Carmen Chan’s office is at the north end of Times Square, where Barclay’s U.S. Corporate and Investment Bank is headquartered, but her view is strictly global. As managing director of internet investment banking, her portfolio of both targets and clients may be filled with U.S.-based tech players, but Chan knows that each of them plays in a world without boundaries or borders.

According to Barclay’s Kristin Roth DeClark, global head of tech investment banking, the technology IPO market is in for a stellar year, with more than $50 billion worth of deals predicted in the coming 12 months, as part of the expected $3.1 trillion in global IPO and M&A activity. In such an environment, Chan’s worldly view will be a critical tool for success.

Hanen Alkhafaji, a senior software engineering manager at PNC Bank, supervises a cross-functional team of developers.

Her work at the $554 billion asset bank’s Dayton, Ohio offices was recently punctuated by a major internal restructuring of the advisor portal team. She guided them through the transition with confidence and reassurance, according to her superiors, and kept the team on track with its current projects.

As a first generation college student, Janel Taylor had no idea what she wanted to do when she graduated. But a human resources internship at Southern Company, an energy company, gave her a new direction. 

“I fell in love with every step of an employee’s life cycle at an organization,” Taylor said. “From talking to them about the opportunity and recruiting them and selling them on the position, the team, the organization, to the excitement of them accepting that job, into when there are performance challenges that we need to help support them through, or development experiences that we need to create for them so that they can develop their skills and grow.”

When you first meet Stephanie Cherrin, one of the immediate things that strikes you is her clarity of thinking—on what she does, why she does it and, even more, how she looks at the early-stage companies in which she might invest and their potential impact on the market.

The 38-year-old partner in J.P. Morgan Technology Ventures, the bank’s under-the-radar technology investment arm, is charged with identifying and making investments in fintech and cybersecurity companies. Cherrin’s demeanor—direct, candid and intentionally thoughtful about the process of investing—stands in sharp contrast to the bank’s desire to remain rather opaque about how much it invests annually in startups, the number of deals it did in 2024, or the types of investments its tech venture team is considering this year. When asked, she declined to answer questions on all of this, citing company policy.

Christine Ferris spent more than 17 years at J.P. Morgan, most recently as global head of CLO primary. In January, Ferris jumped to SMBC Nikko Securities America as head of securitized products — an unexpected career move that she couldn’t resist.

Until joining SMBC, Ferris had spent her entire career at J.P. Morgan, where she said she “was given excellent opportunities to grow as a leader.” She had no plans to leave the company. However, during a pitch meeting with SMBC Nikko Americas executive Scott Ashby, she learned about his vision for expanding SMBC’s investment banking business in the Americas. The plan laid out by Ashby, head of capital markets and investment banking, intrigued Ferris so much that she accepted an offer to run the securitized products business at SMBC Nikko Securities America.

Alli Yttreness took a circuitous route back to banking after starting out as a teller while attending the University of Minnesota. Yttreness joined the $675 billion-asset U.S. Bank 11 years ago from the American Academy of Neurology, where she had served in the Office of the General Counsel. 

“I knew that I wanted to be in banking law, but it was really about finding where my passion was,” Yttreness said.

Aileen Thomas joined the $60 billion-asset Synovus as a consumer product team member in 2018. Within just two years, she was promoted to consumer product lead. Thomas was promoted, according to nominating executive Liz Wolverton, head of consumer banking and brand experience, because it was “evident she possessed high leadership potential and what we look for in executive leaders. Her exceptional intellect, courage, expertise, work ethic and people skills allowed her to quickly expand her visibility and responsibilities.”

Banking came naturally to Aidis Suever, who grew up in a banking family in which both her parents were bankers in their native Albania. 

“We love numbers,” said Suever. “I was raised in a household where being in the banking industry was really what I knew.”

When Chun Schiros moved to the U.S. from China after graduating from college, it was in hopes of becoming a facial-recognition engineer and working under the Tennessee professor who had written the textbook she’d studied in Beijing. But that professor had retired from teaching, so she instead headed to Alabama, where she completed master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering and statistics at Auburn University. Then she began work as a medical researcher, a career step that made sense for someone interested in how to use data in new ways.

Heather Orrico’s career in finance got its start at a field hockey game. Orrico was a member of Yale University’s field hockey team, and after a game, she got into a conversation with an alumni who worked in finance. “She told me that I should consider sales and trading,” she recalled.