"Another Crack in the Glass Ceiling"

This past week there was another crack in that glass ceiling. Citigroup, the third-largest bank in the U.S., named Jane Fraser as their CEO starting in February, making her the first woman to head a major U.S. bank. Fraser has been working for Citigroup for the past 16 years, serving as the president and CEO of the Global Consumer Banking division last year. The financials and Wall Street glass ceilings are some of the most prominent with mostly male CEOs and only a small number of women heading Fortune 500 companies, but, with this, we are taking a great step in the right direction.

A telling event occurred in April 2019 at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee. A lawmaker asked Michael Corbat, the current CEO of Citigroup and six of his peers — from JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of New York Mellon and State Street — to raise their hand if they believed a woman or person of color would succeed them. None of them did. In fact, there are only 31 women among the chief executives of the 500 companies that make up the S&P 500 stock index, and women only accounted for 26 percent of all senior U.S. financial services executives in 2019 - which is an increase over the past few years but not nearly enough.

Being a mother of young children and having a career is the toughest thing I have ever had to do. You are exhausted, guilty, and you must learn how to do things differently. It was the making of me because I became much more 80-20 – focusing on what was really important – got good at saying no, and also became more human to the clients who also face many of these issues too. - Jane Fraser

This position most definitely went to the right person, and Fraser's background is evidence of that. Born in Scotland, she attended Girton College, Cambridge and Harvard Business School, working for Goldman Sachs for two years between getting her degrees. After graduating from HBS, she joined the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Two weeks after she had a child, she was made a partner. A working mother, Fraser has been in a balancing act for most of her career, but she has balanced it beautifully. She is an inspiration for women and shows that being a mother is not a weakness, but a strength. By "focusing on what was really important," she honed that skill and made her way up the ranks to the position she is at now.

Hopefully, this groundbreaking decision by Citigroup will carry over to other Wall Street Firms. JPMorgan has put two women, Marianne Lake and Jennifer Piepszak, at the forefront for succeeding current CEO Jamie Dimon. I am optimistic and confident that I will be writing about other trailblazing women soon, but I do hope we achieve a world in which a successful, female CEO is not a shock, but an expectation.