The Most Powerful Women in Banking 2022: Welcome remarks

Gemma Postlethwaite, Chief Executive Officer, Arizent

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Gemma Postlethwaite (00:15):

Good morning. Good morning, everyone. First of all, welcome to The Most Powerful Women in Banking Conference. And I have to say it's not every morning we find ourselves aboard a ship. Rest assured that we are working on the humidity and the AC situation. Probably a little too late for my hair unfortunately. But there we go. We are truly thrilled to be launching this event in person for the first time. And on our 20th anniversary celebration of The Most Powerful Women in Banking program. We are right in the middle of an incredibly exciting week of events. Last night, we celebrated The Most Powerful Women in Banking NEXT honorees, rising leaders under 40 in the banking community. And tomorrow we will culminate our anniversary week with our annual Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance Gala. So it's quite a week. It is so wonderful to have you all here today.

(01:19)

As this conference in particular is important to fulfilling our mission of advancing women in financial services. We are living and leading in a moment of extraordinary change and turmoil. And it's my belief that supporting one another and learning from one another has never been more important. Together with our honorees, we have been building a community of powerful women who have been doing just that for 20 years. And today we're expanding that circle even further. So welcome to all of you who are new to this incredible community of women. Our hope for today is that you come away with practical ideas that you can take back to your organizations, that you be inspired to keep pushing forward with the important work that we all have ahead of us. And I hope having made new friends along the way. Over the course of the day, we will hear from many of our honorees on a range of leadership topics, successful paths to the boardroom, successful and effective mentorship and sponsorship building and motivating high performing teams.

(02:37)

And we will also discuss the new context in which we are doing all of this one of global economic and geopolitical instability. And in a post pandemic era, as if leadership wasn't already challenging enough. I am particularly excited that we will hear from two incredible leaders from outside of our industry. First, our keynote speaker this morning, Lauren Manning, someone who I'm very proud to be calling my friend. We have much to learn from her amazing path to recovery as President Barack Obama said of Lauren, she is the embodiment of American resilience, one of the most paramount qualities of modern leadership. Leadership. Thank you Lauren, very much for being with us today. And our final conversation of the day is going to be with the world renowned Venus Williams. Today we'll dive into her work off the court where she has successfully fought for pay equity in sports and beyond a truly outstanding achievement and an important example for our industry.

(03:50)

I want to especially thank all of our honorees who are participating in today's program. We are so very grateful to all of you, and I want to thank all of you for joining us. I am truly in awe of the room full of leaders that we have here today. Standing here, I can honestly say I have never been more confident about the future. When this collective power of this room is truly harnessed together, I know we can chart the course toward an ever more equitable, more inclusive, more innovative industry for the next 20 years. So let's set sale together. Please enjoy the day. Thank you.