The 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance: Barron’s 2021 List
Women have made enormous strides in the past year in the public sector. America elected its first female vice president, Kamala Harris, in November. Janet Yellen now serves as the nation’s first female secretary of the Treasury, and the 117th U.S. Congress includes a record 143 women, or 27% of its total membership.
Women are also achieving greater prominence and power in the private sector, and particularly in the world of finance, where
Citigroup
(ticker: C) CEO Jane Fraser just became the first woman to lead a major U.S. money-center bank. Thasunda Brown Duckett, a
JPMorgan Chase
(JPM) executive, was recently named CEO of TIAA, the $1.3 trillion-in-assets financial-services firm. And the two major U.S. stock exchanges are both headed by women—Stacey Cunningham at the New York Stock Exchange, and Adena Friedman at
Nasdaq
(NDAQ).
Fraser, Duckett, Cunningham, Friedman, and Yellen are just a few of the highly accomplished, path-breaking women named to Barron’s second annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance. And these 100 honorees—a group that includes banking and brokerage executives, money managers and research analysts, financial-company CEOs, public servants, and policy makers—are but a fraction of the army of women whose contributions are strengthening the financial-services industry and the U.S. financial system, as both prepare for the challenges ahead.
Those challenges loom especially large in the midst of a pandemic, and at a time when disruptive technologies are upending every industry, not to mention the very concept of money.
Barron’s list isn’t a ranking; it’s presented alphabetically. We will publish profiles of all 100 women, unveiling 10 new profiles alphabetically each week.
To develop Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women list,
we solicited nominations from readers, finance-industry insiders, and Barron’s writers and editors, who keep tabs not only on Wall Street’s movers and shakers, but also on lower-profile executives with outsize influence and leadership potential. Even Bono, the Irish singer and activist, weighed in this year, nominating
Bank of America
(BAC) Vice Chairman Anne Finucane in a personal letter extolling “her longtime pursuit of conscious capitalism and the role business can play in addressing the toughest challenges of our time.”
For this, and many other reasons, Finucane, too, earned a spot on our 2021 list.
As was the case last year, we received hundreds of nominations—and selecting 100 honorees from a pool of such impressive candidates was no easier the second time around. The final list was determined by a panel of Barron’s journalists.
The women on our list are all based in the U.S. They were chosen on the basis of their achievements, leadership, and influence within their respective organizations, and their capacity to shape their business or the industry in the future. Financial News, our sister publication in London, publishes an annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in European Finance.
Illustration by Eva Bee
This year’s roster has 28 new names, including Duckett; Finucane; Cathie Wood, chief executive and chief investment officer of ARK Investment Management, the manager of several red-hot funds focused on innovation; and Erika James, the first woman—and the first person of color—to head the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
We’ve also added Lael Brainard, a member of…
Read More: The 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance: Barron’s 2021 List