The 25 Most Powerful Women On Wall Street

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Irene Dorner

Irene Dorner

Firm: HSBC

Title: President and CEO, HSBC USA

Street Cred: Dorner joined HSBC thirty years ago starting out at HSBC as an in-house lawyer and progressing throughout the organization holding a myriad of positions. 

American Banker named her the most powerful woman in banking last year.

She also beat ovarian cancer last year. 

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Nancy Peretsman

Nancy Peretsman

Firm: Allen & Co. 

Title: Managing Director

Street Cred: She's currently a managing director at boutique investment bank Allen & Company.  She's been working there since 1995. 

Her previous experience on Wall Street includes working at Salomon Brothers, where she led the worldwide media investment banking business as a managing director. 

During her banking career, she's worked with clients such as Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch, Gerry Leybourne, Oprah Winfrey and Eric Schmidt, according to CityFile.

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Sonia Gardner

Sonia Gardner

Firm: Avenue Capital (co-founder)

Title: President, Managing Partner, Co-Founder

Street Cred: She co-founded Avenue Capital, a hedge fund that specializes in distressed debt, with her brother Marc Lasry.

She serves on the board of directors of the Managed Funds Association and is a member of the board of trustees at Mount Sinai Medical Center. 

She holds a bachelor's degree with honors in philosophy from Clark University and she received her J.D. from Cardozo School of Law. 

Source: CNBC, Source: 100womeninhedgefunds

Mary Callahan Erdoes

Mary Callahan Erdoes

Firm: JPMorgan Asset Management

Title: CEO

Street Cred: She's been serving as the chief executive of JPMorgan Asset Management since 2009 where she oversees $2 trillion.

Erdoes' unit, which acts independently, bet against the "London Whale" trade that lost JPMorgan's CIO office billions, according to DealBook.

Erdoes was named one of Forbes' 100 "most powerful women in the world."

She received her bachelor's degree in mathematics from Georgetown University. She holds an MBA from Harvard. 

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Alexandra Lebenthal

Alexandra Lebenthal

Firm: Lebenthal & Company

Title: President/CEO

Street Cred: She's the president and CEO of Lebenthal & Company and its multi-family office Alexandra & James.

She's a great networker and incredibly well-connected on the Street. She's also the recruiter for Wall Street's secret society Kappa Beta Phi, according to Fortune

Lebenthal is also the treasurer of the Securities Industry Financial Markets Organization (SIFMA) and a member of The Committee of 200 — an organization for some of the most powerful female businesswomen. 

Blythe Masters

Blythe Masters

Firm: JPMorgan

Title: Head of Global Commodities

Street Cred: Masters became the head of global commodities at JPMorgan in 2006.

She was named managing director at JPMorgan at age 28, the youngest woman ever in the firm's history, according to The Wall Street Journal. She's also credited for being one of the creators of the "credit default swap" during a deal with Exxon back in 1994. 

Outside of the office, she's an equestrian, competing in horse shows. 

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Renée Haugerud

Renée Haugerud

Firm: Galtere (founder)

Title: CIO

Street Cred: She's been running her hedge fund Galtere for 14 years and only one year has been marked by negative returns, according to a book review of Stephen Weiss' "The Big Win."

Haugerud first started trading commodities back in 1981 at Cargill. Today she uses a commodity-based global macro investing strategy. 

She received her bachelor's degree with honors in forest resource management from the University of Montana.

Source: Galtere

Ruth Porat

Ruth Porat

Firm: Morgan Stanley

Title: CFO

Street Cred: Porat has been working at Morgan Stanley since 1987 when she joined the bank's M&A department.

During her career at Morgan Stanley she has served as the global head of the Financial Institutions Group and as vice chair of the Investment Bank, according to BusinessWeek.  She's been serving as executive vice president and CFO since January 2010.

She graduated with her bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University.  She received her master's in economics from the London School of Economics and holds an MBA from Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Abby Joseph Cohen

Abby Joseph Cohen

Firm: Goldman Sachs

Title: U.S. Investment Strategist

Street Cred: Cohen serves as the senior U.S. investment strategist at Goldman Sachs and before that she was the bank's chief investment strategist.

Cohen began her career as an economist for the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C.  She joined Goldman Sachs in 1990.  

She gained notoriety for predicting the bull market in the 1990s.

Edith Cooper

Edith Cooper

Firm: Goldman Sachs

Title: Executive VP/ Global Head of Human Capital Management

Street Cred: She's been the head of Human Capital Management at Goldman since March 2008.

She joined Goldman in 1996 working with the energy sales group. In 2000, she was the co-head of the commodities business in Europe and Asia and also ran the futures business in 2002.

Source: Goldman

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Meredith Whitney

Meredith Whitney

Firm: Meredith Whitney Advisory Group

Title: CEO

Street Cred: She's currently the CEO of her namesake investment research firm, Meredith Whitney Advisory Group.

Before that, she was a managing director and analyst at Oppenheimer where she gained notoriety in 2007 for predicting Citigroup would have problems with its mortgage holdings. In 2008, she graced the cover of Fortune magazine. CNBC viewers selected her as the "Power Player of 2008."

She has been bearish on the financial sector for some time. Last summer, she made a call that the financial sector would shed 50,000 jobs.

She predicted a wave of muni bond defaults during a "60 Minutes" interview back in 2010. That hasn't happened. 

She graduated from Brown. 

Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani

Sharmin Mossavar-Rahmani

Firm: Goldman Sachs (Private Wealth Management group)

Title: CIO

Street Cred: She joined Goldman as a partner in 1993. Before that, she spent six years at Fidelity Management Trust Company where she was CIO for all separate and co-mingled fixed income accounts. 

She is the author of two books — one on OPEC natural gas and the other on bonds.

Outside of work, she serves on the board of trustees and the investment committee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Harvard's Committee on University Resources, and the National Advisory Board of the Merage Foundation for the American Dream.

She holds a BA from Princeton and a master's from Stanford.

Source: Goldman Sachs

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Catherine Keating

Catherine Keating

Firm: JPMorgan

Title: CEO of United States Institutional Asset Management at JPMorgan

Street Cred: She was one of the youngest partners at Philadelphia-based law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, according to American Banker.  She left the law firm to join JPMorgan in 1996. She became the head of the private bank in 2005.

Outside of work, she's on the board of trustees at Villanova, the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York, the Inner-City Scholarship Fund, and the New York Women's Forum and is a member of the Manhattan Chapter of the Young Presidents’ Organization.

She graduated with her bachelor's degree from Villanova and received her J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Marianne Lake

Marianne Lake

Firm: JPMorgan Chase

Title: CFO

Street Cred: Lake was named CFO last fall succeeding Doug Braunstein. Her previous experience includes serving as CFO of the consumer and community banking business since 2009.

She began her career working as an accountant for PriceWaterhouseCoopers, according to Bloomberg News.

She holds a bachelor's degree in physics. 

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Lara Warner

Lara Warner

Firm: Credit Suisse

Title: CFO of the Investment Banking Division

Street Cred: Warner has been the head of Investment Banking since 2010. Before that she was a managing director in the investment bank's fixed income and equity research departments. She also spent time at Lehman Brothers.

Warner is a graduate of Penn State with a B.A. in finance.

Source: LinkedIn

Jamie Zimmerman

Jamie Zimmerman

Firm: Litespeed Management (founder)

Title: CEO

Street Cred: Zimmerman began her career as a lawyer, but learned that wasn't what she really wanted to do. 

Zimmerman then got her experience in risk arbitrage doing stints at L.F. Rothschild, Dillon Read, Oppenheimer and Toronto Dominion Bank where she ran research for risk arbitrage. 

She launched her own event-driven fund in 2000, which has about $1.45 billion AUM today.

She's a graduate from Amherst College.

Source: Voice of Experience

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Leda Braga

Leda Braga

Firm: Bluecrest

Title: CIO

Street Cred: The Brazilian-born hedge fund manager runs Bluecrest's biggest fund, the $13.6 billion BlueTrend. In 2011, she was one of the highest earning hedge fund managers taking home earnings of $50 million, according to Forbes.

She previously worked as a quantitative analyst on JPMorgan Chase's derivatives research team, according to Bloomberg.

She holds a Ph.D. in engineering from Imperial College.

Dawn Fitzpatrick

Dawn Fitzpatrick

Firm: UBS O'Connor

Title: CIO

Street Cred: Prior to becoming CIO, she worked as a portfolio manager for UBS Global AM. 

You can see a photo of her in this UBS ad for Working Mother from 2004.

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Eileen Serra

Eileen Serra

Firm: JPMorgan

Title: CEO of Credit Card Services 

Street Cred: She was named CEO of Credit Card Services (that's a $19 billion business for JPMorgan) in August 2012. 

She joined JPMorgan back in 2006. Before that, she worked at Merrill Lynch as head of private-client banking solutions.

She also did stints at American Express and McKinsey & Co.

Source: Bloomberg News

Candace Browning

Candace Browning

Firm: Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Title: Head of Global Research

Street Cred: She's the head of global research at BofA Merrill Lynch overseeing about 1,000 employees in 20 different countries.

She joined Merrill Lynch in 1990 as a research analyst. 

She graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Brandeis University. She holds an MBA from Columbia University. 

Source: BofA

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Mei Gao

Mei Gao

Firm: Fore Research & Management

Title: Partner

Street Cred: Prior to joining Fore, she was a VP at Toronto Dominion Bank trading the convertible arbitrage portfolio.

She graduated from Shantou University, China (BA, Literature) and Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada (MBA).

Source: TCFA

Carla Harris

Carla Harris

Firm: Morgan Stanley Investment Management

Title: Managing Director, Emerging Managers Platform

Street Cred: During her career, Harris has worked on IPOs for UPS, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Ariba, Redback, the General Motors sub-IPO of Delphi Automotive, etc. 

She began her career at Morgan Stanley in 1987 working in M&A. 

She holds an MBA from Harvard. 

Source: Morgan Stanley

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Hope Pascucci

Hope Pascucci

Firm: Rose Grover Capital (founder)

Title: President

Street Cred: Pascucci is the president of Boston-based hedge fund Rose Grover Capital. 

She has worked at Merrill Lynch in both New York and London for ten years.  She ran Deutsche Bank's global capital markets business from London from 2000 until 2007 when she departed to join Rose Grove, a fund started by her husband.

She holds a bachelor's degree is psychology from Amherst College. 

Source: Amherst

Irene Tse

Irene Tse

Firm: Tse Capital 

Title: Founder

Street Cred: Tse spent three years at Stan Druckenmiller's Duquesne Capital as a portfolio manager.  She then moved to Goldman Sachs where she was a partner before joining JPMorgan as chief investment officer of North America. 

She left JPMorgan last year to launch a hedge fund.

Source: Bloomberg News

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Dottie Mattison

Dottie Mattison

Firm: Guggenheim Partners

Title: Senior Managing Director

Street Cred: She joined Guggenheim in 2010. Mattison comes from a retail background. She was an exec at Wal-Mart. 

Last summer, she was named CEO of Prometheus Global Media, which owns Billboard, Adweek, The Hollywood Reporter, etc.

The Wall Street Journal named her one of the "50 women to watch" in 2007. 

Now let's meet another powerful woman...

Now let's meet another powerful woman...

The Fabulous Life Of Sallie Krawcheck >

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