Megan Comfort got into banking on the advice of her mother. Comfort’s mother, an immigrant from the Philippines, worked as a bank teller for most of Comfort’s childhood, and urged her daughter to go into banking because of the benefits and the opportunity to try different roles.

Immediately after high school, Comfort began working as a teller at Nevada State Bank, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorp. Three years later, she joined the small-business banking team at the bank. “That’s when I fell in love with banking. I loved helping small-business owners,” she said. 

Jillian Chuck has learned about providing a high-touch customer experience through an unusual avenue — by working in her parents’ Jamaican restaurant. 

Food is what initially brought her parents together. Chuck’s father immigrated to the U.S. to attend school and met her mother, who was working in his uncle’s bakery. 

Growing up in the small Illinois town of Roscoe, Amy Bartlett never imagined that she would go into banking. Today, she holds BMO’s House Discretionary Limit, which means she is one of a handful at the bank allowed to recommend that the CEO or chief risk officer extend more than the bank’s maximum credit limit to a client. 

Bartlett joined BMO in 2007 as an analyst working with large diversified companies, and has stayed at the bank since in its Chicago office, now also supervising bankers in Toronto and New York.

Maria Tedesco’s first foray into banking was in a marketing role at BayBank in Boston. Although she held a B.S. in finance and accounting from Ithaca College, she didn’t know much about the banking industry but wanted to help people with their finances. The CEO of the bank took a chance on the young Tedesco, and she was soon promoted to  regional manager in charge of branches. 

Since starting at BayBank in 1992, Tedesco worked at several banks in a broad range of roles across retail, consumer and business banking. Her experience includes more than seven years at Citizens National Bank and a two-year stint as chief operating officer at BMO Harris Bank before joining Atlantic Union Bank in 2018.

Zewditu Tizu Menelik has spent her career in the center of some of the banking industry’s biggest recent challenges. Now as many banks retrench, Menelik is making a different bet, growing and restructuring Huntington Bancshares’ corporate, specialty and government banking segment.

Menelik was tapped to lead corporate, specialty and government banking at Huntington in October 2022, coming over from Fifth Third where she was the group head of diversified industries and international corporate banking. At Huntington, she has recruited away a specialized mortgage solutions team from Flagstar Bank, added financial services focused on federally recognized Native American tribes, and started a national deposits group.

Wendy Cai-Lee is the Founder and CEO of Piermont Bank, a fully chartered digital commercial bank, and the first multi-racial MDI (Minority Depository Institution) in the United States. The bank is the engine behind many successful fintechs as well as entrepreneur-led businesses in many leading industry sectors. With nearly 30 years of executive-level experience managing and leading Fortune 500 companies and startups, Wendy is a subject matter expert in fintech, international finance and banking.

Prior to building Piermont Bank, she was an Executive Vice President at East West Bank, responsible for its Commercial and Consumer Businesses in the U.S. Prior to East West, Wendy was a Managing Director at Deloitte LLP, where she managed its U.S./China cross-border M&A business. She started her banking career with JP Morgan Chase and held various management positions at both Chase and Citi. Wendy is named to Inc.’s 2024 Female Founders 250 and was an honoree of The Most Powerful Women in Banking to Watch by American Banker in 2025, 2024 and 2023.

Wendy is a member of New York State Department of Financial Services’ Charter Advisory Board and CDFI/MDI Council. In addition, Wendy is an Emeritus member of the Board of Friends of UNFPA. She also serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at Douglass College. Wendy received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Rutgers University.

The top priority for Popular’s customers is “trust,” said Beatriz “Betina” Castellví.

In her role as executive vice president and chief security officer, Castellví ensures that the San Juan, Puerto Rico, company builds and maintains this trust by preventing cybercrime, fraud, and data privacy violations against the bank and its customers.

Popular operates Banco Popular de Puerto Rico and the New York-chartered Popular Bank. Besides the territory and state, the $72.8 billion-asset Popular also has branches in New Jersey, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

When Truist undertook high-profile job cuts in fall 2023, some executives worried about the negative feedback they might hear on employee surveys.

Kimberly Moore-Wright did not share their qualms. As the bank’s chief teammate officer, she reassured other executives that the $520 billion-asset bank needed to keep listening; that way, executives would learn things they needed to know.

After working with three different large public banks for over 30 years, Lisa Oliver joined The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod as its president and CEO in 2017.

She was the bank’s first female president in its 104-year history.

The move was counter to how some people’s career trajectories go, with many starting at smaller banks and moving to larger banks as their careers progress.

But for Oliver, the transition was intentional.

When the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action for college admissions last year, some companies pulled back from their DEI commitments. Wells Fargo did not, said Kristy Fercho, senior executive vice president and head of diverse segments, representation and inclusion at the bank.

While Wells Fargo’s lawyers confirmed that the bank’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs were still legally compliant, the bank also made it clear that the court decision would not affect its commitment to increase diverse representation in the company to better serve its diverse customer segments, said Fercho.