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The 2015 Tech 50: Catherine Bessant
Bank of America Corp.’s global technology and operations executive climbs to the No. 2 spot on this year’s Tech 50 ranking.

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.”
![]() 2. Catherine Bessant Bank of America Corp. ![]() 3. Phupinder Gill CME Group ![]() 4. Lance Uggla Markit ![]() 5. Robert Goldstein BlackRock |
![]() 6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko Bloomberg ![]() 7. R. Martin Chavez Goldman Sachs Group ![]() 8. Deborah Hopkins Citi Ventures ![]() 9. Stephen Neff Fidelity Investments ![]() 10. Adena Friedman Nasdaq OMX Group |
![]() 11. David Craig Thomson Reuters ![]() 12. Daniel Coleman KCG Holdings ![]() 13. Michael Spencer ICAP ![]() 14. Michael Bodson Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. ![]() 15. Charles Li Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing |
![]() 16. Chris Concannon BATS Global Markets ![]() 17. Christopher Perretta State Street Corp. ![]() 18. Antoine Shagoury London Stock Exchange Group ![]() 19. Kevin Rhein Wells Fargo & Co. ![]() 20. Neil Katz D.E. Shaw & Co. |
![]() 21. Lee Olesky Tradeweb Markets ![]() 22. Richard McVey MarketAxess Holdings ![]() 23. Seth Merrin Liquidnet Holdings ![]() 24. Robert Alexander Capital One Financial Corp. ![]() 25. Frank Bisignano First Data Corp. |
![]() 26. John Marcante Vanguard Group ![]() 27. Joseph Squeri Citadel ![]() 28. Lou Eccleston TMX Group ![]() 29. Claude Honegger Credit Suisse ![]() 30. Chris Corrado MSCI |
![]() 31. David Gledhill DBS Bank ![]() 32. John Bates Software AG ![]() 33. Michael Cooper BT Radianz ![]() 34. Gary Scholten Principal Financial Group ![]() 35. Sunil Hirani trueEX Group |
![]() 36. Hauke Stars Deutsche BÖrse ![]() 37. Brian Conlon First Derivatives ![]() 38. Jim Minnick eVestment ![]() 39. Lars Seier Christensen & Kim Fournais ![]() 40. Tyler Kim MaplesFS |
![]() 41. Jim McGuire Charles Schwab Corp. ![]() 42. Steven O'Hanlon Numerix ![]() 43. Sebastián Ceria Axioma ![]() 44. Yasuki Okai NRI Holdings America ![]() 45. Stephane Dubois Xignite |
![]() 46. Mazy Dar OpenFin ![]() 47. Brian Sentance Xenomorph Software ![]() 48. Mas Nakachi OpenGamma ![]() 49. John Lehner BNY Mellon Technology Solutions Group ![]() 50. Jock Percy Perseus |