Freada Kapor Klein is on a mission to close gaps through investing; Jennifer Risher is working to hasten the deployment of the $251 billion sitting in donor-advised funds to charitable causes; Susan M. Collins became the first woman of color to lead any of the nation’s regional Federal Reserve banks when she was tapped to lead the Boston Fed. Meet women building a fairer, more equitable financial system.
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Lindsey Argalas
50 | CEO, Taxbit
As Taxbit’s CEO since 2023, Lindsey Argalas’ expertise in fintech and consumer technology is meeting the rising demand for accounting and tax services for blockchain, crypto and tokenized assets. The Salt Lake City-based unicorn (it has some $235 million in funding) addresses the crypto-related tax needs of exchanges, institutional investors and governments alike. Prior to Taxbit, Argalas was the chief digital and innovation officer at Banco Santander and chaired Santander Innoventures, the bank’s $200 million fintech venture capital arm.
Thasunda Brown Duckett
52 | President & CEO, TIAA
TIAA manages the savings of nearly five million customers, but it’s a family story that CEO Thasunda Brown Duckett shares to raise the issue of retirement planning literacy. Her father, Otis Brown, worked for more than 30 years at a warehouse job and didn’t contribute to his 401(k) plan, leaving years of savings, a company match and returns on the table. Since taking the top job at the $1.3 trillion AUM institution in 2021, Duckett has advocated for retirement education and planning services to address the glaring gap in savings.
Kate Burke
53 | CEO, Allspring Global Investments
This month, Kate Burke was promoted to the CEO role at Allspring Global Investments, which has more than $600 billion in assets under advisement and 1,325 employees across 19 offices worldwide. Burke joined Charlotte-based Allspring in 2023 as president after 18 years at AllianceBernstein, where she shepherded the firm’s move from New York to Nashville—one of the largest of the industry’s southern migrations. Allspring was spun out of Wells Fargo’s asset management business in 2021.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Priscilla Almodovar
58 | President & CEO, Fannie Mae
Priscilla Almodovar is the first woman to lead the $4.3 trillion Fannie Mae, one of the largest companies in the world. As the head of the Congressionally chartered enterprise, Almodovar is a leading voice in a national housing affordability crisis made worse by stubbornly high interest rates. Almodovar also advocated for homeownership as a path to building generational wealth and financial stability and frequently talks about how her parents’ purchase of their first apartment later helped pay for their children to attend college, including her law school education at Columbia University.
Jo Ann Corkran
70 | Co-CEO & Managing Partner, Golden Seeds
As co-CEO and managing partner of Golden Seeds, Jo Ann Corkran oversees an investor group of more than 300 members that focuses on funding women-led businesses. Founded in 2005, the group is one of the most active angel investment organizations in the U.S. and has invested over $185 million in over 257 women-led startups. Corkran also is a general partner at two Golden Seeds venture funds and was previously a managing director at Credit Suisse Asset Management.
Zoe Cruz
70 | Founder & CEO, Menai Financial Group
After her public breakup with Morgan Stanley in 2007 (which resulted in her resignation as co-president following a 25-year career there) Zoe Cruz found her stride a decade later in the digital asset space, first as an advisor at Ripple Labs and then, in 2020, as founder of Menai Financial Group. Her firm has two offerings: one product that offers diversified exposure to digital assets, and a strategy that helps identify the top 20 to 40 most compelling investments out of more than 15,000 cryptocurrencies.
Stephanie Drescher
52 | Partner & Chief Client and Product Development Officer, Apollo Global Management
Stephanie Drescher’s grandmother had no schooling beyond 8th grade but followed the markets every day, inspiring her granddaughter to a career in finance. Drescher joined Apollo Global Management, with its more than $785 billion AUM, in 2004 after a decade at JP Morgan, primarily in the alternative investment group. Today, Drescher is in charge of a division of about 130 colleagues in its global wealth business, and she leads Apollo’s Expanding Opportunity Steering Committee as well as the company’s women’s network. She is also on the board of the girls’ college access organization Student Leadership Network.
Molly Duffy
55 | Global Co-Head, Financial Institutions Coverage, Standard Chartered
At 54, Molly Duffy took over Standard Chartered’s multi-billion-dollar client segment and, in creating two new growth strategies—one in the public sector and one that doubles down in working with other banks, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds—turned the division into a business that drives 51% of Standard Chartered’s overall Corporate and Investment Banking income. “This chapter has brought together everything I’ve learned so far,” Duffy, who spent 12 years at Credit Suisse before joining Standard Chartered in 2017, told Forbes. “I’m proud that it all came together in a role I wouldn’t have been ready for at 40 but was prepared to fully lead at 54.”
Monica Brand Engel
56 | Cofounder & Managing Partner, Quona Capital
Monica Brand Engel leads Quona’s Africa, MENA and cross-border investment strategy with a focus on investing in technologies that expand access to quality financial services in emerging markets. Engel, who is half Peruvian and half American, has said “never quite fitting in” helps her spot opportunities that also deliver on impact. “Our goal is to bring what’s on the margins into the mainstream,” she said. With 68 active portfolio companies and a team of nine nationalities speaking 20 languages, Quona has nearly $800 million in assets under management.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Nancy Donohue
60 | Cofounder & Chief Investment Strategist, Summit Rock Advisors
Nancy Donohue’s Summit Rock Advisors, founded in 2007, serves philanthropic families and charitable organizations. Although the firm represents fewer than 50 clients, it has approximately $23 billion in assets under supervision and its returns support causes including medical care, education and the environment. “I’m so grateful that we can easily find the higher purpose in who we are and what we do,” she told Forbes. Donohue designed an investment program for her clients (who have a minimum of $100 million in assets), pairing low-fee index positions with elite hedge fund, private equity and venture capital managers. She previously led investments for Harvard University’s endowment.
Samara Epstein Cohen
54 | CIO, ETF and Index Investments, BlackRock
Samara Epstein Cohen is BlackRock’s chief investment officer leading the teams managing some $7.8 trillion of the company’s index funds and ETFs. In this position, she’s been responsible for the launch of the firm’s target date ETFs in 2023, the only suite of target date ETFs in the U.S. specifically geared towards people without access to a 401(k). BlackRock was a homecoming of sorts: Cohen rejoined the firm in 2015 after starting her career there in 1993 as an analyst. Cohen went on to spend nearly two decades at Goldman Sachs, where she built and led the global market transition team, guiding clients through the changing regulatory landscape following the 2008 financial crisis.
Jennifer Fonstad
59 | Managing Partner, Owl Capital
Two-time Forbes Midas lister Jennifer Fonstad has spent nearly 30 years in venture capital and has helped fund some of the world’s most influential tech companies. Her early jobs gave her a hand in investing in companies like SpaceX, Athenahealth and Hotmail. She co-founded Owl Capital in 2019 to focus on early-stage startups; the firm has since had nine IPOs, 25 M&A exits and over 600 financings. Fonstad started her career teaching math in sub-Saharan Africa. Owl Capital bills itself as the first investment firm to commit 5% of its carry profit pool to the communities where the entrepreneurs it supports live.
Colleen Foster
59 | General Partner, Amboy Street Ventures
Named after the first U.S. birth control clinic that opened in Brooklyn in 1916, Amboy Street Ventures invests in early-stage startups in sexual and reproductive health products and services. Colleen Foster joined Amboy Street in 2022 after more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs, where she was a partner managing a global commodities franchise of more than $1 billion. Foster also has a long tenure of working on behalf of Planned Parenthood (she currently sits on its board of its telehealth platform). “The economics of investing in women and their healthcare from puberty to post-menopause produce outsized returns,” Foster said when Amboy Street closed its debut $20 million fund two years ago.
Lori Heinel
62 | Executive Vice President & Global Chief Investment Officer, State Street Investment Management
Lori Heinel assumed the role overseeing a worldwide team of more than 600 in 2021. She’s since led the revamping of State Street’s operating model and deployed technologies to focus it on strategic priorities. Last year, State Street posted record returns, with total revenues climbing 13% year-over-year to an all-time high of $2.3 billion; AUM grew by 15% to $4.7 trillion. Heinel’s also been lauded for advocating for women in the industry, once writing in an International Women’s Day essay: “Fearless girls are made not born, and we all have a common interest in creating more of them.”
Kristin Hull
57 | Founder & Chief Investment Officer, Nia Impact Capital
Kristin Hull embraces the role of “activist investor,” pushing companies like Tesla and Apple on workplace, environmental and social justice issues. Growing up in San Francisco and learning trading at her father’s successful market-making firm, Hull founded Nia Impact Capital the year she turned 50. “I wanted to make it easier for women to invest for positive returns and for positive impact,” she says. She’s grown the firm to almost $500 million under management across three investment portfolios and a mutual fund.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Karen Finerman
60 | Cofounder & CEO, Metropolitan Capital Advisors
Karen Finerman is the cofounder and CEO of Metropolitan Capital Advisors, a hedge fund launched in 1992 with her mentor from her first job out of Wharton in risk arbitrage. A panelist on CNBC’s Fast Money since its 2007 inception, Finerman’s worked to demystify investing for the masses and is the author of the bestselling book, Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters About Business and Life; hosts the podcast, How Shoe Does It; and co-hosts the female-focused InvestingFixx club with financial journalist Jean Chatzky (a 2023 50 Over 50 alum). Finerman recently has taken an ownership stake in the New York Liberty of the WNBA.
Kimberly Johnson
52 | Vice President & Chief Operating Officer, T. Rowe Price Group
Kimberly Johnson leads technology, global investment operations and client account services and several other operating teams for T. Rowe Price, an international management firm with $1.68 trillion in assets under management. She joined the financial services holding company three years ago after leading a team of 3,600—and an operating budget of $1.4 billion—at mortgage lender Fannie Mae. An alum of Princeton University, Johnson joined its board of trustees in 2023.
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Yvette Kanouff
59 | Partner, JC2 Ventures
Yvette Kanouff is the first (and, so far, only) woman to win a Lifetime Achievement Emmy for television engineering and technology and is an inductee to the Cable Hall of Fame. She’s now putting her expertise to work for startups as a partner at JC2 Ventures, the firm founded by former Cisco CEO and chairman John Chambers. “JC2 Ventures is a very different type of venture capital fund,” she said. With 18 current companies in the JC2 portfolio and a total of eight IPOs and acquisitions, the firm says 40% of the companies in its portfolio are deemed unicorns.
Freada Kapor Klein
72 | Founding Partner, Kapor Capital; Chair, Kapor Center
Freada Kapor Klein started her career in activism, founding the nation’s first organization dedicated to fighting sexual harassment in 1976. It was through “following the trail to the center of power, which leads to money,” that she landed in Silicon Valley. She and her husband, Mitch Kapor, cofounded early-stage venture firm Kapor Capital in 1999 and, in 2011, changed its strategy to exclusively invest in mission-oriented startups. Between that year and 2017, the firm achieved a 29% internal rate of return, and today, Kapor Klein says, the firm continues to achieve “top quartile returns.” In the last three years, seven of its portfolio companies—including Gusto, Formlabs and Newsela—have reached unicorn status.
Karen Kerr
56 | Founder & Managing Director, Exposition Ventures
A member of the charter class of Kauffman Fellows, Karen Kerr went on to found Exposition Ventures in 2019, an investment firm inspired by the Chicago World’s Fair that served as a showcase for the Second Industrial Revolution. With a doctorate in physical chemistry from the University of Chicago (she supported herself during her PhD by consulting for investors ARCH Venture Partners), Kerr’s firm has backed companies in 3D printing, robotics, virtual reality and AI that are crucial to advanced manufacturing in the future.
Nataliya Kofman
51 | Partner, Senior Managing Director at Wellington Management
Nataliya Kofman has led the $2.3 billion Vanguard Global Wellington Fund since its 2017 inception and co-leads the firm’s quality equity team. The fund has outperformed its benchmark and the category average every year for the past eight. Kofman has said she developed her global perspective on managing risk growing up in Ukraine and in her first career as a mechanical engineer at Ford Motor Company. There she was part of the team responsible for the launch of the F150 pickup and where she said she honed her skills in analytical thinking and structured decision-making.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Maria Hackley
63 | Global Head of Industrials Group, Citi
Maria Hackley, center, is the global head of industrials at Citi.
Michael Ostuni/PMC/Getty Images
After her 50th birthday, Maria Hackley was presented with an opportunity to guide a team of over 100 bankers serving 2,800 major clients worldwide. “I embraced the challenge and underwent a rigorous application and interview process over a two-month period,” she said of winning the role. Her division drives nearly $4.6 billion in annual revenue, across more than 90 countries. The daughter of Cuban immigrants who fled after the Bay of Pigs, Hackley volunteers for a nonprofit that offers training to Cuban entrepreneurs starting small businesses.
Colette Kress
57 | Chief Financial Officer, Nvidia
Colette Kress joined semiconductor giant Nvidia in September 2013, long before it became a $4.2 trillion (market cap) publicly-traded company known for being the backbone of the artificial intelligence revolution. Kress has overseen a historic revenue growth over the last decade–Nvidia recorded $60.9 billion in revenue in 2024, a fifteen-fold growth from a decade ago. Prior to Nvidia, she spent 13 years at Microsoft and three years as CFO at a Cisco division.
Marianne Lake
55 | CEO, Consumer & Community Banking, JPMorgan Chase
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon says retirement is still years away, but speculation that Marianne Lake will be his successor grows more persistent with each move she makes. Lake recently assumed leadership of international consumer banking and JPMorgan’s strategic growth office. When she spoke at the annual Investor Day in May, Wall Street analysts took note of the full hour she was allotted as much as her message (every other senior executive, including Dimon, was given just 30 minutes to speak). Lake oversees services for 85 million consumers and seven million small businesses. She’s the co-founder of the bank’s Women on the Move program to expand women-run businesses.
Jane Larimer
60 | President & CEO, Nacha
Most consumers might never recognize the name “Nacha,” but the independent, not-for-profit organization governs the ACH Network, the system of direct deposits and payments that reach all U.S. bank and credit union accounts. That gives Larimer oversight of the staggering 33.6 billion payments (volume in 2024), transactions whose value added up to $86.2 trillion. Larimer was the organization’s first in-house legal counsel when she joined Nacha in 2017, and she took over as CEO two years later.
Alexandra Lebenthal
61 | Managing Director and Senior Banker, Rockefeller Capital Management
She’s the granddaughter of the first woman to run a Wall Street brokerage firm, Sayra Fischer Lebenthal, and the daughter of municipal bond legend Jim Lebenthal. And while the family is credited with democratizing bonds as an investment for the masses, there’s been no glide path for its third generation. Alexandra Lebenthal now focuses on advising women-led firms through her leadership role at the $171 billion (AUM) Rockefeller Capital Management. “I’ve been in their shoes,” she says. “Having your name on the door isn’t always easy.”
Saira Malik
54 | Chief Investment Officer, Nuveen
Saira Malik is a member of Nuveen’s executive management team and leads a business with more than $1 trillion in global assets under management across equities, fixed income, private placements, green capital, infrastructure and product. She learned about investments from her mother, who picked stocks as a hobby, and Malik started publishing her own markets newsletter as a college student. She joined Nuveen in 2003 and was named to her current role in 2022. She also continues to write a weekly newsletter.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Lynn Jerath
51 | Founder & President, Citrine Investment Group
Over three decades, Lynn Jerath spearheaded more than $10 billion in real estate deals during stints at Goldman Sachs and The Carlyle Group. Since turning 50, she has shifted into investments she finds meaningful to her Chicago home base, backing senior and affordable housing and distressed real estate through an investment group she founded in 2021. A University of Pennsylvania trustee, Jerath sits on its $23 billion endowment board while also serving on the board of HOPE Chicago, which funds post-secondary education for students at five Chicago public high schools.
Anna Marrs
52 | Group President, Global Merchant & Network Services, American Express
Anna Marrs joined American Express six years ago and oversees relationships with millions of businesses that accept Amex, as well as strategic payment, banking and fintech relationships and credit fraud and risk operations. Her team has more than 6,500 employees and accounts for about a quarter of Amex’s revenue — a record $65.9 billion in 2024. She also serves on the board of DocuSign and on the governing body of the London Business School, where she earned an MBA.
Kara McShane
52 | Global Head of Commercial Real Estate, Executive Vice President and Managing Director, Wells Fargo
In the role since 2020, Kara McShane put Wells Fargo at the top of an array of industry rankings — currently the second-largest commercial real estate lender— amid a challenging market for the sector by building greater collaboration with other bank divisions. That’s given her wide visibility as a banking role model. “I recognize the unique challenges women face and pride myself on being a mentor and leader that walks the walk, helping elevate women throughout their careers,” she said.
Sonia Millsom
53 | CEO, Oxeon
Oxeon takes a unique approach to building healthcare companies and its own business: It searches for executive talent, invests in healthcare innovation and, as an employee-owned company, shares the equity and returns from its more than $100 million portfolio. Sonia Millsom became Oxeon’s CEO in 2022 and has further expanded Oxeon’s influence as a founding sponsor of Break into the Boardroom, an organization that places women on the boards of healthcare companies.
Christina Minnis
60 | Global Head, Credit & Asset Finance; Head of Global Acquisition Finance, Goldman Sachs
Christina Minnis works at what she calls the “convergence of public and private markets” that is reshaping capital flows to meet the demands in high-need markets such as technology, power and infrastructure. She’s part of Goldman Sachs’ newly formed Capital Solutions Group, with $145 billion in alternative assets and a focus on financing large deals for corporate clients. A former All-American squash player at Yale, Minnis has been in leadership at the banking giant since 1998.
Ileana Musa
57 | Co-Head of International Wealth Management and Head of International Banking & Lending, Morgan Stanley
Ileana Musa was recruited to Morgan Stanley in 2017 to focus on the firm’s high-net-worth clients. Today she does that through co-leading the bank’s international wealth management business and its international lending operations. She also heads up a Morgan Stanley national initiative to empower the Latino community in building generational wealth through homeownership and entrepreneurship. Born in Cuba and immigrating to the U.S. as a toddler with her mother and siblings, it’s a personal story for Musa. She’s said she continually draws inspiration from her late mother, who supported her family, put her children through college and then earned her own business degree at 70.
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Racquel Oden
52 | Head of Wealth and Private Banking, HSBC USA
Racquel Oden joined HSBC last year to lead the bank’s wealth management, global private banking and retail businesses in the U.S. at a time when it wanted to better focus on globally connected, high-net-worth clients. Oden came to HSBC USA from JPMorgan Chase, where she was responsible for its consumer banking network expansion; previous stints included Merrill Lynch, UBS and Morgan Stanley. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants who was the first in her family to attend college, Oden chairs the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, which raises millions for scholarships and mentoring. She’s the first African American woman in her current role.
Sandi Peterson
66 | Operating Partner, CD&R
A former group chairman at Johnson & Johnson, Sandra Peterson leads health and consumer investments in North America and Europe at CD&R. It’s the 9th largest private equity firm in the world, and its funds have raised nearly $50 billion over the past five years. Peterson joined the firm in 2019 and has since had a hand in some of its most significant transactions, including one with French multinational health company Opella; Zephyr AI, which advances precision medicine for oncology and cardiometabolic diseases; and Cynosure, which is developing technology for non-invasive and minimally invasive procedures. She’s been an independent director on Microsoft’s board since 2015.
Emily Portney
53 | Global Head of Asset Servicing, BNY
A member of BNY’s executive committee, Emily Portney leads its largest unit, Asset Servicing, delivering custody, fund services, as well as middle office and data solutions to asset owners, investment managers, insurers, banks and broker-dealers. She previously served as the chief financial officer for BNY, the first woman to hold the role. BNY has more than $55 trillion in assets under custody and administration. Her career also includes the CFO role at Barclays International and more than 20 years at JPMorgan Chase.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Ilana Weinstein
55 | Founder & CEO, IDW Group
Ilana Weinstein founded the IDW Group in 2003 to address global talent needs in the finance sector, using her industry insights from prior stints at Goldman Sachs and the Boston Consulting Group to craft what she describes as “M&A of people.” Today, IDW is one of the top boutique recruiting firms for hedge funds and family offices. “We are like a special-ops unit,” the Harvard Business School alum once said.
Jennifer Risher
59 | Cofounder, #HalfMyDaf
There’s more than $251 billion sitting in donor-advised funds (charitable investment accounts), and Jennifer Risher thinks that money can be put to better use sooner. Risher, also an impact investor, cofounded #HalfMyDAF with her husband, Lyft CEO David Risher, to challenge those with DAFs to spend down a portion of their holdings by a specific date and be eligible for matching funds from #HalfMyDAF. The effort, which she promotes through national speaking engagements and outreach, has moved more than $75 million to nonprofits, she says.
Raj Seshadri
60 | Chief Commercial Payments Officer, Mastercard
As Mastercard’s chief commercial payments officer, Raj Seshadri leads the firm’s commercial cards business, B2B payables, healthcare payment services, non-card payments, remittances and disbursements. It’s a role that takes on both the complexities of the global payments system and also closer-to-home issues of small businesses in emerging economies, modernizing transactions and migrant workers sending money to their families back home—issues her division has been addressing through new technologies and innovation. Seshadri first joined Mastercard in 2016 after tenures at BlackRock, Citi and McKinsey. She’s a physicist by training with a PhD in the field from Harvard.
Susan Sheffield
59 | President & CEO, GM Financial
Susan Sheffield ascended to the top of the nation’s largest originators of auto loans and leases this year after serving as executive vice president and chief financial officer since 2018. The Fort Worth, Texas-based company is the third-largest U.S. auto financier (based on outstanding balances) and originated a combined $56 billion in retail loans and operating leases in 2024. Sheffield started her career in corporate and commercial banking and is known for championing financial literacy, including the KEYS by GM Financial program.
Tamara Steffens
61 | Managing Director, TR Ventures
In just over three years, Tamara Steffens has more than doubled Thomson Reuters Venture Fund to $250 million and overseen investments in companies such as Spellbook, Payflow, TrueWind and Materia, as well as six exits. Earlier in her career, she scaled teams at six startups and says one of her most significant post-50 accomplishments was Microsoft’s 2014 acquisition of email app Acompli, a sale she negotiated as the startup’s senior vice president of business development. She later joined M12, Microsoft’s venture fund, leading its Female Founders Fund competition.
50 OVER 50 HIGHLIGHT
Susan M. Collins
66 | President & CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston
Susan Collins became the first woman of color to lead any of the nation’s regional Federal Reserve banks when she was tapped to lead the Boston Fed in 2022. Born in Scotland to Jamaican parents, she was raised in New York, where her father, a social anthropologist, worked at the UN. She makes a point of connecting with New Englanders to understand the economy from their perspective. “The Fed is a public service institution,” she said in recent remarks. “Our overarching mission is to support a vibrant economy that works for everybody — not just for some people.”
Peggy Styer
64 | Cofounder & Managing Partner, Razor’s Edge Ventures
Razor’s Edge Ventures cofounder Peggy Styer invests in growth-stage national security companies, yielding over $1 billion in returns in the last five years. Styer previously cofounded and led Blackbird Technologies, an enemy tracking and tagging tech acquired by Raytheon in 2014 for $420 million. She also cofounded and served as CEO of mobile communications company RavenWing, acquired by Boeing in 2008. Her first innovation was a “fortune-telling machine” she built in middle school, she once shared in an interview.
Lisa Suennen
59 | Managing Partner, American Heart Association Ventures
An executive with a “Rubik’s Cube of healthcare knowledge,” Lisa Suennen leads American Heart Association Ventures as its managing partner, a role she took on in 2024. Suennen oversees $200 million in assets and invests in businesses and organizations with the aim of bridging the funding gap between research and practice across the cardiovascular and brain health sectors. Suennen also founded CSweetener in 2016, a nonprofit network that offers mentorships for women in healthcare, which was acquired by the HLTH Foundation in 2019.
Kat Taylor
67 | Cofounder & Chair, Beneficial State Bank
Kat Taylor set out to create a new kind of bank in 2007—one with a community-first mission—after watching how income and wealth inequality left too many parts of society at a disadvantage. Beneficial State Bank, which is owned by nonprofits required to distribute excess funds to underserved communities, has since grown to $1.8 billion in assets (as of 2023). Outside of her work with the bank, Taylor led the creation of the California Consumer Financial Protection Law and the DFPI, one of the strongest state consumer protections and bank regulatory agencies in the country.
Anne Walsh
61 | Managing Partner of Guggenheim Partners & Chief Investment Officer of Guggenheim Partners Investment Management
Anne Walsh grew up the daughter of an investor, where business talk occurred around the dinner table. “I actually knew and understood bond math in the sixth grade,” she has said. At Guggenheim, she guides the firm’s investment strategies for its more than $349 billion in total assets. Walsh’s career in financial services spans nearly four decades, and she currently serves on the Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets, an advisory group to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on economic and public policy.
Sheffali Welch
52 | Chief Operating Officer, The Clearing House
The Clearing House is a banking association and payments company owned by the largest commercial banks in the U.S. It is the oldest of its kind in the nation and processes more than $2 trillion each day through wire, bank-to-bank transfers, check images and the real-time payments network. As its chief operating officer, Sheffali Welch plays a key role in the internal operations and strategy for what she describes as the “rails” of the nation’s banking system. Her career includes tenures at BNY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Citi.
Karen White
63 | Executive Partner, 8VC
As an executive partner at 8VC, Karen White collaborates with founders and CEOs to build and scale businesses, a practice she honed in a storied Silicon Valley career, beginning at Oracle in the early 1990s. She joined the firm—which has $6 billion in committed capital and invests across the areas of logistics, biotech, healthcare and defense—in a full-time capacity in 2024 after serving on its board for the prior eight years. White came to 8VC from catastrophe risk modeling company RMS, where as CEO she led the company to a $2 billion acquisition by Moody’s in 2021.
Tamar Yehoshua
60 | Venture Partner, IVP
Tamar Yehoshua’s career has included leadership roles at Amazon, Google and Slack at crucial times in the companies’ development. In 2023, she joined venture firm IVP, which for more than four decades has funded more than 400 breakout tech companies around the globe, including brand names like Twitter and Netflix. Over the past 15 months, Yehoshua’s held two jobs, adding president of AI startup Glean to her resume before recently transitioning to an advisor’s role there. Glean, valued at an estimated $7 billion after a $150 million Series F raise in June, helps companies like Duolingo and Databricks use AI agents to improve workplace efficiency.
Ivy Zelman
59 | Founder & Executive Vice President, Zelman & Associates
Housing market analyst Ivy Zelman had just launched her firm—which provides housing data, analysis and investment services—when she called the 2008 housing crisis and then the bottom of the market in 2012. She further cemented her place in Wall Street lore as a figure in the best-selling novel-turned-movie, The Big Short. In 2021, the $2 billion (market cap) Walker & Dunlop acquired Zelman & Associates, and with U.S. housing facing an ongoing and historic affordability crisis, Zelman’s proprietary research and expertise remain in high demand.
This article was originally published on forbes.com.
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