EVP, General Auditor
State Street
Diana Pagliarini brings over three decades of risk management experience in banking for financial institutions ranging in size from $17 billion to $3 trillion including regional and global financial institutions. Her transformational leadership has improved operational and risk management processes, strengthened regulatory posture and influenced governance practices at the enterprise level. She brings deep experience in working with Audit and Risk Committees through board facing roles for 19 years. She is known for building strong teams and providing leadership in developing enterprise talent as a competitive advantage.
In her role as General Auditor, Diana oversees a global team of professionals across 15 countries, and has improved processes, productivity and stature of the Corporate Audit function. She has been credited by regulators for designing and implementing industry best practices. She has leveraged process improvement and risk management strategies to drive business transformation, resulting in improved outcomes such as a “Weak” to “Strong” rating upgrade, improved regulatory issue closure rates, reduced audit cycle time by 40%, and led AI and technology transformation programs with benefits to the business and risk management functions.
She held various leadership positions at Bank of America in Internal Audit and Risk, designing and implementing process improvement programs that elevated risk management effectiveness, achieved scalability and reduced operating costs, which were recognized through a patent.
Her non-profit board roles are thematically linked to mentoring and coaching young people. As Governance Committee Chair of Big Sisters of RI, she led a board membership and executive director transformation. In her affiliation with and as Advisory Board Member for the Scholars of Finance, she has been a featured speaker on ethics in finance at Harvard, Yale and Boston College, podcast guest on “Investing in Integrity” and two-time speaker at the annual Northeast Leadership Symposium.
Diana resides in the Boston and Providence areas.
In banking, risk is not a department—it is the baseline architecture of every transaction, product, and customer interaction. Historically, financial institutions managed risk in siloes: credit risk lived in lending, compliance lived in legal, and cyber threat vectors lived in IT. Today, those boundaries have entirely dissolved.
This session will examine the evolving nature of risk and how understanding risk management is critical for career ascension.