When markets swooned in April, NYSE Group President Lynn Martin was ready. Years of investment in cutting-edge technologies and processes had prepared the world’s largest exchange to weather the volatility and surging trading volumes wrought by tariff concerns. 

In a CNBC op-ed, she reassured investors that the “beating heart of the global financial system” had met the challenge, handling more than 1 trillion messages on two separate days with a median processing time of 30 microseconds.

“I felt it was my responsibility to remind people that the NYSE has been around 233 years. We’ve survived wars, pandemics and geopolitical uncertainty, so don’t panic,” she explained now. “We’re quite proud that our financial markets showed their resilience and strength during that time.”

For the fifth consecutive year, Donna Milrod, executive vice chair and chief product officer of Boston-based State Street Corporation, is a Most Powerful Women in Finance honoree.

At State Street, Milrod is responsible for leading the product development strategy, value propositions, and growth of the Investment servicing business. She leads a team of 600 and has  eight direct reports. Additionally, she serves on the executive committee and reports to Joerg Ambrosius, State Street’s head of investment services.

Milrod is also responsible for leading strategy, value propositions and growth of the company’s asset servicing business, which represents  more than 80 % of State Street’s overall business.

Over the past year, financial markets have been driven by higher rates and a potential shift toward deglobalization. In response, Hanneke Smits, global head of investment management at BNY, has aligned the bank’s portfolio strategies to meet evolving client needs.

This includes launching Pinpoint, a data-driven portfolio consultation service that has led to new client opportunities in Switzerland; debuting Pershing X Wove, a wealth-management platform for North American clients; and expanding a partnership with alternative credit specialist CIFC Asset Management, which allows clients around the world to access private credit exposure.

Yie-Hsin Hung entered the financial services sector after earning a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University and an MBA from Harvard University. Her first stop after college: investment banking.

Although she enjoyed “the fast-paced environment and the opportunity to work on complex, high-stakes transactions” in investment banking, Hung eventually desired work that was “more enduring and purpose-driven.” She found work as the CEO of New York Life Investments from 2015 to 2022 and today as president and CEO of State Street Investment Management, formerly State Street Global Advisors. She’s been head of the world’s fourth largest investment management firm since 2022.

In her eight-year tenure as Nasdaq CEO, Adena Friedman has led a massive transformation of the iconic stock exchange into a global financial services technology powerhouse. Nasdaq has diversified beyond its core listings and index business into a business partner for banking and capital markets, expanding its reach into treasury, risk and compliance management and regulatory reporting. 

Anchored by a $10.5 billion acquisition of software giant Adenza in 2023, Nasdaq under Friedman’s leadership has most recently built a suite of compliance and anti-financial crime services used by most globally systemic institutions through AI-driven models for areas such as AML due diligence or sanctions assessments.

Jenny Johnson believes Franklin Templeton has unlocked the key to bringing investments in private markets to more clients, a trend that is likely to accelerate under Trump administration policies designed to broaden access to private equity, real estate and other less liquid investment options. The key is something the firm has been doing for three decades—educating financial advisers.

Advisers want to give their clients more options, said Johnson, president and CEO of Franklin Templeton, which manages about $1.6 trillion in assets. “There’s a real recognition that it’s kind of un-American if we don’t all have fair access to the same kinds of investments.” 

But it is not enough to pick a good product, she said. “If the firm behind that product hasn’t surrounded it with really robust education, it’s too hard for the advisers to understand.”

When TIAA launched an IRA product broadening access to its proprietary annuity products on March 10, the stock market recorded one of its most volatile days in years. Investors were fretting over the impact of tariffs and the possibility of a recession.

The day’s roller coaster ride reinforced what TIAA president and CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett already believed about the value of lifetime income annuities.

“Guaranteed income isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity,” Duckett said, arguing that people want security they can count on regardless of market swings. “That’s why we’re committed to expanding access to guaranteed lifetime income solutions, in both the institutional and retail markets.”

Abigail Johnson, known to all as Abby, runs her family’s old-school asset management firm with a focus on alternative investments that couldn’t even be traded on an exchange a year ago. 

Fidelity Digital Assets, which provides custodial and trading services for the crypto holdings of institutional and high-net worth clients, operates as an independent subsidiary and has become a core contributor to the $6.4 trillion-asset company, which grew to $32.7 billion in 2024 revenues. (The company has about $16.4 trillion under administration.)

Mary Callahan Erdoes arrives for a meeting seven minutes late, apologizing profusely. The CEO of JPMorganChase’s mammoth asset and wealth management (AWM) business moved into the company’s gleaming new headquarters at 270 Park Avenue a day earlier and underestimated the return time to her office after escorting a client to the entrance. “This building is the craziest thing that’s happened to New York City in a long time,” she said.

If you really want to see something crazy, look at the high-energy Erdoes’ workload—and her results. Over the past year she’s shepherded the bank’s high-net-worth clients through a volatile spring, flown around the world to meet with heads of state and billionaires, spoken at big forums, including the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and even helped fetch a record price for a venerable sports franchise. She also played a high-profile role as the most senior member of Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon’s operating committee.

With digital commerce growing rapidly, it’s important to pick up the pace of development, Bridgit Chayt says.

“Last year has shown a lot of progress in the way we work,” said Chayt, executive vice president and head of commercial payments and treasury management. “We have been able to onboard at the ‘speed of fintech’ rather than the ‘speed of banking,’ which is gratifying.” 

Chayt was pivotal to Fifth Third’s acquisition of Rize Money in late 2023 and the subsequent launch of Newline, the bank’s embedded payments business. Embedded payments refers to payment products that are integrated into software or a platform. Consumers or businesses use embedded payments to complete a transaction without leaving an app or website. Embedded payments are often grouped with embedded finance, which refers to the delivery of banking services via relationships with third parties, another strategy that is a big part of Fifth Third’s business.