“Chief experience officer” is the kind of job title that seems open to interpretation.

Beth Johnson took on the role of vice chair and chief experience officer at Citizens three years ago. For her, the job title means that she’s responsible for building the Providence, Rhode Island, bank’s capabilities so it can deliver excellent customer experiences in a rapidly changing banking environment. That includes digital design, data and analytics, marketing and communications and enterprise payments strategy and infrastructure.

Deborah Guild, the head of enterprise technology and security at PNC, has served in a number of tech leadership roles at the bank over the last 12 years. This year, however, her challenges look a little different, given  the acceleration of AI, global cybersecurity threats, and an alarming increase in consumer fraud perpetrated by bad actors. 

Additionally, deepfake technology and sophisticated cyberattacks have made traditional identity verification more challenging than ever.

For Tracy Kerrins, the convergence of two enormous responsibilities at Wells Fargo is not a balancing act. It’s a single mission.

As Wells Fargo’s chief information officer for consumer technology and head of generative AI, Kerrins manages a $4 billion budget and a global team of roughly 7,000 employees. Her mandate is to modernize the bank’s core consumer platforms while embedding AI capabilities across the enterprise for 215,000 employees and nearly 70 million customers. 

“I don’t separate the roles,” Kerrins said. “Everything I do with generative AI informs what I do with consumer technology, and vice versa. It’s all about finding better, faster, and more innovative ways to serve our employees and customers.”

BMO’s Erminia “Ernie” Johannson said leadership requires courage, perseverance and resilience.

She led the successful integration of one of the largest U.S. banking acquisitions last year with the acquisition of Bank of the West. The deal catapulted the $1.3 trillion-asset BMO into the ranks of the top 10 banks in the U.S. by assets.

As the top lawyer at JPMorganChase, Stacey Friedman thinks “it’s a super interesting time to think deeply” about the rule of law in the United States. 

Friedman, the executive vice president and general counsel of the nation’s largest bank, navigates a legal and regulatory landscape on a global scale. She leads a group of more than 2,000 lawyers in multiple jurisdictions around the globe. What may be a headwind in one country could be a tailwind in another, she says.

“The front windshield is really quite big and I can watch and participate and learn,” Friedman said.  “At the end of the day, I’m super hopeful for America, for humanity, for the institution, and for the rule of law.”

The incoming questions from Wendy Stewart’s middle-market corporate banking clients this spring was universally similar. Across industrial, marketplace and geographical settings, companies were asking about strategies surrounding trade, tariffs, inflation, interest rates and even immigration, in the wake of recessionary worries ramping up across both Wall Street and Main Street.  

“I’m hearing a lot of things that start with a ‘t’ or an ‘i’,” said Stewart, the Atlanta-based president of Bank of America’s Global Commercial Banking unit. “We started off the year expecting to go in one direction, and it clearly went in a very different direction.”

But under Stewart’s direction, the bank’s commercial banking services continued to attract and maintain American businesses’ confidence, gaining 8% year-over-year growth in middle-market loans and a 15% gain in deposits to over $600 billion. This follows similarly strong results in 2024 that saw 4% annual growth in loans and 6% t in deposits, from companies in 115 U.S. and Canadian cities (plus another 15 international markets) with between $50 million and $2 billion in yearly revenues.

Holly O’Neill got a big promotion in 2025. But after 30 years at Bank of America, she’s used to big promotions.

O’Neill started her career at BofA in 1996, when she was a trainee and then a credit analyst. By 2021, she was president of BofA’s retail business. And on April 1 of this year, her purview grew to include consumer and preferred banking, which serves mass-affluent clients and small business owners. Effectively, the promotion put O’Neill in charge of all consumer banking at the nation’s second-largest bank. (She was ranked on her 2024 title of president of retail banking.)

“Huge opportunity,” she told American Banker. “It’s been an incredibly busy few months but a really positive transition, and I’m really excited about it.”