S9E5: Jane Fraser Says Think About the Skills, Not the Title

18:50Jane Fraser:And I stood in front of the cafeteria, and there were 22 ,000 people in the mortgage business. And the market had just crashed again in mortgages. and they all knew half of them were probably going to get fired. And I stand up in St. Louis, Missouri with my accent, having never worked in mortgages in my life before. And that was one of those moments that I was like, okay, you might have the job, but you have to earn the right to lead. And I thought the only way I could get these people to follow me is if they feel I'm really in it with them. I thought the only way I can persuade them is my son, who was 11, and who was rather upset about being told to move from London to the States, as 11-year-olds are, I explained to them that he had come for the day.

19:44Jane Fraser:He had his day at the new school he was going to. And I explained he had run around the baseball pitch the wrong way because he didn't know which way to run. Because he's used to cricket where you go backwards and forwards. and I felt that would be the only way that that audience could say, okay, she is coming here. If her kids are moving here, she's going to be here. And then we just always talk to them straight. But those are some of the things. Part of it is they'll trust you if they feel you're going to talk to them straight and you put yourself into their shoes. So how would I want to be communicated to?

20:24Jane Fraser:What would it be? and then get good people around you when you don't know anything. Just go and get people who know, have that courage to have a team that is better than you are at any of their jobs and just lead them and help them be successful. So those are the things that I learned how to, I don't know if you ever earned the right to lead, but that was the way that you capture the hearts and minds of people.

20:52Sanil Rajput:Well, you clearly did something right because on March 1st, 2021, you became CEO of one of the most systemically important banks in the world. You also became the first woman to lead a big four US bank. When you stepped into that role, did you feel a sense of responsibility beyond the institution itself?

21:13Jane Fraser:Yeah, it's weird. The first day you become a CEO, I remember walking into my boss, what I felt was my boss's office. And you sit down in the chair and you suddenly feel the weight. There's a weight around you. And I see it from my friends who are CEOs when they stop and they just say the weight's lifted off because you are, and many of you have probably run your own companies before this or will be shortly. If you're the CEO, that defines who you are. You're no longer a Jane. Even to friends and other people outside, you are the role all the time. Even Friday night when you just want to go out and relax with your husband and have dinner, you are the role to everyone around.

22:00Jane Fraser:So that sense of responsibility is there. And then I definitely felt it a bit more for being the first woman in the role. Just a sense of you just sat there. You've got to try and get, you've got to do the Taylor Swift, shake it off. Because you're not going to do a good job if you're feeling that pressure and that element of I better be in the job, I better do a good job. It doesn't help, but you definitely felt the responsibility. And you also think, it made me more mindful about how I did things rather than just what I was doing. and that I think everyone should probably feel when you're going to leadership positions because people will remember you for how you led or how you turned up much more than they'll remember you for whatever decision you made or you took.

22:56Jane Fraser:So I think that piece is important.

23:00Sanil Rajput:When you first sat in the CEO chair, you had a bit of a job to do. In your early days as CEO, you said that Citi was failing to match the efficiency and profitability of rivals like JP Morgan, and you were ready to roll up your sleeves and make some changes. When you need to change a complex organization of 250 ,000 people, where do you even start?

23:22Jane Fraser:Yeah, I was lucky. I knew the company, so I knew the things I thought needed to get changed strategically. And so I started with, and it's going to sound, you're all going to be like, Or I started with a vision and said, what is it the firm is going to be and define that around the client base we'd be. And what were the different business that fit together where we had a competitive advantage and where there were synergies across them. And I felt we could really scale and win and then get rid of everything else. and the world had gone very, it was starting to get incredibly complex and we were running businesses that were both global in nature and incredibly local in nature.

24:10Jane Fraser:And my view was I had to get out of everything that was locally defined. So I would only be in businesses that could have global platforms and then the last mile could be local. But that got us out of retail banking, branch-based banking, out of local credit cards. We got out of all of those businesses. But I was always very motivated that you will inspire people with where you run to, not just what you're getting out of. And so it was always mindful of defining what we would be. But the vision wasn't just enough. It was also what were the cultural changes we need to make. So one of the first things we did was a from to in terms of some of the culture.

24:55Jane Fraser:and then putting that into the leadership principles that we use for how we recruit and evaluate people. And I ended up putting the time in, and I had a pretty clear view of over a five to 10-year period where I'd imagine the org structure would go, how we need to be re-engineering and changing the bank. So I had a pretty good sense of the journey, and a lot of the decisions were then the timing. when's often the toughest piece so we I knew I had to sell everything before I could reorg once we'd reorg I knew all the different pieces that we thought would fit together so a clear sense of who we were but the most important bit was just it it's it's that always have never make it a no vote always make it a yes vote right what it is is that what is it that you want the firm to be, not what you want to fix?

25:56Jane Fraser:Because you will not inspire people with, we're going to fix this, we're going to fix that. You will get incredible things out of people. And they'll take the mountain for you if you lay out something that they get really excited by. And you see that every single day in this part of the world. But even in boring financial services, that's true. And we're able to get a lot of talent to come and join because teams like, some teams just love, they love running into the fire. Some people just made that way. And so, you know, if you can galvanize a team to run into the fire and do amazing things, they'll really, they surprise themselves and it becomes infectious in an organization.

26:42Jane Fraser:And that can be true of a team. It can be true of a company. Yeah.

26:46Sanil Rajput:I think there's something really powerful about how you galvanize teams, and I think we can see that in a lot of the transformational work that you've done. I want to talk about one transformation in particular. In 2023, you launched a massive restructuring project that completely redesigned the accountability structure at Citi and put five core businesses directly under you. How do you deal with resistance and bring people along with you?

27:11Jane Fraser:So we often find in companies you'll have multiple layers within the company. And that just slows down communication. It slows down innovation and productivity. So we took out four layers in our company. One was the layer beneath me. And that then brought the management of the bank much closer to the actual businesses day to day. and then we took out three layers in the middle of the organization, which is often the treacle or, you know, dulce de leche or whatever you want to call it, that stops things inside a company.

27:53Jane Fraser:And if you're trying to get somewhere to be agile, that's sort of stuck in there, but we've always done it this way, you need to put a lot of change through. So we changed through a huge number of people. 50 ,000 people in our bank had different managers in a three-month time period. But that's when you can then put new norms in, get rid of more of the bureaucratic processes, get things to be agile, and then get people to suddenly believe they can innovate. And that's remarkably powerful. Some of you will go and work in companies that, or your own companies, which will be smaller and you don't have to worry about the legacy.

28:35Jane Fraser:Others of you will be in institutions where you're going to have legacy to deal with. And you want to have your cake and eat it of what are the best strengths of that. But then what are the areas that are really getting in the way? And we've always done it this way. People getting comfortable. A lot of folk can be very complacent. The biggest thing is fire every asshole in your company. like because good people in a bad culture you know they'll go back to being good people again and fix the culture but if an asshole is always an asshole and it's amazing how that just drains energy so the people that just take energy away from the team get them off the team help them find another opportunity you don't need to be an asshole about it right so you can help them get into something else, but get rid of them.

29:34Jane Fraser:And my favorite one on that was one of my friends, who's being McKinsey with me, runs one of the big German insurers. And he'd said he'd done the same. He got rid of people who were draining energy on the board, on his management team, two superstars, but he were there. And then he said, and I only see my mother once a month now rather than every weekend. And that's really helped my own emotional energy completely. So those are some of the things that make a difference. Yeah.

30:02Sanil Rajput:On the note of firing the assholes, I think there is an element of empathy that you have to do that with. One of my favorite quotes from you is that empathy can be a competitive edge.

30:12Jane Fraser:Yeah.

30:13Sanil Rajput:How do you lead with empathy while making decisions like layoffs that will fundamentally change people's lives? Yeah.

30:19Jane Fraser:So it's a bit like that story in mortgages where you're standing, you go to a site and you're going to tell everyone that the site is going to get shut down. And you put yourself and say, okay, I'm a member of that site. How do I want that to be communicated? I want to be told straight. I want to be told it clearly up front. And then I want you to tell me what are you doing for me? So it's empathy for me is putting yourself in the other person's shoes and understanding their position. I don't know how you sell a thing to a client. If you don't put yourself in their shoes and don't, if you're sitting there saying, what is it I need to sell?

31:01Jane Fraser:What is it I want to sell to them as opposed to what do they need? And if you go into that, okay, what do they need? You unlock a whole range of things that you would never do if you were just pushing your own agenda or pushing your own pieces to it. So to me, empathy is about understanding needs of your employee base of your customers you know of someone we had an activist shareholder in our stock and I remember my coach telling me I had to deal with them with empathy and I had a very rude response to that one and they said no but understand the pressure they're under and then you'll be able to if you can solve for them they'll get out of you and he was absolutely right and I wouldn't quite call that empathy in the sort of traditional form but when I did put myself into okay what are the things that these guys are embarrassed and embarrassed about that you know they're they're looking they're not looking good to the outside world in and what's a successful off-ramp here that's when we had a a breakthrough.

32:09Jane Fraser:So that's where I think empathy gives you a competitive edge, because there's far too many people that don't try and understand that other, that the other perspective, and then just not being a jerk to people. And Warren Buffett, he was in our stock for a while. And he had two things, a piece of advice he gave me, which I'll pass on. He said, you can always call them an asshole tomorrow. Really good piece of advice. So never in anger. Respond to that email or other pieces. And then he said, criticize by category, praise by name. And that's also another really good piece of advice. Because you're always going to regret.

32:54Jane Fraser:If you criticize someone by name, it's going to come back and bite you. So those are different elements of empathy. empathy is not being nice but it's just being thoughtful about the other side of the table

33:11Sanil Rajput:in addition to empathy you're also known for leading with humor a few years ago the Wall Street Journal called you Citi's chief executive prankster

33:23Jane Fraser:my team's gullible

33:26Sanil Rajput:I was going to say you stole my dream job title that's pretty cool tell me more about your favorite prank and how you use humor as a leader my favorite one was

33:38Jane Fraser:um these normally we have a team building exercise when we have the quarterly management off site and um we have a site up in upstate new york it's about an hour's drive out of new york city and so we decided that and we told everyone just bring athletic gear you know comfortable athletic clothing. We're going to do an outside activity in the evening. And then on the Thursday, this was the Monday, it was the offsite. And on the Thursday, we found a website for the most dodgy skydiving club near the site. And we sent out the waiver form from them, told everyone to sign them. And the only one who really didn't fall for it was our general counsel who said, there's no way that the insurance would cover having the entire senior management team of Citigroup jumping out of an aeroplane on a night skydiving, team building exercise.

34:42Jane Fraser:So he didn't fall for it. But we had all the other excuses come through. I'm too fat. There are various other ones and others who signed up for it and then the next day on the Friday we sent out a just a note and Friday was April Fool's Day we sent out a note saying it's always good to get ahead of April Fool's Day with your team so that was fun the best bit though was actually that was the other cool thing we did as soon as the note went out we have a we had a 65 year old leader on the team woman and we had her send a note out responding to everyone saying sign me up I did this a few years ago best thing I've ever done so none of the 50 year old men were going to say I'm too scared after that got to find the tryst if you ever do decide to go skydiving I would love to come with you there'll be several people pushing me out of the plane if they do well

35:42Sanil Rajput:luckily the team's still around. You didn't go on that dodging skydiving adventure. So now we can talk about the future for Citi. Citi's vision is to be the preeminent partner for institutions with cross-border needs. But between tariffs and geopolitical conflict, it feels like our world and financial system are becoming more fragmented. Does that change how you lead a global institution?

36:07Jane Fraser:yes and no i think it doesn't change certain things so trust and your reputation are probably two of the most critical elements you know particularly as a bank but i think for any institution reputation is is absolutely critical and so thinking about for example today not just fragmentation but the political environment you you need to run a company as independent of the who's in power in whichever country, and make sure that your decision-making is the right thing for the institution. And that's hard. And I think when you're a global company, we've had operations in Venezuela for years, Haiti, other places, you understand a bit more of what that is like.

36:54Jane Fraser:We have a bank in Ukraine. so you get used to some of the geopolitical tensions that are out there but I think we are moving from a world where America dominated to one where China is far advanced of America in many different industries and ultimately will be moving to much more of a multi-polar world the famous middle powers will be rising up as well this will all take time but I think it's one where you really appreciate diversity because there isn't one model that's the right model. There isn't one way of doing things. It is the right way of doing things and so as the world becomes more fragmented, we'll find a greater diversity of different approaches.

37:46Jane Fraser:We'll find different diversity of business models. We'll certainly have a lot of tensions to manage and as a leader on a global institution, you then have to keep going to what is it that your clients need and then is that different in different parts of the world and you adapt accordingly. But always those principles, always go to the use case. Don't get outraged by, oh, this is shocking, this is happening in the world, I can't believe it, it's just a waste of time. Focus on what are the things you can control, what can you do about it and how do you help people succeed in that environment? And we'll all be in client service in different forms.

38:29Jane Fraser:The most important thing is be really clear on the use case because there's lots of hammers in search of nails. Hone in on a nail and then get the hammer to crush it. But be very clear in a fragmenting world of what your job is and what your company's job is and stick to that and don't get distracted by the noise.

38:54Sanil Rajput:On the note of sticking to business, Citi is systemically important. And for the audience, that basically means failure would seriously affect the global economy.

39:03Jane Fraser:So just to give you an example, we move$2 ,000 trillion around the world every single year. How do you sleep at night with that, right? Because if we go down, and this is for 5 ,000 multinationals, This is payroll, supply chains, cash management, the foreign exchange, hedging, et cetera. It's the working capital of the multinationals around the world. So when you say systemically important, the weight I talked about earlier, if something goes wrong in our company, that causes chaos for everyone else. So you're constantly with that weight of making sure you're trying to stop bad things from happening or recovering very quickly when they do.

39:51Jane Fraser:That's what systemically important means.

39:54Sanil Rajput:I'm trying to wrap my head around what$2 ,000 trillion looks like. If you'd like to move some of that into my bank account, I wouldn't mind.

40:01Jane Fraser:It's$5 trillion a day. It's bigger than the GDP of Germany.

40:06Sanil Rajput:This is America, right?

40:08Jane Fraser:This is the soft power of America. these types of things that the multinational companies have done everywhere around the world make sure the world works it's something to be proud of where you often don't talk about sometimes you don't feel so proud at the moment but there's plenty to be proud of

40:26Sanil Rajput:when you're working closely with the governments of nearly 100 countries maybe even more when economics and geopolitics now become more and more intertwined how do you preserve cities neutrality while still maintaining this global financial stability?

40:40Jane Fraser:Oh, you're not a politician. So, right, you are, and thank God, but it's a much easier job. And in the sense, if you are, you have a set of fiduciary responsibilities, you have a set of stakeholders, your shareholders, your employees, your customers, society writ large, depending on the company. and your job is to do a good job at the day job and run the organisation, not for the renters, but for the long-term owners. And they have different... A renter and a long-term owner has very different sets of principles or things that they want you to do, let's put it like that. And I don't find it hard.

41:28Jane Fraser:It's pretty clear what I need to do and what our company needs to do. and what you don't want to do is turn yourself into a politician. I don't have the right to tell Mexico what the government should be doing there. I can advise them on economic policy and what will help development and growth and progress from that point of view, but stay clear of having the arrogance of telling them how to run their company better, but advise them on what is better economic policy, what's worked in different places, different pieces. And frankly, as soon as you move into that mode, you are far more powerful because they know that you don't have, you know, it's not your agenda you're working on or your ego.

42:16Jane Fraser:You're just there trying to help and counsel. And that's power.

42:22Sanil Rajput:We'll be back with more of Jane Frazier after this.

42:55Jane Fraser:Thank you. edu slash programs.

43:20Sanil Rajput:Let's talk about technology.

43:22Jane Fraser:Yeah.

43:22Sanil Rajput:With the rise of fintechs, financial innovation today is happening at startup speed. Yeah. How does a bank with cities scale compete with newer companies on innovation?

43:33Jane Fraser:Yeah. So, and you said the key word there. I think today there is a race for scale. Again, where Europe's struggling and America and China are winning is scale. And the ability to innovate at scale is what's critical. That's where all those things about having an agile organization, it's not BS. You need people to be nimble. You need to be willing to shut down businesses or things that are going to get disintermediate and disintermediate yourself. But the most critical thing with fintech, think about it. We were talking with a company the other day in payments. And they were saying, we've hit a trillion dollar mark.

44:19Jane Fraser:It was an IPO pitch. And they turned around and said, so how many trillion do you move? You're like, 2 ,000 trillion a year. And get on our platform, we'll help you scale. It was probably the lower point of the IPO. It's not where you're endearing yourself to. It was so much bigger than you. But there are places where scale makes an enormous difference today. And it's a race for scale. And we often see companies topping out. So a fair amount of what you're trying to do is innovate. So you're getting rid of the things that you're going to get disintermediated on. But you're also wanting to incorporate onto your own platform where many of these different fintech players can be augmentative.

45:05Jane Fraser:But you can also help them. Everything, your competitors and your collaborators all start merging. And you're better off trying to find win-wins each time rather than zero-sum games. So that's a lot of the approach is, you know, how do we get our egos out of the way, find win-wins with different players, but equally where you don't think someone's got a good business model or you don't think they're good, you know, not doing business with them either. Some of the crypto players are in one bucket there and others are in the good guy bucket, for example. Yeah.

45:43Sanil Rajput:When I was looking into some of the technology that Citi's working in today, I was surprised to learn that you're actively exploring tokenized assets and even your own stablecoin. When you think through emerging technologies, how do you differentiate between a true structural shift in finance versus another cycle of tech hype?

46:01Jane Fraser:You don't know. So you need to be, if we're looking at tokenization, stablecoin, different areas, No one can tell you which approach is going to win, what it is. So you do want to have a portfolio, and you want to be learning. And you want to be able to pivot if you need to. But again, it comes back to this hammer and nail. If we look at where finance is headed, it's moving to always on and instantaneous. and our customers want you to be able to move money around the world instantaneously 24-7 and they want to do it with no hassles. So if the new technologies come that are enabling that, tokenization is one, we're going to adopt it very quickly.

46:53Jane Fraser:We move billions of dollars in tokenized deposits around the world all the time and we merge the fiat, so actual cash, with the coins or with the tokenization all on the blockchain. So for us, it's just a question of what's the use case? How does it help our clients? If it's better than the solutions we have today, you jump on them and then you make sure they work and then shut down the old stuff and be willing to do that. and the benefit again, scale if you're looking at doing tokenized deposits it's much easier off our platform where you're moving trillions a day than it is if you're trying to start it up but you've got to be willing to shut down things and disintermediate yourself which is hard

47:43Sanil Rajput:well we've talked about tokenized assets there's another technology that is top of mind for everyone in this room and that is AI AI has now officially entered the world of finance through credit memos, risk analysis, and now even AI investment banks. What role does human judgment continue to play inside of banking that AI is not going to replace?

48:05Jane Fraser:look trust you know if you're if you're sitting there with a a CEO fellow CEO and they're looking at doing a massive merger a transformational deal or another piece like that and you're sitting there going through what are the different decisions they're going to make how they're thinking about it pros cons what approach and you're then imbuing confidence into them to helping them, confidence in their decisions, so they'll go ahead. That AI can't teach you. It can teach you what's the right answer to do, does this make sense, et cetera. But there's still this relationship, trust, human element that's absolutely critical.

48:49Jane Fraser:And I see it with relationships. We have a great connection between American Airlines. Before you were all born, we had a credit card with American Airlines. And it's been a multi-decade relationship. But if the CEO and I didn't really get on, we were negotiating a renewal of the relationship, AI couldn't do that. That was about two human beings saying, okay, we're committing to do some pretty bold, difficult things together, and we're in it together, and we both trust each other. Those are things that AI doesn't replace. And it also gives me that I look at it and go, we still need to have a apprenticeship is still how a lot of humans learn.

49:37Jane Fraser:And you've still you're going to be greatly enabled by AI, it's going to do amazing things that can make jobs fascinating. But we're still going to need pyramids. And we're still going to need people to learn because human beings are still going to be critically important. Jobs will be much more interesting. And we're all going to have to get used to changing jobs and reinventing ourselves regularly. But I think the notion that human beings can be sitting on their rear end watching sports all day long and not having a valuable role to play is we're better than that. I don't believe in that. But it is going to be disruptive.

50:16Yeah.

50:17Sanil Rajput:Thank you for sharing the importance of relationships. And I want to pause there to pass the floor to a few members of our audience to ask you some of their questions.

50:26Jane Fraser:Okay, hi. I have a question. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I'm Vanessa.

50:31Sanil Rajput:Hi. I'm an MBA too. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciated a lot of what you shared on just human-centered leadership and there not being one right business structure to do things. You touched a little bit on earlier on the question that I had, but I really wanted to talk about just as you steward so much systemic capital and wealth in the world, how do you think about the responsibility to support on the fronts of wealth inequality domestically and globally? And what are some specific levers that you believe that an institution like Citi can pull to actually help support there?

51:03Jane Fraser:Yeah. I often think, I say this quite often, you have to be a bank with a brain, a bank with a soul. And the soul is your people. And we're in, you know, I look at Ukraine. Our people in Ukraine, they have not, our bank is not, it's the only American bank, one of the only bank, international banks in Ukraine. Our people have not let that bank shut one day. because if it does, the payrolls of the multinationals that operate in Ukraine will not work. The supply chains into Ukraine will not work. We run the visa network and the Clearstream network there, so the credit card system, all these different things will not work if our people didn't turn up.

51:59And just before the war broke out,

52:03Jane Fraser:we moved half our people to the border, Lviv, who we've all heard of now. And then when the war started, we set up operations with the bank we have in Poland and all our people moved. Who could? The men couldn't move. But all of the women moved and the wives and families of our employees. We moved them all to Poland and they lived with our Polish employees. And we set up a school in the building in Poland for the kids. And this has been the case for four years. Right now, our employees, we gave them all generators because they only get at most four hours of power a day. And it is cold as hell at the moment in Ukraine.

52:48Jane Fraser:It is brutal. But they know that if we go down, it is highly consequential for the country. the same we're the only bank in Israel US bank and we play an important part similarly there the same in much of the Arab world and the rest so it's easy in the developed world to be sanguine about this because we have it pretty damn good but when you go to other countries and you just see the motivation people have to make sure that things are working so their country operates well. So I find our people will do extraordinary things to make sure that the bank can support companies and keep economies open.

53:43Jane Fraser:And the other bit, we saw it in COVID, we saw it many times. Again, folk will get out of bed to serve a client. They'll get out of bed too and be really motivated if they're feeling that what they do matters. We're the number one affordable housing lending in America. We have a chronic housing shortage. And the team that does that, they are so proud. And they go the extra mile to try and make sure that we can get more units built, get tax policy passed to help that and other elements. So those things, it's not just this corporate social responsibility, tick the box BS stuff. It truly motivates people to work for a company that is trying to do good things, trying to do the right things.

54:33Jane Fraser:And I think that's those companies that can do that. It's a competitive advantage. It can't be the raison d 'etre, but it's got to be part of the package.

54:46Hi, Jing.

54:46Jane Fraser:I'm Caroline. Thank you for all your sharing. So I'm the current student of MSX. So before I came here, I worked as the investor relations officer for the public tech companies. So I really appreciate all the helps that we had from the city and city has been the trust partner in our capital market. So I have a question that city operates across over 180 countries. How do you think about the boundary between the global standardization and the local adaptation today? And in your view, what's the most fundamental structure challenge facing global financial institutions right now? Yeah. A few different pieces there.

55:32Jane Fraser:The benefit we have, it's not just we're in lots of countries, but we've been in them. We've been in China 125 years, Japan the same, India the same. We just had 100 years in Australia. We have 100 years in Germany going up. So often in Korea, we were the first foreign bank. Depressingly, we opened roughly the same year I was born. It made me feel ancient. But it gives you much more local understanding. and even when you're global, our local teams on the ground who understand risks, who to do business with, who not to touch for business in different parts of the world, and who can also just connect with the clients there and know, you know, who won the soccer that weekend or, you know, what's been going on on the ground, those other elements.

56:27Jane Fraser:They're very important. So even for big global companies. That local knowledge on risk, the relationship to mention these other things is where a lot of the richness lies. And I think the best global companies, they can have a standard product suite, but understanding all the local nuances and other pieces is where a lot of the joy of a global company comes from. And as the world fragments, I think it comes back the same thing. There is no one model. We laugh at city and say the benefit of city is we have one language and that's bad English because everyone is from everywhere around the world.

57:11Jane Fraser:But with that comes an appreciation. There is no right way. There is no single way of doing things. There are different ways of doing it. So I would encourage all of you in your own companies or wherever you work, find ones that have that, what I call is a global mindset, that there are many different ways of doing things. Because when you have that openness, and I think that becomes the most important competitive advantage that you could possibly have as a company is appreciating there are many ways of doing things and not just one. All right.

57:47Sanil Rajput:Thank you so much to our audience members for some great questions. Now, Jane, in view from the top tradition, I have a few rapid fire questions that we'll run through quickly. Are you ready?

57:56Jane Fraser:I'm ready, I think. Usually, when you get asked a question, you have no idea what the answer is. Yes.

58:02Sanil Rajput:It'll be fun. Like, please don't ask me what

58:04Jane Fraser:my favorite Bad Bunny song is.

58:08Sanil Rajput:I don't think I know any Bad Bunny songs, so we'll avoid that one. Most fun role you've held at Citi?

58:14Jane Fraser:Oh, running the private bank, just because of all the entrepreneurs. And they all tell you their story and what they've done, what their fears and opportunities are.

58:23Sanil Rajput:Cambridge UK or Cambridge USA?

58:26Jane Fraser:Oh, Cambridge UK. It's the real Cambridge.

58:31Sanil Rajput:Favorite Scottish food?

58:33Jane Fraser:Oh, I like haggis. Yeah.

58:37Sanil Rajput:I'll try it one more. And if you weren't CEO of what would you be?

58:42Jane Fraser:Oh, I would love to be a travel writer or travel advisor. I love going to different parts of the world. So I have a list on my iPhone of when I'm done, what are the other, where are the places that I've gone to, but I've actually never been able to visit, that I want to be going to see. Amazing.

59:01Sanil Rajput:Well, Jane, I have one final non-rapid-fire question to close this out. There are students in this room who want to lead Fortune 500 businesses one day. What is one piece of advice you have for them? So my, I'll make it quick.

59:14Jane Fraser:The old CEO of Citi called me up one day and said, I want you to come to my office and give me your development plan. So I quickly wrote it up that night and brought it with me. And do you remember when Nancy Pelosi just tore up the things behind the president? That's what he did to my development plan. And he said, you're thinking about it all wrong. You are laying out a plan as to what are the jobs you would like and how you get there. He said that what you need to think about is how are you going to succeed in those jobs? So what are the skills, the relationships and the other things that you need to be acquiring in order to be successful in the jobs you want and go about getting those?

59:59Jane Fraser:And it completely changed the next 10 years of my life. I went around doing much more lateral moves. I went out systematically building, you know, what are the different skill sets, relationships, things I would need to know to have the jobs at the C-suite of Citi rather than just laying out an aspiration. And I took a highly unorthodox career path. And I'm the luckiest woman imaginable. It's been a fabulous life. so go the unorthodox path but think about what are the skill sets and things i need to be successful in the job not how do i get the job because surprise surprise you will get the job if you have the skills to be successful in it ladies and gentlemen please give jane a hand

1:00:57Sanil Rajput:All right, talk about 125 % prepared. That was an extremely dense conversation from leadership to the contemporary realities of the global financial system to culture, reorgs, and more. Where would you like to begin? I'd love to start off with her leadership style. Jane was way easier to talk to than I'd expected, especially for an executive at that level. And I think she just felt very human. It felt like I was talking to a friend, especially because she was light. She was very charming. She was able to unpack serious situations, take a step back and view them in a very human way. Yeah. And that definitely reduced my stress going into this conversation.

1:01:39Sanil Rajput:I imagine that has a pretty massive effect on her employees as well. We talked a little bit about her comedic style too. I didn't know that had a place in finance. I know we have DJs running big banks like Goldman Sachs, but I wasn't sure if comedians would be at the top as well. And as somebody who likes to lean into humor, that made me feel like I could bring my more authentic self to work. And I wonder if some of her peers feel that way. The final thing I'll touch on, at least right now in her leadership, is she just has such a great sense of organization. The way that she took Citi as a behemoth and as a very complicated product and turned it into five distinct business lines, that reorganization is bold.

1:02:26Sanil Rajput:I'm imagining it took a lot of effort to bring employees along the lines with her. But now she just has such a better grasp of the business. And so to me, it's a sign of what it takes to manage a company at scale. It's a level of organization and framework-based thinking that I would love to unlock one day. And continuing along this line a little bit, she had some super astute thoughts as to how a global business like Citi is navigating an increasingly complex, increasingly multipolar world. What can those who aspire to be global leaders, what can they learn from Jane? I think there are two buckets of global leadership that I found interesting.

1:03:06Sanil Rajput:One is just a response to the times. We are in an era of increased fragmentation. And I can imagine that's scary for a bank like hers. It's difficult when you have operations of your bank in different countries that are in theory now competing with each other, consider themselves adversaries. And Jane and Citi have found a way to lean into neutrality and continue to operate their business, find customers and work with customers who want to operate across those countries in the same way. And I think it's a remarkable skill, especially with the current administration. But it seems like focusing on the work on markets rather than on politics has been effective for her.

1:03:48Sanil Rajput:That's a great segue to another question I wanted to ask you, which is about scale as well as the need for Citi to be always on and instantaneous. How is she thinking about pushing this business into the future? I was surprised at the level of technological adoption that Citi is pushing for. One of the things we talked about was whether new technologies like decentralized systems or AI are just fads or if there's something to lean into. And Citi has been investing a ton of resources into tech development. They're exploring their own stablecoin. They're exploring other forms of cryptocurrencies.

1:04:26Sanil Rajput:And they're also looking into how AI can be pushed into different departments of the bank. What I saw from her was an interest in understanding the tech of the future, but also a very cautious interest. It didn't seem like they were diving into technology just for the sake of doing it and signaling that they're a futuristic company. They picked what makes the most sense for their business. So if you look at Citi as the bank that handles all cross-border needs, they are this global bank, it made a lot of sense for them to invest in things like stable coins because one of the biggest values of decentralized systems is the ability to go international and go global.

1:05:02Sanil Rajput:The same thing with AI. I think there are parts of Citi's offering that are very tech forward. They do a lot of work that requires, for example, quantitative investing that requires being very tech savvy. And they're leaning into AI in specific parts of their business where it makes most sense. I think it's an interesting challenge when you're trying to do that with a 200 ,000 person company, but they are selectively using their resources in the right way to experiment, figure out what works, and then take the successful experiments and bring it into the business. Take the unorthodox path and think about the skills you'll need to be successful.

1:05:42Sanil Rajput:I think it is so easy for people to think of their careers as a linear track. We have this dream of, especially in finance, two years of banking, two years of private equity, then business school, and then back to private equity. Jane did not follow that path. She was unconventional. And she started in finance, but she moved to Spain because she wanted to learn Spanish. Who does that? And then she ended up in McKinsey. Instead of just staying there and making money, she said, I'm going to go try finance because that's what came to mind. She was interested in global markets, so she's going to go work at a global business.

1:06:16And what I took from that is there is so much joy and lore and interesting information you can get from being nonlinear.

1:06:27Sanil Rajput:A lot of people will find themselves going up and to the right. But in order to get there, they have to go left, then down, and then to the right, and maybe back left again before they eventually find their way in that direction. And she gave me a lot of confidence in acknowledging that one's straightforward dream might not happen, but also isn't necessarily the best thing for them. I think one has to really enjoy the journey, do what strikes them as interesting or what really appeals to them at the time, and have some faith that things are going to work out. Sanil, thank you so much. Thank you so much.

1:07:03Sanil Rajput:It's been a privilege being here, and I really enjoyed the conversation about Jane.

1:07:33Sanil Rajput:Thank you.

1:07:59Sanil Rajput:Thank you.