Embedded finance and real-time payments are two of the most important trends in banking, creating a need for a vision that connects emerging technology to specific business strategies.

“Embedded finance is the only way to go,”  Tessa Naroditsky, SVP and director of payments strategy for Comerica Bank, told American Banker. “It’s how you create value.”

Naroditsky is leading initiatives that combine how faster payment processing improves the bank’s delivery of products through partners, the essence of what’s referred to as embedded banking.

Wenni Wu, chief growth officer at Piermont Bank, speaks English, Mandarin and Cantonese fluently. Her language skills and cultural background—Wu was born in the U.S. and is a descendant of the Teochow Chinese community—helped land her first post-college position as a cross-border investment advisor for Chinese companies.

“It was back in the early 2010s, when there was a significant amount of [Chinese] investment into the real estate market in the U.S.,” she recalled. One of the Chinese CEOs she worked with gave Wu a piece of advice that still resonates today. “He said that if you choose the right platform, it can elevate your skill. But if you choose the right people, you can build your own platform.

Spending one’s entire career at a single company—a “lifer,” so to speak—can have complicated consequences. Is the experience and deep dive one gets enough to overcome feelings of insecurity around knowledge of the industry and the “real world”? If you ask Ally’s Cindy Balint, executive director of consumer credit operations, it all comes down to a focus on the customer.

“Of course, I have the fear that I am not up to speed on everything because I’ve spent so much time at Ally, and prior to that GMAC. [GMAC rebranded as Ally Financial in May 2010.] But I know if I focus on the customer—who I make sure I interact with on a daily basis—that’s what keeps me grounded.”

Jessica Carta is a self-described “payments geek”. As the senior vice president for consumer and small business payments, Carta leads all digital consumer and small business payment initiatives across the bank. Prior to joining Citizens, she worked at Mastercard and built payment products at two different fintechs. 

“Payments and money movement touch every part of our day, every part of our ecosystem,” Carta said. “I particularly love the consumer angle because I’m a consumer, you’re a consumer. We can all understand and relate to it.”

Even in the midst of market volatility, Capstone Partners executive Olivia Ferris helped the investment banking and advisory services firm achieve a 6% increase in engagements and a 17% increase in closings last year compared with 2023.

Ferris credits the leadership team’s “management as a service” philosophy — a philosophy trumpeted by Capstone founder and CEO John Ferrara — for last year’s boost in engagement and closings.

Ali Mattera considers her professional journey to be in banking a “Cinderella story.”

“I started, like most amazing success stories, in college as a teller,” Mattera told American Banker.

Her initial jobs at smaller banks gave her the opportunity to experience multiple facets of banking operations early on in her career.

“I had the ability to have my hand in a little bit of everything, so I had exposure to retail, compliance, BSA, and technology,” she said. “For me, taking a natural interest in all things technology, I definitely saw that as the fastest path for me to have a seat at the table.”

It’s not every day that a summer intern later becomes the lead on many of Bank of America’s largest prime financing and equity clients, but that’s how Rachel Scarry’s 12-year career with the $3.4 trillion-asset bank has progressed. 

Based in London, Scarry, 34, is head of prime brokerage sales origination for Bank of America, and has focused her attention on markets outside the bank’s Stateside headquarters—with the results to show for it. New client acquisition in Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA) was standout in 2024 and continues year-to-date in 2025.

Julie Andress, managing director for institutional equity sales trading at KeyBanc Capital Markets, consistently ranks among the top producers on the trading desk. She even ranked among the top producers when she was on three-month maternity leaves in 2020 and 2024.

Since joining KeyBanc Capital Markets in 2011, Andress has regularly cultivated client relationships that have contributed to double-digit revenue growth.

In 2022, Webster Financial Corp. and Sterling Bancorp wrapped up their merger, with the Webster brand remaining. For folks at both companies, the all-stock deal — valued at $5.1 billion when it was announced — was cause for celebration.

But once Webster executive Katherine (Katie Lane) celebrated the deal, she had plenty of work ahead of her. It was Lane’s job to lead the integration of Webster Bank’s and Sterling National Bank’s SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) programs — an enormous undertaking at what now is a financial services company with more than $75 billion in assets.

When people told Sophia Kearney-Lederman early on in her role as senior economist for FHN Financial that they thought economists were dull, she wasn’t sure how she should take it. “When it first happened, I was like, ‘Oh, is this a compliment or a little bit of a judgment?'”

Now, five years into her job, she doesn’t take it personally. Breaking down complex economic data and news into digestible analysis for the employees and clients of First Horizon Bank, parent of FHN Financial, and explaining why it matters to them personally, is quite interesting, she said.