The Latest from Women in Banking

On July 15, Zions Bancorp. cut the ribbon on a 400,000-square-feet technology center in Midvale, Utah. The center lets the Salt Lake City-based bank's 2,290 tech employees, from cybersecurity experts to application engineers, work from one space instead of 12 buildings scattered across Utah.

Jill Castilla is growing her main bank – and its remote affiliate. Citizens Bank of Edmond's asset size grew 13% year-over-year in 2021 to $370 million. The suburban Oklahoma City-based bank racked up 850 loans totaling $130 million last year.

Only six years ago, KeyBank was nowhere to be found in a ranking of the top 25 banks for lending to developers of affordable housing. Last year, under the leadership of Angela Mago, the bank finished in the No. 2 spot, sandwiched between Citi at No. 1 and JP Morgan Chase at No. 3, according to Affordable Housing Finance.

As a technology executive for PNC Bank, Deborah Guild has long been helping women blaze career pathways in the business world. Now she's helping them in what seems a most unlikely field: auto racing.

Ranjana Clark has long been committed to working seamlessly across borders. The COVID-19 pandemic, of course, made that more challenging. But as the pandemic's restrictions eased in 2022, Clark was able to lean more aggressively into that commitment.

As Global Chief Information Officer of JP Morgan Chase, Lori Beer manages a $14 billion budget and more than 55,000 technologists across the bank's businesses.

After 40 years on the job, Catherine "Cathy" Pombier Bessant is well ensconced among the sparse but growing ranks of senior stateswomen in finance. Bank of America's global technology and operations executive for 12 years and its vice chair of global strategy since September 2021, Bessant has topped American Banker's list of the Most Powerful Women in Banking three years in a row, from 2017 to 2019, and was inducted into AB's Hall of Fame in 2020.

When Peetz joined Citi in 2020, she was returning to work after three and a half years of retirement from a career that included leadership positions at Bank of New York Mellon, where she led the financial markets and treasury services group, and at JPMorgan Chase, where she had a variety of commercial lending, sales, and management positions.

Over the past year, Jane Fraser, Citi's first female CEO in the firm's history, completed a strategy refresh at the world's most global bank. Despite an implausibly volatile geopolitical environment, she steered Citi to robust first quarter 2022 earnings—returning $4 billion to shareholders, while commanding 200,000 employees globally, and serving millions of consumers and businesses across 95 countries.

As part of American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance program, we have selected five "Top Teams" for 2022. Bank of America is one of the team honorees.