for Nasdaq over NYSE, a Morningstar analyst noted in July (Nasdaq garners about 70% of IPO listings). In 1Q and 2Q 2025, Nasdaq captured 83 new public company listings, raising $8 billion in proceeds. Nasdaq this year also attracted new listings totaling $50 billion in market value from companies switching from longtime competitor NYSE, including Shopify, Thomson Reuters and Kimberly-Clarke. 

Friedman's roots with the company date to 1993, when the daughter of former T. Rowe Price chief investment officer David Testa joined the exchange as an intern. Friedman progressed through data products and corporate strategy functions (heavily involved with Nasdaq acquisitions of INET, OMX Group the Philadelphia Stock Exchange) that ultimately led to her appointment as chief financial officer. She left for a three-year stint as CFO at the Carlyle Group in 2011 — a period during which she helped take the private-equity firm public — but returned to Nasdaq as president and COO in 2014. She added chair to her title in 2023. 

Friedman has been a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since 2018, and chairs the technology committee of the Business Roundtable. In her personal life, she earned her pilot's license before graduating college, holds a black belt in taekwondo and is an "avid" pickleball player, colleagues said.