The Most Powerful Women in Banking

Fiona Bassett moved to New York with a mandate of making Deutsche Bank one of the top exchange-traded fund issuers in the United States. Since her arrival in 2014, she's done just that.

In 2012, BNP Paribas was the largest global custodian without a presence in North America and it wanted to change that. It found its leader in Claudine Gallagher, then the global head of depositary receipts at J.P. Morgan. Four years later, le succés.

Karen Peetz has myriad responsibilities as president of the world's largest custody bank, not the least of which is managing relationships with Bank of New York Mellon's 500 largest clients.

During American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking gala last year, Marianne Lake laid out the "30-5-1" challenge: each week, spend 30 minutes having coffee with a talented junior woman, five minutes congratulating a woman on a recent success and one minute talking up that woman to another senior peer.

A lot of what Cathy Bessant knows about directing a team can be traced back to her days as patrol leader of her Girl Scouts troop.