Kourtney Gibson wants to change the way Americans approach retirement. And as the CEO of retirement solutions at TIAA, she knew that change had to start from within.
"We really spent 2025 working on culture, motivating our people to continue to excel and breaking down silos to drive transformative changes," said Gibson, whose team generated nearly 70% of TIAA's total enterprise revenue in 2025. "When you're a 100-year-old organization with wonderful frameworks, you still have to ask: What are we doing today that's going to change our trajectory?"
For Gibson, who joined the company in 2022 and was named CEO of retirement solutions in the fall of 2024, that meant doubling down on what was already working—largely the company's annuity-embedded target-date solutions, TIAA RetirePlus. The default product provides lifetime income to participants in a target-date structure, and is becoming increasingly popular as Americans live longer and fret more about financial survival.
"The collapse [of pensions] has really created a gap in workplace retirement plans—which were never designed to be the sole way Americans were going to survive in retirement," Gibson said.
In 1975, 70% of private-sector retirement participants had access to a defined benefit plan; today, that number has plummeted to roughly 12%, according to the Department of Labor.
TIAA is now solving for that, and winning market share. In 2025, Vanguard selected TIAA as the lifetime income provider for its first new target-date series since 2003. By February 2026, TIAA surpassed $75 million in annuity-embedded target-date solutions. (This type of offering is proving particularly popular with Gen Z participants, a demographic that saw participation jump 37% in 2025.)
"We're paying people that are 108 years old, and if they live to 110, they're still going to get their TIAA paycheck," Gibson said. "That's the security we're trying to ensure every American has access to."
To further future-proof TIAA's business, Gibson spent 2025 as the executive sponsor for TIAA's YoPro business resource group, providing mentorship and career development to the company's up-and-coming generation of talent. She also served as co-lead on a recordkeeping modernization initiative to improve digital experiences and boost engagement—the kind of participant-minded initiative that keeps her ahead of the competition.
"I've been at TIAA since 1983, and I've learned more from Kourtney in the last four years than in the10 that preceded her," says Ray Bellucci, COO of retirement solutions at TIAA. "She asks the right questions: 'How are employees engaging with the plan? How are they looking at their retirement assets?' It's made me ask better questions."
