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.

Julieann Thurlow, president and CEO of Reading Cooperative Bank, successfully merged her bank with a neighboring one in a deal that brought the asset size of the Massachusetts-based mutual bank past the $1 billion mark this year.

However, this wasn’t your average bank M&A deal. Since both institutions are mutual banks there were no price negotiations, even though the merger co-mingled the two banks’ assets to a combined $1.23 billion. Instead, Thurlow focused her negotiations around relationship building and aligning the mission and goals of each institution to ensure a smooth transition for their members.

Thurlow told American Banker that a mutual bank merger allows each bank to do more for their communities working together with a combined asset size than they could do separately. 

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.

Penn Community Bank CEO Jeane Vidoni is prioritizing increasing its industrial and commercial loan volume. 

In August, the bank launched an ad campaign to attract businesses that need commercial loans. Penn Community used artificial intelligence as part of its marketing efforts to reach CFOs and other executives who are seeking loans to expand their companies.

Shifting the bank’s focus to its business customers who need commercial real estate and commercial and industrial loans will help its growth trajectory, Vidoni told the Philadelphia Business Journal. 

Kim Posnett’s career has long been on the rise at storied Goldman Sachs. So it was fitting that to mark her two decades at the firm, she ascended to even more rarefied territory: co-head of investment banking.

But before that January 2025 crowning, it was her previous role as head of global technology, media & telecommunications group that groomed her for the even bigger chair. That put her at the center of major events like Twitter’s $44 billion sale to Elon Musk, and Silver Lake’s $25 billion taking-private of Endeavor. High-stakes deals like that helped cement the firm’s status as the #1 advisory in worldwide, announced and completed M&A for the year. (Posnett is ranked on her prior role of Global Head of the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group, per American Banker’s methodology requiring that a woman be in her role for at least one full year.)

Laurie Stewart, who has led Sound Community Bank for more than 30 years, said her guiding principle as CEO is “community is our middle name.”

Her employees are a large part of Stewart’s community, and she measures her success by keeping layoffs and turnover as low as possible despite economic pressures.

“I think 2024 was a year of really needing to manage through challenging economic times, but still be honest to your culture and your commitment to your stakeholders, including the communities that we serve,” she said.

Christina Mohr is confident that her team can excel at a restructured Citigroup.

“What they’re calling simplification at Citi is really about putting clients at the center of what we do,” said Mohr, the New York company’s vice chair of M&A and investment banking. In other words, Citi is focused on what has always guided her career: “To serve clients intensively.”

As the president and CEO of Hanmi Financial Corp. in Los Angeles, California, Bonnie Lee is one of just eleven female CEOs of publicly traded financial institutions. 

Since becoming CEO in 2019, she has grown Hanmi’s total assets from $5.5 billion to $7.6 billion, an increase of 36%. She did this, she said, by strengthening the bank’s balance sheet; diversifying its loan portfolio, which was concentrated in commercial real estate when she took the helm; expanding its products and services; and closing some branches and opening others, especially as the bank expanded into Texas, Illinois, and the eastern U.S. 

As Krista Snelling entered her fourth year as president and CEO of Santa Cruz County Bank in Santa Cruz, California, the bank was on an even keel.

Snelling had joined the bank in March 2021 from Five Star Bank in Sacramento, California, where she had been chief financial officer for five years. She proceeded to build an executive team that combined local people and bankers from outside the Santa Cruz market, while making herself a fixture at area events.