The Latest from Women in Banking

Elizabeth Mays does not stop thinking about risk management when she leaves her office at JPMorgan Chase & Co. each day. Her most recent book, Credit Scoring for Risk Managers, was largely written from a booth at Chuck E. Cheese.

As a veteran of political campaigns and the Clinton White House, Lisa Caputo is a battle-tested strategist and tactician - useful experience for handling global marketing and corporate affairs at Citigroup Inc.

The cult leader of customer service at TD Bank has an office in the middle of one of its call centers for a reason. "It keeps me close to employees and it keeps me close to customers and feedback," says Linda Verba, executive vice president and head of retail banking at the $134 billion-asset bank.

Lynn Heitman remembers the days when direct mail response rates were 20 percent. Now 2 percent is considered high. "It was a very different time," she says. "It was much easier to succeed."

After leaving Seattle to return to the Midwest to help care for an ill family member, Grossi received a call from FirstMerit asking if she'd be interested in joining the Akron, Ohio, bank as its head of retail banking.

Maureen Miskovic started out at the London Metal Exchange as the silver crisis was cresting. She was at the London Stock Exchange for the Mexican peso crisis and Barings Bank's implosion. And she became the chief risk officer at Lehman Brothers just in time for the run on its stock in 1998.

The chief executive of JPMorgan's Treasury Services business pushed through with a $1 billion investment to broaden the group's global service capabilities.

Betsy Cohen never stops innovating. When she was 32 she founded JeffBanks, and built it into the largest bank headquartered in Philadelphia. She sold it in 2000 for $350 million, or 2.75 times book, and founded The Bancorp in nearby Wilmington, Del.

For Dorothy Savarese, the financial crisis has in some ways amounted to a restoration of the principals that guide her institution, Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank.

Dorothy Bridges is as prepared for downturns as they come. But the head of the Washington, D.C.-based community development lender City First Bank, and one of a few black women to run a U.S. bank, faces a difficult test.