Special Program Root Tag

When Ranjana Clark joined Western Union this past spring, she said goodbye to Wells Fargo. But not to banking.

Carla Brooks isn't a banker, but the managing director and deputy portfolio manager at Commerce Street Capital LLC, has been on the front lines of the banking crisis.

As chief marketing officer and chief innovation officer at AXA Equitable, Barbara Goodstein is responsible for all of AXA Equitable's digital efforts, corporate communications and advertising. In this time of shaky investor confidence, Goodstein and her team have focused on conveying a consistent message across multiple channels.

Goldman Sachs pushed away the rumors and calmed the frayed nerves concerning its own health, and Liz Beshel played an essential role in that effort as the firm's treasurer.

During 19 years at MasterCard, Joan Kelly has helped lead the development of systems that now process more than 21 billion payment transactions and settle $2.5 trillion between financial institutions.

When she was chief information officer for Discover Financial Services, Diane Offereins created a network designed to put the 23-year-old company on technological par with its older and larger rivals. Now, as head of Discover's Payment Services, Offereins puts that infrastructure to work.

At first glance, it seems as though the credit crisis would hit a retailer's account base hard. But Susan Ehrlich has managed to keep Sears Holdings Corp.'s customer count steady with a few old-fashioned tricks.

Take away everything Carla Harris has accomplished in her career at Morgan Stanley and you would still have an extraordinary resume: gospel singer, much sought-after lecturer, newly-minted author, and director on the boards of eight non-profit organizations.

As the head of the largest woman-run hedge fund in the United States, it's easy to understand why Anne Dias Griffin has made this list for a third consecutive year.

In a year of upheaval, these women stood out for their leadership, their coolness under pressure, and their continued drive to innovate.

Liz Ann Sonders says her job is to educate, rather than make predictions. "I differ from my CIO brethren in that I'm not asked to make bombastic forecasts about where the S&P will close at year end," she says. "I'm really just supposed to interpret what's going on."

Kathy Elsesser, a Goldman managing director since 2002 and partner since 2004, and head of its consumer retail group in investment banking, has used every ounce of her energy to keep her team on track.

Many executives take pride in quickly making judgment calls. But what Paula Rosput Reynolds learned in an arduous year as vice chairman and chief restructuring officer at the embattled AIG was the value of a carefully formed opinion.

Suzanne Shank can make competing with the big guys on Wall Street sound ho-hum. "You can have a lot of bodies, but if you have a good group of people with good connections you can do a pretty good job."

Mellody Hobson, the president of Ariel Investments in Chicago, is a ubiquitous presence in the media, educating the public about the importance of responsible investing.

These highly profitable banks all have one thing in common: women in key roles.

With nearly a quarter of U.S. Bancorp's revenues derived from the corporate and institutional payments group led by vice chair Pamela Joseph, the retail business of the Minneapolis banking company can sometimes get overlooked. Not this year.

In 2004, a dozen top female executives at what was then The Bank of New York decided to establish an internal networking group to help mid-level female executives break out of their shells. Five years later, the Women's Initiatives Network (WIN) at what is now BNY Mellon has more 2,000 members.

Diversity in the executive ranks of a bank remains an unusual enough occurrence to know that it doesn't come about by accident. In Kansas, Sunflower Bank, which has $1.7 billion of assets, has been a model for diversity.

Heidi Miller is arguably the highest-profile woman in banking, so when she speaks, people take notice. Take her keynote address at this year's NACHA Payments conference, where the chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase Treasury and Securities Services outlined "dangers."