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.

Ashley O’Neal’s first job in banking was a turnaround. 

She’d been hired into a management-trainee program at National City Bank in 2006, after she graduated from the University of Missouri–Columbia, and then put in charge of a struggling branch. 

The assignment came with a daunting list of problems for a new branch manager: “The branch had a huge employee issue. Employee morale, unethical behavior and turnover were all high at this branch,” she recalled. “I went in with a lot of issues to correct.”

The U.S. has long been in the thralls of an affordable housing crisis, with a shortage of more than 7 million rental homes for people living at or below the federal poverty line. In the aftermath of the pandemic, supply shortages, inflation and rising interest rates have made the problem even worse. And it has also made the job of Victoria O’Brien, head of equity acquisitions KeyBank community development lending and investment, even more challenging.

Overseeing compliance at a bank can be difficult in the best of circumstances. Doing it for an institution headquartered in Sin City can make the task downright daunting. 

But Hilary Nelson, director of operations and compliance at Lexicon Bank, takes it all in stride. 

“I was born and raised here so it’s just normal for me,” she said. 

A two-day exploratory seminar at an insurance company set a teenaged Kimberlene Matthews on a path to becoming an actuary. Now she runs the Pension and Enterprise Solutions group in PNC’s Institutional Asset Management arm. “I love math; I always did,” she said. 

Tracy Woodrow, chief administrative officer at M&T Bank, called Erin Komorowski an “unlikely banker.” 

“Erin has C-suite potential because she is empathetic and fearless,” Woodrow added. 

Prior to joining the Buffalo, N.Y.-based institution, Komorowski’s resume was filled with stints at nonprofits — including two years with the Peace Corps. It was during her time working in Dominica, a small island in the Caribbean with a population just over 70,000, that eventually led her to business school and banking. In Dominica, she worked with a nonprofit that provided training and mentoring to help entrepreneurs gain access to credit from banks and through grants.