For Tracey Brophy Warson, there's little difference between building relationships and building her business.

You learn a lot about how Paula Polito got to where she is — overseeing four businesses with $160 billion of assets — by asking how she landed her first job.

Amy Carlson had to make a tough call last year about a business she had spent the three previous years building: whether to scale it back, hold steady or keep investing.

Dawn Fitzpatrick understands the importance of bench strength. When asked to name a significant management decision in the past year, she cited hiring her successor after being promoted.

Fiona Bassett moved to New York with a mandate of making Deutsche Bank one of the top exchange-traded fund issuers in the United States. Since her arrival in 2014, she's done just that.

In 2012, BNP Paribas was the largest global custodian without a presence in North America and it wanted to change that. It found its leader in Claudine Gallagher, then the global head of depositary receipts at J.P. Morgan. Four years later, le succés.

Karen Peetz has myriad responsibilities as president of the world's largest custody bank, not the least of which is managing relationships with Bank of New York Mellon's 500 largest clients.

During American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking gala last year, Marianne Lake laid out the "30-5-1" challenge: each week, spend 30 minutes having coffee with a talented junior woman, five minutes congratulating a woman on a recent success and one minute talking up that woman to another senior peer.

A lot of what Cathy Bessant knows about directing a team can be traced back to her days as patrol leader of her Girl Scouts troop.

Avid Modjtabai's big job at Wells Fargo got even bigger this year when she took on responsibility for the company's operations group and added its 10,000 employees to the 55,000 she already oversaw.

Innovation — whether nurturing it internally or keeping up with it externally — is of the highest priority for Diane Reyes. In keeping with that objective, she oversaw the launch of a fintech innovation lab in Singapore last fall.

Sandie O'Connor is at the forefront of high-level policy discussions currently shaping the banking industry.

As chief operating officer at Northern Trust, Jana Schreuder is ensuring that the Chicago custody bank stays on the cutting edge of innovation.

When a female employee is about to squander a big break for fear of being out of her depth, Barbara Desoer gladly butts in. In such situations, she pushes the employee to realize that she is indeed ready for the next challenge of her career.

Since taking the helm of Citigroup's Latin American business in June 2015, Jane Fraser has been working to make it a simpler, stronger and more transparent institution in the region.

Anne Finucane is in charge of positioning Bank of America for future success and a big part of that job is figuring out how to reach millennials.

Dorothy Savarese draws inspiration from her ability to make a positive difference in the communities her bank serves.

Diane Morais has been driving a transformation at Ally Bank since she took over as president and chief executive in March 2015.

LeeAnne Linderman is a self-styled "change master." And considering how much change she has been leading at Zions Bancorp. lately, the label is more apt than ever.

"Everyone feels better when they feel welcome, whether it's someone coming to work or a customer walking through the door," said Mary Walworth Navarro, who headed the strategic review that led to the word "welcome" becoming a key component of the Huntington's marketing efforts.