The 2015 Tech 50: Catherine Bessant

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Catherine Bessant
Chief Operations and Technology Officer
Bank of America Corp.
Last year: 3

With 110,000 employees and contractors at her disposal in 34 countries, and a development budget last year of $3 billion, Catherine Bessant presides over one of the world’s biggest information technology organizations. It just happens to be within Bank of America Corp., the second-biggest U.S.-based banking company, with $2.1 trillion in assets. (Other vital statistics: 48 million consumer and business relationships, 4,800 retail offices, 15,900 ATMs, 31 million active online customers and 17 million mobile users — and those are just domestic numbers.) So big is Bessant’s platform that her decisions can send ripples throughout the IT world. A case in point is a software-defined infrastructure initiative, essentially the creation of a private cloud, on which Charlotte, North Carolina–based BofA plans to run 80 percent of its workload by 2018. “Our strategic partners would say our drive for software-defined infrastructure is causing them to rethink their own models for delivery,” says Bessant, global technology and operations executive since 2010. (Her title was renamed chief operations and technology officer, effective July 22.) “That form of innovation really is driving sector change, given our scale,” adds the 33-year BofA veteran, whose past positions include president of global corporate banking, chief marketing officer and president of consumer real estate and community development banking. The 55-year-old doesn’t just do IT: She chairs the bank’s clean-energy-promoting Environmental Program and in March was paired with a professional ballet dancer in “Dancing with the Stars of Charlotte,” which raised $255,000 for the local ballet and the Buddy Kemp Cancer Support Center, named for a BofA executive who died of cancer. Bessant describes the current tech environment as “moving at the speed of the consumer, not the speed of the enterprise. I need to convene the best and brightest talent to solve the challenge of enterprises working one way and the market demanding a different speed.”

See the full story, “The 2015 Tech 50: Racers to the Edge.”

The 2015 Tech 50