CIO Amy Brady wears a vast array of hats in leading KeyBank’s Technology, Operations, and Services (KTOS) organization. In this role, Brady oversees the front-to-back IT organization, data and analytics, enterprise security, enterprise risk, and an intelligent automation center of excellence, all while managing back-office operations, contact center services, and KeyBank’s corporate real estate portfolio. Named one of the “25 Most Powerful Women in Banking” in 2024, she has made her mark in the industry and the community, serving on boards such as Playhouse Square and DuPont, and championing causes that uplift women in technology.
On a recent episode of the Tech Whisperers podcast, we explored Brady’s career journey and leadership philosophies and delved into how she inspires, innovates, and delivers at scale. Afterwards, we spent some time focusing on the defining “answer the call” moments of her career. Brady shared how these moments pushed her out of her comfort zones, the thought processes that went into her decision-making, and the learnings she came away with. What follows is that conversation, edited for length and clarity.
Dan Roberts: Your first answer-the-call moment was banking on a career in banking, out of college. What attracted you to the industry, and what’s made you stay?
Amy Baker: I went into banking thinking it would be a stable career. I had watched my father work so hard, and the industry that he was in, the steel industry, ended up being really tough towards the end. So, I thought, banking would be stable.
It has been nothing but stable; very quickly into my career, I realized it was just constantly changing. The pace of that change has accelerated exponentially, in large part because of external factors: The market changes — 2008-2009 was tough for financial services. I was so proud to be a banker, and for the first time, I was ashamed to be a banker. Then there are the technology changes we’ve had and the client expectations and operating model changes — it’s always something.
I have stayed in banking because of the opportunities. Having spent 15 years on the business side and then moving to R&D and then moving into tech and ops and all these other things, I’ve just never felt that I had to leave the industry to keep growing, and that’s been spectacular.
Also, the industry has purpose. Despite what might get said in headlines, at its core, the financial services industry is there to help clients — individuals, small businesses, large corporations — achieve their dreams, their strategy. The financial services industry keeps our economy running. I like being a part of something that has purpose.
You spent 14 years working on the business side at Bank of America when the bank’s president asked you to move to Atlanta and build a research and development group. What went through your mind when you got that call, and what convinced you to accept the challenge?
I was running about 150 offices in southeast Florida at the time, and it was a job I absolutely loved. I loved the diversity of the clients and employees and the community involvement. I was so happy with what I was doing, and then to give it all up and uproot my family — my girls were two and three years old then — and move to Atlanta, that was a big step. It felt risky because I didn’t know anything about building and leading a research and development team.
As it turned out, it was probably the most pivotal job I’ve had in my career, because it exposed me to so much. I learned so much, I grew so much as an individual, and if I hadn’t taken that risk, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
When the president asked me to take the job, I asked him, ‘Why me?’ He said, ‘Because you run a successful market and you’re going to help us reinvent banking and tell us what not to do.’ I thought that was interesting. Someone once said to me, ‘Did you intentionally build your professional brand?’ I don’t think I intentionally built my brand, but I do think my brand was that of a change agent, someone who could challenge the ways we were doing things and encourage teams to perform at a higher level.
They wanted to hear more about our failures during our R&D tests than our successes. Successes, those were easy. Lots of people wanted to take them and adopt them. But we saved the company millions and millions of dollars by keeping them from rolling out things that weren’t going to work.
Your next answer-the-call moment came four years later, when you were offered a technology role. How did that call come about?
The organization had recently hired a new CIO who was very experienced but new to the industry. I was asked to help this leader learn the industry and transform the technology organization into a more business-aligned tech organization. Other than being an end user, the only thing I knew about technology was what I had during my time with R&D. Of course I would say, ‘Oh, they’re too slow. They’re too expensive. They’re not innovative enough.’
I remember about six months after I moved into technology, I was talking with the executive who ran tech and ops for Bank of America and I said, ‘Oh, my gosh! These people are brilliant!’ She said, ‘You sound so surprised.’ And I was. It taught me that you don’t necessarily understand all these functions and these talented subject matter experts in these functions until you’re with them and you walk a mile in their shoes. The power of being able to be from the front end of banking all the way to the back end of banking — I am so fortunate that I’ve had that career, and I’m thankful for all the time I spent at Bank of America building those skills.
Initially, I thought I’d do technology for a while and go back to the business side. But what I learned was that tech was changing the business. Everything about banking was becoming technology and people versus paper and people. I wanted to be part of creating that change. That’s what’s kept me in technology — constantly looking for ways to improve what we do through the application of technology.
After 25 years with Bank of America, you answered the call to move to Cleveland and take on a new challenge at KeyBank. How did you make that decision?
I was in an odd time at Bank of America. I’d been asked to step out of a role and was told I was going to have another role, but there was a gap in when they could announce it because it needed regulatory and board approval. While I was waiting, I thought I might as well take some of these headhunters’ calls, which I’d never done before. I met this impressive woman and enjoyed talking to her, and that was it.
About nine months later, she called me and said, ‘I have this opportunity.’ At that point, I was commuting from Atlanta to Los Angeles every week for Bank of America and didn’t want to have to travel for an interview, so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do a video call.’
This was late 2011, and it wasn’t like you could do a video call from your home back then, so I drove to a place with video-call technology, and I did an interview with a bunch of people from KeyBank, which I’d never heard of before. I wasn’t looking to move to Cleveland, but they were just amazing people. I drove home and said to my husband, ‘If they ask me to come in for an in-person interview, I’d really like to do it, just to see if they’re for real.’
A couple of weeks later, I got on a plane to meet Beth Mooney, who was CEO at the time. My husband watched a video of her giving a speech while I was on the plane, and he got goosebumps and said, ‘All right, we’re moving to Cleveland,’ before I had even met her.
It was a big move. I never intended to leave Bank of America, and I have incredible respect for the people there, the company, everything they did for my career, and the opportunities I had. To come work with Beth and her then-leadership team to help fulfill her vision for KeyBank was just something I didn’t want to pass up.
So, we uprooted our family. My daughters were going into ninth and tenth grade — not a great time to move your family. But it was the right thing to do, and I haven’t looked back.
You’ve been a member of the DuPont board of directors for five years. What have you gained from that experience?
I’ve felt very blessed and supported by Beth Mooney and our current CEO, Chris Gorman. They both put their trust in me to go on a for-profit board, as did our board of directors. It’s been an important opportunity for a couple of reasons. One, it has helped me grow as an executive. I present to our board of directors at Key, but sitting in that seat has given me a much different perspective on what information board members need, how they need that information delivered, and what is critical for a director to do for their role as a governor of the company. I’ve improved my ability to present to our board and the information I pass along because of my experience.
It’s also helped me learn and be connected to another industry, hearing market trends and learning what that industry is going through and its ups and downs. That’s helped me understand the macro economy better and at a more detailed level — to advise but also then to bring it back to strategies we’re doing at Key, or when I served on the board of the Federal Reserve, to be able to advise around rates and different programs and how the Fed was operating. Having the perspective from a banker and hearing from a large multi-industrial company that’s global really helped my ability to inform and advise as a board member in the Federal Reserve.
It’s also given me the opportunity to learn from someone like Steve Larrabee, who is the CIO at DuPont, and to see what his team does or what his CISO does or how they’re doing a certain implementation. You can always learn from other industries and bring those back to your industry to improve your own practices and challenge your practices.
The challenge is learning the industry. My first couple of years, I would spend hours and hours looking things up while I was reading the board material. What is that chemical? What is that polymer they’re using? What is that thing they’re building? What is that industry they’re selling into? It was great because I felt like I had to go back to school and teach myself all these things.
It’s also challenged me on M&A practices, because DuPont has been an active acquirer and an active portfolio manager, so I was looking at it from the company side versus the banker side. It’s even enhanced how I view financial services and the role we play.
Tell us more about your experience as a technology executive serving on the board for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
I was probably one of the first CIOs to serve on a Federal Reserve Bank board. Typically, it would be the president, CEOs, heads of commercial banking, that type of thing, and I was very honored when Loretta Mester, then president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, asked me to join the board. I had watched how she had built a very diverse board of directors. She recognized not only what the Federal Reserve was going through, with a lot of technology change and the importance of the payments rails they were building and re-engineering, but also the role that a CIO plays in local economies, through building jobs and helping retrain workforces in underserved areas and communities. The CIO network here in Northeast Ohio does a lot of concerted work together to build the tech workforce across Northeast Ohio to serve multiple industries. She recognized some of that power as she was looking at her district.
Having been a lifetime banker, I was a humbled once I got on the board by how much I didn’t know about the Federal Reserve. I knew a lot about it from a very high level, and then from the examiner perspective, because that’s what I’d experienced day in and day out. But to learn the inner workings and how each reserve bank participates in the whole and how the system serves the economy, that experience was remarkable.
For more insights and advice from Brady, the epitome of multifaceted executive, tune in to the Tech Whisperers podcast.
See also:
Read More from This Article: KeyBank CIO Amy Brady heeds the transformative call of IT leadership
Source: News