The Most Powerful Women in Banking NEXT No. 9, Kathleen Sherwood, Truist Financial

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Kathleen Sherwood may be a rarity among her former college classmates. The Macon, Georgia, native has spent her entire career at the same company.

Following her 2009 graduation from the University of Georgia, where she majored in finance and art history, Sherwood started in the leadership development program at BB&T Corp. She was sent to Cleveland, Tennessee, where she trained as a commercial banker at a time when the industry was recovering from the financial crisis.

"It was a really tricky time … going into the workforce," Sherwood said. But a woman she knew who worked at BB&T said, "'Hey, this is a great place. They've got a great culture.' And I went up and interviewed and felt very similarly about the culture and the people."

Sherwood spent the next decade working for BB&T in various commercial banking roles. In 2019, the Winston Salem, North Carolina-based bank merged with Atlanta-based SunTrust Banks to create Truist Financial . Sherwood stayed on and in 2022 took what she described as "a leap" into consumer banking, becoming the bank's head of unsecured and personal lending.

In her current role, Sherwood leads direct-to-consumer auto loans, cards, secured lending and the recently rebranded LightStream by Truist, the bank's direct-to-consumer personal loan business.

LightStream by Truist is one of nine product offerings Sherwood manages, and it takes up the bulk of her work hours. The online lending platform, which was part of an acquisition that SunTrust completed in 2012, offers low-interest, fixed-rate loans from $5,000 to $100,000. Truist touts the fact that customers can apply from the website or the mobile app and receive funds deposited directly into their accounts, in some cases as soon as the same day they apply.

Two years ago, as part of a streamlining and cost-cutting initiative, Truist executives set out to integrate LightStream into the bank's broader consumer business. Sherwood has been at the helm of that integration. During the second quarter of this year, the rebranding effort was completed, and LightStream is now part of Truist's digital platform.

By the end of the third quarter, the product will be available for Truist's premier banking and wealth clients, Sherwood said. It will be offered at Truist's 1,900 branches by year-end.

It's all part of Sherwood's focus on ensuring the bank's consumer offerings meet client needs.

"Coming out of the merger, we did a lot of work" to ensure that customers were not negatively impacted, Sherwood said. Now it's about taking a good look at what the bank offers, she added.

Some of the questions being asked: "Do these products make sense? Do they have the right value proposition for clients as well as internally?" Sherwood said, explaining that some products will be sunsetted. "We're continuing to iterate on that."

Sherwood, a mother of three, sits on the board of her children's Montessori school. Though she still has a passion for art history, Sherwood said she's right where she wants to be in her career.

"I really love what I get to do every day, and a lot of that is the incredible people that I get to work with," she said. "The challenges that we faced, and problem-solving them together, and ultimately being able to deliver better [results] for our clients, our shareholders and our teammates … I love it."