Hope Dmuchowski is senior executive vice president and chief financial officer for First Horizon Corporation. She has responsibility for accounting, treasury, financial planning & analysis, line of business finance, banking data analytics, loan and deposit pricing, corporate development, and investor relations. In addition to her financial management responsibilities, she also has responsibility for corporate properties, sourcing, and procurement.

Dmuchowski has over 25 years of experience in banking and brings a wealth of finance, accounting and merger expertise having served in several key roles running integrated business and economic models, budgeting, forecasting, financial analysis, regulatory reporting, and operations. Prior to joining First Horizon in 2021, Dmuchowski worked at Truist and the predecessor bank BB&T in numerous roles, including head of financial planning and analysis and management reporting, chief financial officer of corporate banking, commercial banking and corporate groups, chief financial officer group director as well as chief financial and operating officer of enterprise operations services. Dmuchowski began her banking career in the Leadership Development program for the sales and trading division of Deutsche Bank.

Dmuchowski has a passion for serving her community and is an avid volunteer in every city where she has lived. She currently serves on the non-profit boards for the National Salvation Army, where she is currently the treasurer, 4Word and the Baptist Hospital Foundation. She also serves on St. George’s Independent School board of directors.

Dmuchowski holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and a Master of Science degree in Business Management both from Saint Elizabeth University, as well as a Women in Leadership certification from Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business.

Jill Castilla knows what success looks like.

Castilla took the helm as CEO of Edmond, Oklahoma-based Citizens Bank of Edmond in 2009, when the bank was reeling from the still-unfolding global financial crisis. In the intervening years, Castilla has not only turned the bank back from the brink of failure, but also expanded its size and profile into a stable and successful bank with more than $416 million of assets.

But success can be defined in a number of different ways, Castilla said, and many of the ways that bankers traditionally measure success may not capture some of the initiatives that make a difference for customers. As a privately-owned and primarily employee-owned business, Castilla faces less pressure for quarterly earnings results than many of her publicly-traded peers, which she says helps her focus less on short-term profits and more on long-term goals, such as securing inexpensive deposits to make loans. The bank’s core deposits grew 35% between November 2023 and May of 2025.

Jodi Richard is vice chair and chief risk officer of U.S. Bancorp, a well-respected financial services holding company with  businesses across the United States, Canada and Europe. U.S. Bancorp is headquartered in Minneapolis and is the parent  company of U.S. Bank, which is the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States. U.S. Bancorp is also the parent  company of Elavon, a leader in the payment processing industry. Jodi oversees all aspects of the company’s risk  management activities, including operational risk, fraud risk, credit risk, market risk, model risk, compliance, AML/BSA,  independent risk review and regulatory services. She became vice chair and chief risk officer in 2018 and is a member of  the company’s Managing Committee, the highest-ranking executives within the organization.

Jodi’s financial career spans nearly 30 years. She joined U.S. Bancorp in 2014 as executive vice president and chief  operational risk officer, managing the company’s operational risk management activities.

Before joining U.S. Bancorp, Jodi was executive vice president and head of operational risk and internal control for HSBC  North America. She was there for 11 years, serving in enterprise risk roles including head of risk governance and  administration and director of regulatory compliance.

Jodi also spent 12 years at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), where she served as national bank  examiner, specializing in retail credit and credit card bank supervision. Between two periods with the OCC, she was chief  compliance officer for Sears National Bank.

Jodi serves on the boards of Fairview Health Services, Junior Achievement USA and the ProSight Financial  Association/Risk Management Association. She is a frequent speaker at risk industry events.

Jodi is a graduate of the Leading Women’s Executive program. She was named to American Banker’s Most Powerful to  Watch list in 2025 and to its Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance in 2024. She was part of American Banker’s  Most Powerful Women in Banking Top Team Award in 2013, 2015, 2019, 2020 and 2022 and was recognized in 2021 for outstanding achievements. She was named Best Technology Executive in 2017 by Waters Technology. In 2017, U.S. Bank was named Operational Risk Bank of the Year by Risk.net.

Jodi holds a bachelor of arts degree in finance from the University of Northern Iowa.

In 2020, less than one year into becoming Wells Fargo CEO, Charles Scharf tapped Ellen Patterson to lead the bank’s legal department. The job promised to be a challenge: Well Fargo faced a mountain of federal investigations plus class action lawsuits and overall concern it could not manage risk.

Four years after coming over from TD Bank, Patterson said, “I feel really good about the progress we’ve made putting a number of historical matters behind us.”

Tasnim re-joined Citi in October 2021 to lead Citi Commercial Bank (CCB), a key business area for the bank. CCB provides full scale banking products and services to mid-sized companies across the globe delivering tailored solutions to this exciting and fast-growing client base. Commercial Banking clients represent a significant global growth opportunity as their needs closely align with Citi’s core value proposition that enables clients to grow cross-border by leveraging sophisticated platforms and solutions. Tasnim is executing on an ambitious growth strategy to capture the mid-market opportunity with an emphasis on talent investment, digital transformation, and expansion into new markets.

Most recently, Tasnim was the UK Corporate Bank Head at Barclays plc where she focused on growing target segments, building solutions, enhancing client experience and developing talent. Tasnim implemented National Industry verticals to serve corporate clients and set-up a Public Sector business to drive growth through industry specific insights and solutions. Tasnim played a leading role in the deployment of the UK Covid-19 Government Loan Schemes and was a strong voice for financial services during the pandemic.

Prior to Barclays, Tasnim was Head of Commercial Banking in Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citi where she led Citi’s expansion of the business in the region, including launching into new markets and driving innovation and digitization. During her more than 20-year career at Citi, Tasnim held various roles in Investment Banking, Corporate and Commercial Banking as well as Senior Regional Management.

Earlier in her career, Tasnim worked at JP Morgan and Commercial Union; and she is a Chartered Management Accountant. Tasnim is passionate about equality in the workplace especially for women and has led several diversity initiatives and chaired various Committees across her career in banking. In 2023, Tasnim was honored as the number one woman to ‘Watch’ in the American Banker’s Most Powerful Women lists and in 2024 she was also recognized on the publication’s Most Powerful Women in Banking list. Additionally in 2023 and 2024, Tasnim was included in Financial News’ 100 Women in Finance list, recognizing leading women across European financial services.

Moving Comerica’s back-office employees into new digs in Farmington Hills, Michigan, was about more than just a change of scenery — it was a concrete manifestation of a recently adopted core value of making “the bigger possible.”

That’s the view of Megan Crespi, Comerica’s chief operating officer. The new office has more natural light, sit-stand desks and 32-inch curved computer monitors, all designed with employee input.

As a technology consultant at Accenture early in her career, Jennifer Barker learned to assess her corporate clients’ wide-ranging needs and concluded that technology can resolve most, if not all, business problems. As the global head of treasury services and depositary receipts at BNY since May 2022, she continues to apply that experience, delving into clients’ treasury-related needs and providing them with the latest tech solutions.

The bank’s Digital Employee artificial intelligence agent, for example, is one of 10 AI solutions already in production. It autonomously corrects failed payments and performs other business tasks, interacts with internal systems, and communicates with employees through tools including Outlook and TEAMS. BNY estimates that another AI-enabled solution for check-processing has reduced manual efforts by an estimated 75%, while its Wire Investigation agent summarizes complex transactions and case histories to determine the best resolution actions.

One of the biggest challenges Jennifer Smith has faced this year at Zions has been the Salt Lake City-based bank’s decision to require most employees to return to the office five days a week.  

“This directive reflected in a headline can sound so simple, yet there are often immediate favorable and unfavorable reactions,” Smith said.  

Particularly as it relates to IT employees, regional banks have hired people from all over the country to source the best talent, she said. “There are cases where we cannot find some talent locally in our markets,” she explained.

As chief information officer at KeyBank, Amy Brady guided the bank to high talent retention rates within the company’s technology, operations and services (KTOS) organization. In a highly competitive market for technical talent, this stability is a significant strategic advantage.

The division, which includes 4,524 employees, had a voluntary annualized attrition rate of 6.8% in 2024. Technology employees had attrition as low as 3.78%. These figures, which are below industry averages according to the bank, reflect a culture that minimizes disruption, preserves institutional knowledge and reduces the high costs associated with recruitment.

This success in workforce stability is a direct reflection of Brady’s focus on employee engagement and professional growth. She advocates for empowering her employees to be the “CEOs of their careers,” a philosophy supported by internal development programs that she said goes beyond typical training, fostering critical skills like adaptability, digital fluency and complex decision-making.