Welcome Remarks & Fireside Chat: An Interview with Wells Fargo's Jennifer Doyle

Transcription:
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Chana Schoenberger (00:08):
Good morning. Welcome to the Most Powerful Women in Banking Conference, 2025. You have arrived at the place where top financial executives share their stories, strategies, and advice on how to lead a financial institution through challenges, how to make the most of opportunities, and how to stay resilient in the face of difficulties.

Holly Sraeel (00:31):
Over the next two days, you're going to hear from the brightest, boldest leaders in banking, financial services, fintech, consulting, and everywhere else—law, et cetera. We need you to be engaged, to stay focused, and to interact with us as much as you can during our programming.

Chana Schoenberger (00:52):
We draw inspiration from the honorees of the most powerful women in banking, finance, women to watch, top teams, Next, and other industry leaders here with us this week, on stage and in the audience.

Holly Sraeel (01:06):
These are the executives that are driving the industry forward through economic and geopolitical uncertainty, and massive innovation that will have a huge impact on the businesses that you run. We are moving through the echoes of the 2023 regional banking crisis, significant interest rate moves, and other dynamics that are affecting financial services across the board.

Chana Schoenberger (01:31):
We'll be hearing from them in conversation on stage, as well as during intimate round tables over lunch. Throughout the conference, you'll also have the chance to meet your peers from across the industry and share how you are solving the problems that banks face now.

Holly Sraeel (01:47):
Before we get underway, Chana and I would like to thank our diamond sponsor, Protiviti, for sharing our commitment to highlighting outstanding leadership in the industry and seeing more women like you advance into positions of power and influence. A bit of housekeeping before we get started: Don't forget to download the Horizon app so you can work throughout this program and connect with speakers and participants. If you're not a subscriber to American Banker, please do so; you really should be. Finally, don't forget to share this experience as we work through the day across social media. The last thing that Chana and I would ask of you is to be direct, to be transparent, and to ask questions, because the best way to learn how to lead is to listen and interact with those already doing it. So let's get on to changing the world.

Chana Schoenberger (02:37):
To kick off our amazing lineup of conversations today, we have Jennifer Doyle, global co-head of the Structured Products Group at Wells Fargo, who is one of our honorees on the most powerful women in banking list. Please welcome her to the stage. Good morning. To kick us off here, tell us a little bit about your current role and what you do at Wells Fargo.

Jennifer Doyle (03:04):
Good morning, everybody. As introduced, I am the global co-head of structured products for Wells Fargo. I describe structured products essentially as an investment bank within the investment bank. We're responsible for and have capabilities for all of the lending, capital markets, sales and trading, and syndicate for structured products. Really, a structured product is a consumer, residential, or corporate debt-backed instrument that has a cash flow that you can either lend against or securitize against. We also have under our purview the responsibility for what is essentially a generalist fixed income business sales component. Some of the smaller accounts looking to buy rates products, credit products, muni products, or structured products—we have responsibility for that sales force. I say "we" because I am a co-head. We also have responsibility for what we call our global secured trading business.

(04:20):
That's the fancy way for saying lending out of trading books. SPG, Structured Products Group, is our main business, but we're also asked to care for those other two business lines as well.

Chana Schoenberger (04:33):
Got it. And why are you doing this? What inspired you to become a banker?

Jennifer Doyle (04:39):
I never set out to be a banker. I was someone who graduated with a finance degree. I knew I liked math, I liked to compete, and I liked the fast-paced environment that competitive sports and interaction created.

Chana Schoenberger (04:58):
What's your sport?

Jennifer Doyle (04:59):
I was a tennis player in college. I did an internship between my junior and senior year, like many people in this room probably did. I lived in Connecticut, further down the shoreline in a town called Clinton. I couldn't afford to live in the city, so I commuted two and a half hours each way to do my summer internship. I would get home at night and have to train, then do it again. I did it for 10 weeks, and after that, I decided I was never going to do that again. I couldn't imagine commuting into the city like that for the rest of my life. I was too naive to realize that maybe someday you'd be able to afford to live in the city and have a pretty awesome life here.

(05:37):
But I immediately researched and found the second largest financial hub in the US, which was Charlotte, North Carolina. I moved there after college and started a career, which essentially was me looking for a job in any shape or form because I graduated without one. I was lucky enough to find out that a local bank at the time called First Union had an in-house placement service. I had a great resume and I interviewed on a Thursday in a derivatives business. I interviewed on a Friday in a trading floor type of business. I got an offer that Friday afternoon and I started on Monday as a 90-day temp. It was truly being in the right place at the right time, which so often is the theme of my career.

(06:29):
I started on the trading floor on a Monday, having never been on one. I guess I saw movies, but didn't know really anything about it.

Chana Schoenberger (06:37):
Wall Street? Trading Places?

Jennifer Doyle (06:39):
Yeah. I mean, it's fixed income, so it's a little less chaotic than what you see in the movies, but think of rows. Does anyone work in trading? One brave soul?

Chana Schoenberger (06:49):
Trading floors.

Jennifer Doyle (06:50):
There you go, so you know what I mean. Screens everywhere, people everywhere. There is some yelling and open communication. I found myself thinking, "Wow, I just won the lottery." I couldn't believe I got the golden ticket. From that point on, I pursued a career on Wall Street in a way that I had never imagined.

Chana Schoenberger (07:15):
So a temp job and the desire to avoid the Metro-North led you to where you are today.

Jennifer Doyle (07:20):
That's a really good way of summarizing it. Thank you.

Chana Schoenberger (07:23):
Awesome. Tell us about—there was an interesting thing that everybody knows the story of—the flight that landed in the Hudson River, right?

Jennifer Doyle (07:34):
Right out there.

Chana Schoenberger (07:35):
And you were on that plane? Tell us about that.

Jennifer Doyle (07:39):
I get the chills now even saying that and looking at the backdrop. I was ironically on a trip where I received an award early in my career—the Rising Star Award for the American Bond Association.

Chana Schoenberger (07:58):
Clearly, they were right about you.

Jennifer Doyle (07:59):
Thank you. I rose, then I fell. I was on a return trip home. My husband was taking a business trip himself, we had a young child at the time, and I needed to be on a midday flight. That midday flight was Flight 1549, and we took off from LaGuardia. I was in seat 9D, a seat I've never sat in again. I heard a loud bang. I am an optimist. My husband says I actually live with my head in the clouds. Even on a flight, you think, "This is nothing, everything's fine." About a minute and a half in, the captain came over the loudspeaker and said, "This is your captain, brace for impact." And that was it.

(09:03):
I remember giving an audible, "What?" I was in a middle seat, looked to my left and right. The woman on the right was panicking; the woman on my left was calm, and I chose to be calm and we locked arms. I remember thinking, "I'm going to die," and then thinking, "That's ridiculous, of course you're not going to die." I've always been blessed to never think, "Why is this happening to me?" and instead think, "What am I going to do about it?" In that moment, I wondered how I was going to get out and where the emergency exit was. It happened to be one row behind me. I was wearing a chunky necklace and I thought, "Well, I'm crashing, I don't want this thing choking me."

(09:55):
I took it off, threw it on the ground, and braced for the landing on the Hudson River. I remember landing thinking it wasn't so bad. 155 people were on that plane and everybody walked away with a different interpretation of that day. I walked out on the wing and it was like I was walking on water on the Hudson. Rescue boats came over and I had to swim to one. I tell people it was one of the greatest days of my life. For me, it was such a gift of recognizing that if I were to have died, I was at peace. But also, to be grateful for every day because you really never know when it's your last.

Chana Schoenberger (11:00):
That's an amazing bit of mental resilience that I don't know many people would have been able to pull off while their plane was crashing.

Jennifer Doyle (11:11):
True, but I tell people to put it in perspective: it was three and a half minutes. People who suffer from cancer struggle with the concept for years. This was an acute situation, but it was brief. If you have perspective, it doesn't have to be as big of a deal as it seems.

Chana Schoenberger (11:36):
I'm really glad that you survived that and can tell us about it now.

Jennifer Doyle (11:41):
Our youngest is named Hudson, so we had another child after that.

Chana Schoenberger (11:46):
Amazing. I've heard a couple of people speak who are survivors of that flight, and they all have a different perspective on what happened.

Jennifer Doyle (11:55):
It's fascinating. Psychology is a crazy thing. Some people had their lives ruined by it—there are some serious travesties. For me, it was a revalidation of optimism and being hopeful.

Chana Schoenberger (12:31):
That's incredible. Now that we're all inspired, tell me about your business. Your group got the number one ranking in asset-backed securities from Bloomberg for the first half of 2025. How did you do that?

Jennifer Doyle (12:52):
We have never been league table focused as an institution. We've always been about servicing the client and executing. Wells Fargo didn't really have a capital markets sales and trading business at all; it was always a strong lender that acquired Wachovia and found this sales and trading business on its doorstep. We had to train a legacy company to move into a capital markets mindset. We started thinking about what we could do in terms of executing for our clients, getting them best pricing, access to investors, and unique structures.

(13:54):
When you provide consistency and solutions for clients, you're often rewarded. Many people in our industry just move to different seats. When you do deals for people and they move, your reputation follows. It becomes easier to build new relationships. It wasn't just me; we have a team of people who have done the work. It's a best-in-class business, but it didn't happen overnight. It was years of being consistent and showing up.

Chana Schoenberger (14:58):
Diaspora theory, right? This is what's good about a conference like this; you meet people from different institutions and then everybody plays musical chairs.

Jennifer Doyle (15:07):
It's so true. I regret that earlier in my career I wasn't more systematic about keeping up with people. This is such a good forum to meet people, but don't just meet them—follow up. Get coffee, have a conversation. I learned later in life how valuable those relationships are. Plus, it's just fun to interact with women.

Chana Schoenberger (15:41):
I feel like that's one of the things they don't teach you in school—that those "loose ties" are very useful. What trends are you seeing in the industry? At American Banker, we're covering lending a lot and there's uncertainty and geopolitical questions. What do investors want now?

Jennifer Doyle (16:11):
There's always drama and uncertainty; that's the norm. I just spent two weeks in Asia meeting 25 different clients. It's fascinating to see what they're talking about there versus here. They want to know what it "feels" like in the US. They can read the numbers, but they're asking about private credit, AI, blockchain, and distributed ledger. They want to know if it's hard to get a restaurant reservation—little pieces of information about the US consumer.

(17:48):
There's a lot of conversation around this idea of a de-dollarization trend, particularly after the recent political shifts and tariffs. But what I found—and I do this trip every year—is that the amount of global money searching for a home in the US is going through the roof. We've seen the amount of non-US buyers for mortgage-backed securities, credit cards, or CLOs go exponentially up. The concept of de-dollarization is something that's good to write about, but it's not something we're actually seeing.

Chana Schoenberger (18:33):
I've heard this from other bankers. They might want to put their money somewhere else, but there's nowhere to go that has as good an investment story as the US economy.

Jennifer Doyle (18:50):
That's right. Away from the US, growth is stagnant. Sometimes as Americans, we are more American-minded than globally-minded.

Chana Schoenberger (19:10):
Well, a huge percentage of Americans don't even have passports—I think 50% don't.

Jennifer Doyle (19:22):
The US is the greatest economy in the world and global buyers are still looking for ways to support our markets.

Chana Schoenberger (19:43):
It is interesting because there have been articles about the bifurcation of the economy into high-end and low-end. We've seen a real push by financial institutions into wealth management. But then the question is, how does your institution bring it back into the community? And what happens to the people on the other side who are struggling to pay for McDonald's with Buy Now, Pay Later?

Jennifer Doyle (20:52):
I'm not in wealth, but Wells Fargo is a massive supporter of communities. I believe we are one of the most charitable when it comes to providing access. If you're looking for a branch in a little town, it's probably a Wells Fargo.

Chana Schoenberger (21:36):
We did an article where a reporter went to the northernmost bank in the country in Alaska, and it is a Wells Fargo branch.

Jennifer Doyle (21:56):
It's a micro-macro story that affects the lending atmosphere. There's no doubt the division between "haves" and "have-nots" has increased. In many ways, that bifurcation has been created by access to homeownership. 70% of US wealth is tied up in homes. If you can own a home and benefit from appreciation and low interest rates, that's fuel to your fire that others don't have access to.

Chana Schoenberger (23:11):
Another thing we've been covering is the growth in private credit. How is that affecting you at a large bank?

Jennifer Doyle (23:22):
Private credit people in the room? No? Okay, then we can talk badly about them. No, I'm kidding. There's a lot of conversation about the role of private credit versus banks. We're highly regulated; they may not be. On the heels of the financial crisis, there was a need for private credit to start lending in areas where banks had to back away due to regulation. Now, private credit has raised a ton of assets and they are looking to originate everywhere. There is this idea of whether we are now competing or working in a symbiotic manner.

Chana Schoenberger (24:47):
Where do the smartest kids coming out of school want to work in finance now?

Jennifer Doyle (24:54):
People used to want to do M&A or private equity. Now, the buzz is private credit and private debt. If you want to do that, you should work in corporate debt finance, do CLOs, and get a leveraged loan background. However, a lot of people aren't coming to finance at all; they are looking at AI and AI-adjacent roles. "Data" is the big place where people are looking to become experts.

Chana Schoenberger (26:34):
If you were a mid-career professional, what sort of upskilling should you be doing right now?

Jennifer Doyle (26:42):
You have to educate yourself on all things AI. I would personally be taking a class and asking as many questions as possible about next-gen tech. I'm fascinated by the "if you build it, they will come" model regarding data centers. I love Copilot, but there's a gap between where we think the future is going and the "now." I think there's going to be a time period where AI is more of a conversation and less of a reality in terms of changing job dynamics.

Chana Schoenberger (28:27):
I think everybody uses AI for daily planning, but sometimes it just isn't useful. I asked it to plan a trip last month and it gave me a flight that didn't exist.

Jennifer Doyle (28:55):
If you put bad data in, bad data is going to come out. You can't necessarily rely on what you're seeing.

Chana Schoenberger (29:08):
Which is a problem if you're a regulated entity. What advice do you have for emerging leaders, especially things you wish you had known when you were junior?

Jennifer Doyle (29:29):
I wish I had known to trust myself more and speak up earlier. On the trading floor, I used to think, "Let me just do my job, keep my head down, and somebody will notice me." That's not how it works. Hard work is rewarded, but the squeaky wheel often finds their way to the top. I thought senior leaders had all the answers—they don't. I didn't think I had anything worthwhile to add, but I did. My superpower is common sense. I realize now that it's the simple questions that aren't asked because people are afraid of looking ill-informed. I wish I had asked the simple questions more when I was young.

Chana Schoenberger (31:09):
Also, if you get an opportunity, take it. Just say yes. I can't tell you how many times I call a female expert and she says, "I'm not the expert, talk to my colleague Frank," whereas Frank would have definitely told me he was the expert.

Jennifer Doyle (31:47):
There's that statistic that men need to be 40% confident to do something, while women feel they need to be 90%. Walk around and ask yourself, "Am I 40% confident?" If you are, you're at the same level as your male colleagues.

Chana Schoenberger (32:10):
We have time for one question from the audience.

Jennifer Doyle (32:33):
I think I'm really good at sharing the wins and taking the blame for the losses. That's what a leader does. Where I'm strategic is that I've been at the bank for 20 years, so I know a lot of people. I make sure that when there is a win to celebrate, the right people know it. I'm not stabbing people in the back or being political, but I am highlighting our business and our team. I use Copilot every Friday to ask, "Who haven't I spoken to?" and it gives me a to-do list. I'm very methodical about connecting with people.

Chana Schoenberger (34:20):
A lot of calls and coffees.

Jennifer Doyle (34:22):
I like to talk to people. If you're going to do a Teams call, please turn your camera on. I want to see your face and your emotions. I want to know you.

Chana Schoenberger (34:50)
Early in the pandemic, someone told me they couldn't turn their camera on because they didn't have eyebrows. They turned it on, and they really didn't have eyebrows.

Jennifer Doyle (35:07):
My leadership style is waiting for people to turn cameras on because I want to see you. If you're having a bad day, just tell me, and that's okay too.

Chana Schoenberger (35:25):
We are nearly out of time, but thank you so much for coming up here. Everybody, thank Jennifer Doyle.