Foundation exec returns to Citi after 6 months at Wells Fargo

Citigroup has lured back an executive from Wells Fargo for a newly created role managing its charitable foundation and inclusive finance efforts, Citi said Monday.

Brandee McHale will become head of community investing and development when she returns to Citi in March. In that role, she will be president of the Citi Foundation and will oversee the community development, inclusive finance and impact investing teams. She will be based in New York and will report to Ed Skyler, the company’s executive vice president for global public affairs.

“It is hard to imagine a better qualified person, and I am looking forward to working with her again,” Skyler said in a company memo.

McHale left Citi in June to become head of the Wells Fargo Foundation. Before she joined Wells Fargo in August, she was president of the Citi Foundation and director of corporate citizenship. Citi had not filled her role since she left.

A Wells Fargo spokeswoman said that Jimmie Paschall, Wells' head of diversity and inclusion, will succeed McHale on an interim basis and that an internal and external search for a new leader will be conducted.

McHale's new job at Citi will incorporate her previous duties and those of Bob Annibale, who Citi said Monday would retire from the company after 37 years. Most recently, Annibale worked as global director of Citi community development and inclusive finance in London.

In the memo, Skyler praised Annibale for building Citi’s community development and inclusive finance teams. He said, for instance, that Annibale had worked with the consumer bank to develop low-cost banking products for underserved populations.

Annibale also worked with the city of San Francisco to establish a universal children’s savings platform, Kindergarten to College, and launched a multicity program called EmpoweredCities which provides financial and housing counseling for people with disabilities.