CEO and President of Santander US
Santander
In college, Christiana Riley was a French and Italian major who loved all things international.
So when an opportunity arose after graduation to work for a New York City-based company with multinational clients, she took it. It didn't matter that the job was an analyst role at the boutique investment bank Greenhill or that her background was in Romance languages.
"I'm the accidental banker," Riley told American Banker. "But my real passion and the reason I was driven toward banking … was because of the truly global nature of this industry."