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 this year.

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.

Additionally, Tasnim is a member of the Board of Directors of Foro Holdings Inc, a Fintech based in Charlotte, North Carolina; a Governor of Central Foundation Girls’ School in London and a Trustee of Developments in Literacy UK, a charity with a focus on girls’ education.

Tasnim graduated from Kings College London with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Management.

Teresa Heitsenrether is the Chief Data & Analytics Officer and a member of JPMorganChase’s Operating Committee. Leading the Data & Analytics organization, she is responsible for setting data and analytics strategy and governance standards, as well as driving firmwide adoption of artificial intelligence to develop new products, enhance productivity, and improve risk management.

Heitsenrether has spent her entire career with JPMorganChase. From 2015 to 2023, she was Global Head of Securities Services, overseeing a business responsible for safekeeping, accounting, administration, and data solutions for institutional investment managers. Under her leadership, the business achieved remarkable growth, increasing revenue by over 22% and assets under custody by nearly $9 trillion. It also launched Fusion, a scalable data platform for institutional investors.

Prior to that, Heitsenrether held various leadership roles within JPMorganChase, including Global Head of Prime Brokerage, where she spearheaded international expansion and growth. She has been recognized as one of American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Finance and named to Barron’s list of the 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance.

Heitsenrether holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Fordham University and a Master of Business Administration from New York University. She serves on the Advisory Board of Fordham’s Gabelli School of Business and is actively involved in JPMorganChase’s Women on the Move initiative and the NextGen Business Resource Group.

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 has 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.

“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.”