When Carol K. Nelson left the Department of Revenue last month to return to banking, she chose a bank whose CEO is a woman bent on helping other women achieve the C-suite, slang for the industry’s top jobs, such as Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
Named the “Most Powerful Woman in Banking” by American Banker magazine last year for the second year in a row, KeyBank Corp. CEO Beth Mooney, 59, stressed ‘’the need for women to help women find the path to success” when she spoke last October to a group of women recognized by the magazine as leaders in their field.
“We at the top of our organizations have an obligation to reach down and to lift up the next generation of women as they dream and stretch for the C-suite,” Mooney said.
Mooney’s position as KeyBank CEO “was definitely a factor that I considered” before deciding on her new job, said Nelson, 58, former chief executive of Everett-based Cascade Bank, who joined KeyBank on Jan. 20 as Seattle market president and Pacific region sales executive.
The Edmonds woman called Mooney “a phenomenal leader” and said she agrees with Mooney that women in leadership positions have an added responsibility of being role models for their peers.
“My views are very much in alignment with hers on this issue,” Nelson said.
It’s not just about women, Nelson said, but about creating a diverse team that includes women and minorities.
Of Cleveland-based Key’s 14,000 employees, 36 percent of its leadership team is comprised of women and minorities, which also hold seven of 13 positions on Key’s board of trustees, she said.
“Beth believes that diversity balances an administration,” she said. “I certainly agree with her on that.”
It’s a viewpoint shared by Gov. Jay Inslee, Nelson said, which she experienced firsthand during her two-year stint as director of the Department of Revenue.
“Our state has done an excellent job in promoting women into positions of responsibility,” she said.
Inslee promoted a “broad diversity” by including not just women in his appointments, but different ethnicities as well as representatives of both the public and private sectors, Nelson said.
And diversity makes for a strong team, she said.
In the financial world, however, women still have a long way to go.
Mooney may have shattered a glass ceiling when she was named CEO in 2011 of KeyBank Corp., recognized as being among the top 20 largest banks in the country; Nelson herself at least cracked it when she became CEO of Everett-based Cascade Financial in 2001.
But women remain under-represented in banking leadership positions.
And the ranks have thinned in the past couple of years, as some women have gone on to start their own businesses and others, like HSBC USA chief executive Irene Dorner, 60, seek retirement.
“We need a pipeline of talented women in the system, and this is about critical mass,” said Dorner, at American Banker’s recognition of women event last October. “If we stick to the current rate of turnover, it’s going to take 75 years to reach parity.”
A report released in December by global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman agrees women are far-too-often an untapped talent.
Noting that it’s been suggested the financial crisis might have been averted if more women had been in charge, the firm analyzed the gender mix of 150 financial companies worldwide and surveyed more than 1,000 current and potential financial services employees from five countries, finding that “it is less than half as likely for a woman in financial services to progress from a middle to a senior level position as it is for a man.”
“The glass ceiling appears to be largely intact,” states the report, which itself was prompted, as stated in the foreward, by Oliver Wyman’s struggle to understand and rectify its own lack of gender diversity.
“Diversity improves average staff caliber,” the report states, “and not only by making better use of half of the talent pool. A diverse and inclusive workplace is an important part of attracting and retaining the best talent, both male and female, and allows firms to understand their customers better.”
As the former CEO of Cascade Bank, which struggled during the financial crisis and was sold in 2011 to California-based Opus Bank, Nelson has come under her share of criticism, particularly from shareholders who lost money during the crisis.
“That just goes with the territory,” she said of the criticism, pointing out that 17 banks failed in the state of Washington, including Frontier Bank, one of Cascade’s former competitors, which “left a hole in the community.” Nelson said she considers Cascade’s merger with Opus a success and she is proud of the fact they were able to return some money, however small, to shareholders.
As for her new position with KeyBank, in which she is expected to lead revenue and growth across Oregon, Washington and Alaska from regional headquarters in Seattle, Nelson said she is looking forward to reducing her commute from her home in Edmonds to Olympia by “150 miles a day,” as well as to returning to the financial industry.
“It is what I love the most,” she said, “and I’m delighted to go back to banking.”
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