Debbra Schoneman believes in the power of the “learning zone” — the space just beyond an individual’s comfort zone where growth and resilience are forged. 

It’s a mindset she adopted later in her career and serves her well in running Piper Sandler as president over the past seven years, especially during a year when market conditions have demanded both adaptability and discipline.

“If we fail to regularly challenge ourselves, our comfort zone will continue to contract,” she said. 

Liz Wolverton is executive vice president and head of consumer banking and brand experience for Synovus.

Wolverton leads the bank’s consumer banking segment, including the branch network, consumer banking products and services, and mass affluent strategy and execution. She’s responsible for the digital and client experience, advancing an aligned and measured approach to delivering a holistic, consistent and differentiated client experience.

Wolverton joined Synovus in 2003 and has held various leadership positions, including chief strategy officer, senior director of banking and director of accounting and financial analysis.

Before joining Synovus, Wolverton served as finance director for Centerplate Management in Greenville, South Carolina. She started her career in the assurance and advisory business services division of Ernst & Young in Greenville and Atlanta, Georgia.

Since 2015 Wolverton has been recognized as one of American Banker’s Most Powerful Women to Watch. This annual recognition acknowledges women for their leadership, innovation and impact on the company, industry and community. She is a recipient of the Synovus Jim Blanchard Leadership Award.

Wolverton serves on the boards of Make-A-Wish® Georgia and Columbus Museum. She is on the advisory board of the Realizing Educational Achievement Can Happen Georgia Foundation.

Liz is married to Bobby Wolverton, who is the director of agronomy at Fall Line Golf Club. The recent empty nesters live in Columbus, Ga.  They spend ample time traveling to visit daughter Graham, a junior at Texas Christian University and daughter Molly, a member of the Corp of Cadets at Virgina Tech.

Cassandra McKinney has proclaimed one of her tenets for career success on her license plate for more than 20 years: WRK2PLY.

“Work hard; play hard,” said McKinney, who leads personal and small business banking for Dallas-based Comerica Bank. “I do believe in living by that because I give my all at work. But when it’s time to rest, to re-energize, to spend time with family, to invest in myself and my development, I work just as hard at that as well,” she said.

As businesses increasingly employ artificial intelligence (AI), Ann Fogarty is studying agentic AI through a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) course, to learn how to write prompts and otherwise optimize its use. 

“I want to really understand the opportunities there,” she said.

Fogarty leads the global delivery of State Street’s investment services, the firm’s largest business unit. In July 2025, she was appointed chief operating officer of investment services, with a remit to align expertise from across State Street to address challenges and develop solutions. (American Banker’s methodology requires that a woman be in her role for at least one year, so Fogarty is ranked based on her performance as head of global delivery, not her current position as COO of investment services.)

For Lori Heinel, helping women in the workplace requires more than just chatting over lunch. 

“If you’re going to mentor women, you have to be willing to stand up for them, advocate for them and not let the narrative around their behaviors override their capabilities and their expertise,” she said.

Over the past year, world events including the ongoing strife between Russia and Ukraine and daily dispatches from the Israel-Hamas war in the Middle East have increasingly shaped the investment bank’s debt offerings and bond issuance. But even in this chaotic environment shaped by “geo-political unrest, market-moving elections, and central bank pivots,” Barbara Mariniello, global co-head of debt capital markets at Barclays, noted that it is “more important than ever to be level-headed, and not overreact to short-term market moves.”

After starting as a summer intern at Barclays, Meghan Graper spent more than two decades steadily rising through the ranks to become global co-head—and, at the end of 2024, sole global head—of debt capital markets. Given the DCM group’s standout results on her watch, her promotion was hardly a surprise.

Under her leadership, Barclays’ DCM business grew revenues 8% year-over-year in 2024—following a record 2023—the largest year-over-year move for Barclays since before the pandemic. Her group’s full-year 2024 revenue hit $554 million, and 2025 is on pace to exceed that mark. Through the first half of this year, revenue totaled $413 million. She has 20 direct reports, and 173 people on her team. (Graper is ranked based on the co-head role she held prior to her promotion in late 2024, as per American Banker’s methodology requiring a woman to be in her position for at least one full year.)

“I was raised in a family where you needed to earn what you had,” said Pourchet, head of corporate and institutional banking, Latin America, at BNP Paribas, where she leads 980 employees and helps manage nearly $2.6 trillion of client assets. “You need to persevere and you need to be very thankful.”

Pourchet later emigrated to New York, with a husband and three children in tow, to become head of commodity structured debt in Latin America at BNP Paribas.

Melissa Stevens is moving colleagues and customers to digital banking, but she is also growing Fifth Third Bank in a more traditional way: Increasing the number of physical branches.

Stevens’ expansive role at the Cincinnati-based lender includes head of enterprise workplace services, which puts her in charge of Fifth Third’s properties. Between 2019 and 2023, Fifth Third opened 107 new branches in the Southeastern states of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to the bank.

Hope Holding Bryant commands nearly half of First Citizens Bank’s balance sheet. 

Last year, the North Carolina-based financial institution increased general bank loans by $3.9 billion, a 6.3% year-over-year growth. As of Q4 2024, general bank loans accounted for $66.8 billion – 48% of total loans. On the other side of the balance sheet, last year general bank deposits grew $9.4 billion to $73.1 billion, which accounts for 47% of total bank deposits. 

Holding Bryant, the vice chairwoman, attributes this success to serendipitous acquisitions over the past few years. In April 2019, First Citizens acquired Biscayne Bank. In January 2022, First Citizens merged with CIT Group. And in March 2023, the bank acquired Silicon Valley Bridge Bank.