30 powerful women in tech changing the world in 2026
Since we published our original list of powerful women in tech in 2021, the technology landscape has changed considerably. AI has moved to the center of the industry, fintech has transformed how millions of people access financial services, and insurance companies are investing in new ways to use data, automation, and digital technology.
So we're updating the list for 2026. Some of the most interesting work is happening inside banks, insurers, fintechs, and financial-services companies, where technology is changing how people open accounts, apply for loans, make payments, buy insurance, manage policies, and interact with financial institutions.
So for this year's list, we're looking beyond the usual technology celebrities. These are women working on digital banking, payments, lending, insurance technology, AI, customer experience, data, and financial infrastructure. Some lead major technology organizations. Others are building new products inside regional banks or transforming established insurance businesses.
1. Lori Beer — JPMorgan Chase
Lori Beer is Global Chief Information Officer at JPMorgan Chase, responsible for the firm's technology systems and infrastructure worldwide. She manages technology supporting retail, wholesale, asset and wealth management businesses. Her role shows the scale of modern banking technology: maintaining and modernizing infrastructure at global scale while introducing new capabilities.
Explore: Linkedin, JPMorgan Chase
2. Teresa Heitsenrether — JPMorgan Chase
Teresa Heitsenrether is Chief Data & Analytics Officer at JPMorgan Chase. She leads the firm's data and analytics organization, including data strategy, governance, and AI adoption across the business. Her work sits at the intersection of data infrastructure and enterprise AI.
Explore: Linkedin, JPMorgan Chase
3. Tracy Kerrins — Wells Fargo
Tracy Kerrins is Head of Consumer Technology and Generative AI at Wells Fargo. Her role brings consumer banking technology together with the practical deployment of generative AI. The challenge is making AI part of existing banking experiences and processes rather than treating it as a standalone experiment.
Explore: LinkedIn · Wells Fargo
4. Deborah Guild — PNC
Deborah Guild is Head of Technology at PNC, responsible for enterprise and business technology and security. Her role illustrates how technology leadership in banking extends far beyond mobile applications: core systems, security, infrastructure, data, and internal technology all shape customer experience.
Explore: Linkedin, PNC leadership profile · PNC
5. Jennifer Smith — Zions Bancorporation
Jennifer Smith is EVP and Chief Technology and Operations Officer at Zions Bancorporation. Combining technology and operations puts her close to one of the central challenges of bank transformation: connecting new technology with the processes and systems employees and customers actually use.
Explore: Linkedin, Zions Bancorporation
6. Michelle Calarco Moore — Wells Fargo
Michelle Calarco Moore is a senior Wells Fargo executive whose work spans digital banking, data, AI, and customer experience. Her work is a useful example of how digital banking has evolved from a channel into a broader discipline involving customer journeys, data, technology, and product delivery.
Explore: Linkedin, Wells Fargo
7. Brianna Elsass — Associated Bank
Brianna Elsass joined Associated Bank in 2026 as EVP and Chief Digital Officer. She oversees the bank's digital strategy across the full customer journey, working across product, technology, operations, marketing, risk, and the retail network.
Explore: LinkedIn · Associated Bank
8. Reetika Grewal — Wells Fargo
Reetika Grewal is a payments, digital, and transformation executive at Wells Fargo. Her work sits at the intersection of payments infrastructure, digital experiences, and enterprise transformation.
Explore: LinkedIn · Wells Fargo
9. Nikki Katz — Bank of America
Nikki Katz is a digital banking executive at Bank of America. Her work includes digital banking and AI-enabled customer and employee experiences, reflecting how digital banking is increasingly connected to AI, servicing, data, and everyday customer interactions.
Explore: LinkedIn · Bank of America
10. Ruchira Ghosh — TD
Ruchira Ghosh works at TD in customer authentication. Authentication sits at an important intersection between security and customer experience: financial institutions need to secure digital interactions while keeping legitimate customer journeys straightforward.
11. Jill Castilla — Citizens Bank of Edmond
Jill Castilla is President and CEO of Citizens Bank of Edmond and founder of ROGER, a digital-first banking initiative. Her work combines community banking with digital product development and provides an example of how a smaller financial institution can build a focused digital banking experience.
Explore: LinkedIn · Citizens Bank of Edmond · ROGER
12. Aleda DeMaria — PeoplesBank
Aleda DeMaria works at PeoplesBank in banking technology and modernization. Core banking modernization tends to receive less attention than consumer-facing applications, but it can determine how quickly a bank can launch products, connect systems, manage data, and improve customer-facing processes.
Explore: LinkedIn · PeoplesBank
13. Tasha McCall — Synchrony
Tasha McCall is a digital payments and applications executive at Synchrony Financial. Her work sits at the intersection of payments, applications, and digital transformation, areas increasingly connected to the customer experience.
14. Debopama Sen — Citi
Debopama Sen is Head of Payments, Services at Citi. Her work focuses on institutional payments and the technology required to support increasingly connected financial flows across global markets.
15. Ericka Leslie — Goldman Sachs
Ericka Leslie is a technology leader at Goldman Sachs whose work spans engineering and asset and wealth management technology. Engineering in financial services increasingly sits close to the business, with technology teams responsible for platforms, data, and digital experiences supporting complex financial products.
Explore: LinkedIn · Goldman Sachs
16. Uma Wilson — UMB Bank
Uma Wilson is EVP, Chief Information & Product Officer at UMB Bank. Her role brings information technology and product leadership together, reflecting the increasingly close relationship between technology platforms and customer-facing financial products.
17. Whitney Stewart Russell — Regions Bank
Whitney Stewart Russell is Head of Consumer Products and Origination Partnerships at Regions Bank. Origination is one of the areas where technology has a direct effect on customers: applications, data collection, document workflows, decisioning, and handoffs between customers and internal systems all need to work together.
Explore: LinkedIn · Regions Bank
18. Denise Garth — Majesco
Denise Garth has spent much of her career working at the intersection of insurance technology and digital transformation at Majesco. Insurance transformation involves more than replacing paper forms with digital versions; insurers need to connect customer experiences with underwriting, policy administration, claims, data, and other core systems.
19. Tracey Cournoyer — Travelers
Tracey Cournoyer is Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Bond & Specialty Insurance at Travelers. Travelers says she has accelerated the business's digital-first journey, helped integrate Corvus Insurance, and launched the Strategic Platform Program as part of a major digital transformation initiative.
Explore: Linkedin, Travelers technology profile · Travelers
20. Kendra Werkheiser — Travelers
Kendra Werkheiser is Assistant Vice President of Software Engineering for Business Insurance at Travelers. Travelers says she contributed to an engineering design that is serving as a blueprint for a new digital platform across the company.
Explore: Linkedin, Travelers technology profile · Travelers Technology & Analytics
21. Asha Anil Kumar — Zurich Insurance UK
Asha Anil Kumar is Chief Technology Officer at Zurich Insurance UK. Her role sits at the intersection of enterprise technology and insurance operations, where modernization increasingly involves cloud, data, digital customer experiences, and integration with established insurance platforms.
Explore: Linkdin, Zurich Insurance
22. Bilge Mert — Brit Insurance
Bilge Mert is Chief Technology & Transformation Officer at Brit Insurance. Her work focuses on connecting business and technology across specialty insurance, where transformation often requires modern platforms and operating models alongside established insurance processes.
Explore: Linkdin, Brit Insurance
23. Kirsty Kelly — CFC
Kirsty Kelly is Global Chief Information Security Officer at CFC. Cybersecurity is increasingly integrated into insurance technology as insurers digitize customer interactions, underwriting, data flows, and connected platforms.
24. Monika Delekta-Ebbage — Hiscox
Monika Delekta-Ebbage is Head of Data Science at Hiscox London Market. Data science has a particularly important role in insurance, where structured and unstructured information influences underwriting, risk analysis, pricing, and portfolio decisions.
25. Pravina Ladva — Swiss Re
Pravina Ladva is Group Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Swiss Re. Her role puts digital and technology at the center of a global reinsurance business, spanning systems, data, platforms, and capabilities supporting an international organization.
26. Tanya Kukreja — Aventum
Tanya Kukreja is Head of Architecture at Aventum Group. Enterprise architecture is particularly important in insurance as organizations connect legacy systems with new platforms, applications, data infrastructure, and digital experiences.
27. Jaga Saravanan — MagMutual
Jaga Saravanan is Chief of Technology Operations at MagMutual Insurance, with a background spanning enterprise transformation, reliability engineering, cloud modernization, and AI enablement. Her work illustrates the operational side of insurance technology: modern systems need to be reliable, scalable, and maintainable while supporting continuous business change.
28. Daniela Ivey — Vertafore
Daniela Ivey is Vice President of Product Management at Vertafore, an insurance technology company. Her work focuses on products and platforms used across insurance distribution, where platform connectivity, user experience, data, and workflow automation are increasingly important.
29. Ana Puche Lázaro — Zurich Santander Insurance America
Ana Puche Lázaro is Director of Operations and Technology at Zurich Santander Insurance America. Her role combines technology with insurance operations as insurers digitize customer interactions, automate processes, and connect operational workflows to core insurance systems.
Explore: LinkedIn · Zurich Santander Insurance America
30. Ana Ariztegui — Helvetia
Ana Ariztegui works in IT strategy at Helvetia. Technology strategy in insurance increasingly involves decisions around modernization, data, cloud infrastructure, customer-facing technology, and how new capabilities connect with established insurance systems.
What these women are changing
Across banking and insurance, technology transformation is becoming less about individual digital products and more about connecting entire processes.
Digital banking is moving beyond individual apps toward connected customer journeys. Payments are becoming embedded into broader financial and commercial experiences. Insurance companies are redesigning processes that were built around manual handoffs, documents, and legacy systems. AI is adding another layer to this transformation, particularly in customer service, operations, software development, data analysis, and decision-support workflows.
The common thread is the need to connect customers, data, employees, and core systems into processes that work from beginning to end. That is where much of the most interesting technology work in financial services is happening today.
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