Each year, in advance of our Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance awards, American Banker puts together a list of 15 women who are rising stars at their banks. The honorees, all women 40 years old and younger, are nominated by an executive at their institution who believes that she has the potential to ascend to the C-suite.

As a managing director within Citi Investment Management, a division that sits within wealth, White is playing an integral part in reshaping that line of business.

Wech worked her way up over the past 16 years from a trainee through the retail division, becoming a branch manager, the manager of multiple locations, a team leader and now a regional head for business banking.

Shalishali joined the $59.7 billion-asset bank through an early talent program, which exposed her to different aspects of banking. She ended up starting off as a credit analyst before taking on other roles, such as a private wealth advisor and a commercial banker. 

After earning her engineering degree at MIT, Wall Street beckoned Jessica Payne, who was recruited into Citi's analyst class. Three years later, rather than use the MBA she earned at Harvard Business School to go in another direction, she eagerly returned to investment banking.

With 16 years at the company, Niemczyk is an Ally lifer. She is currently a senior director of invest and deposits business operations and analytics at the bank.

Melhaoui leads a team of 11 and is responsible for overseeing the bank's liquidity and interest rate risk for the U.S, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Argentina.

Jagadish leads strategy and execution of digital and mobile capabilities for all customer-facing digital platforms for TD Bank in the U.S., as well as commercial bank products and services.

Flanders started her banking career at First Horizon as an intern. She worked in the bank's treasury division for eight years and is now its investor relations officer.

Arrington, who has an MBA and a law degree with a concentration in financial transactions, is the chief risk officer for the $753 million-asset bank.

Dupuis started in banking as a high schooler. She is now the retail banking director at $16.4 billion-asset First United.

Deckelman is a managing director running the global front-end financing and short-term interest rate desk, known as STIR. She oversees 34 people with responsibility for sales around the world. 

After a dozen years with the bank, Davis is now a managing director and senior relationship manager within PNC Bank's energy group, which ranks among the top revenue-generating businesses for the bank.

Comfort began as a teller at Nevada State Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorp. She's been promoted several times since then and is currently NSB's small business manager.

Chuck is the director of commercial deposits, revenue and liquidity at Comerica in Dallas. Overall, she is responsible for the product team, commercialization for liquidity and revenue strategy.

Bartlett joined BMO in 2007 as an analyst working with large diversified companies, and has stayed at the bank since in its Chicago office, now also supervising bankers in Toronto and New York. 

Fulton Financial taps Valley National's Richard Kraemer as its new CFO; UBS' veteran private banker Jenny Su has left the firm; Bank of America names Kevin Brunner head of global technology, media and telecommunications investment banking; and more in this week's banking news roundup.

Friday's deal for Premier Financial ends a five-year M&A hiatus for the Wheeling, West Virginia-based company while marking its expansion into Michigan.

ChoiceOne Financial Services would pay about $180 million to acquire Fentura Financial in a bid to expand in Detroit's suburbs. The deal would create a bank with more than $4 billion of assets.

Third-party origination operations are also going to Mr. Cooper in the $1.4 billion deal, in which the seller cited interest in improving its capital position.