By Reshma Kapadia
In Greek mythology, the goddess Athena offered guidance and mentorship during periods of uncertainty and transition. The people on Barron's 2026 list of the 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance are modern-day Athenas, helping their firms, clients, investors, and in some cases, the country, through a period of unusual geopolitical, technological, and economic flux.
Our annual list honors established and emerging leaders in finance, economics, policy, and the corporate world . This year's honorees are identifying and funding tomorrow's artificial-intelligence beneficiaries, brainstorming new types of investment products, shaping financial advice for the next generation, and ensuring that monetary policy keeps the economy on an even keel.
This year's list features 28 additions. Luana Lopes Lara, the former ballerina who nudged out Taylor Swift as the youngest self-made female billionaire in the U.S., helped pioneer a new asset class with Kalshi, the prediction-markets firm she co-founded with MIT classmate Tarek Mansour.
Katherine Boyle, a former Washington Post journalist, is now a general partner at venture-capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, where she was an early investor in defense technology companies such as Anduril and SpaceX. When Boyle first advocated for funding companies critical to maintaining America's global dominance, it was a controversial stance in Silicon Valley circles. Not anymore, as more countries ramp up military spending and work to shore up critical supply chains.
As co-lead of a16z's American Dynamism practice that she helped to launch in 2022, Boyle hasn't limited her investments to defense tech. She is also investing in manufacturing, education, public safety, and logistics.
Beth Hammack, a voting member of the Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee, is one of several central bankers added to the list this year. In December 2024, just five months after joining the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Hammack cast the lone vote on the policy committee against lowering interest rates. She argued that the economic outlook for the year ahead was skewed toward higher inflation -- a prescient call as inflation concerns persist.
Although the Trump administration has publicly made its case for lower rates, Hammack has maintained a hawkish stance, consistently saying that monetary policy needs to be restrictive to rein in the elevated inflation that has plagued Americans for the past five years.
Powerful investment industry gatekeepers are also on this year's list. Sarah Samuels, chief investment officer at consultant NEPC, has added a diverse array of money managers and investment strategies to the menu from which the firm's pension, foundation, endowment, and other institutional clients choose. Nancy Fahmy, head of the investment solutions group at Bank of America, is a gatekeeper for investment products that Merrill advisors can have on their platform.
Two women returned to this year's list in new roles after a hiatus. Ida Liu, previously at Citi's private bank, has earned the trust of some of the world's most influential families and entrepreneurs. She is now charged with expanding HSBC's private banking presence at a moment of fierce competition. Joanna Rotenberg, previously at Fidelity, now oversees Vanguard's U.S. direct investor business, with an eye toward having an advisor in every investor's pocket.
Barron's seventh annual list honors only women based in the U.S. Our London-based sister publication, FN, publishes an annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in Finance in Europe.
Our list, chosen by a committee of Barron's writers and editors, is drawn from staff recommendations and hundreds of external nominations. Barron's looks for veterans and visionaries, including leaders of some of the biggest companies in finance, and rising stars, including some who are building their own successful companies. The list honors women who are influential within their firms and the industry, but also beyond. Many are working to cultivate the next generation of women in finance.
The list includes several notable investors, such as Erin Miles, head of Alpha Engine at Bridgewater Associates. In his nomination, Greg Jensen, co-CIO of the hedge fund giant, described Miles as "the single best combination of investment acumen and ability to lead world-class investment professionals" that he has encountered in his career.
Miles' investment insights and efforts "massively contributed" to last year's returns, he said. It was the hedge fund firm's most profitable year in 50 years.
The varied backgrounds of the women on this year's list reiterate the many paths to the top in finance. Sharon Hill, head of global and income active equity at Vanguard, taught math before becoming a quantitative investor. Kate Burke, CEO of asset manager Allspring Global Investments, began her career as a bank teller, and later served as chief talent officer at a rival asset manager.
One position comes up often as a springboard for women on the list: chief of staff. Jessica Tan, head of Americas, global product solutions at BlackRock, spent two and half years working as CEO Laurence Fink's chief of staff. "I got a front-row seat to everything he was seeing in his role as CEO and really connecting the dots globally -- whether he was meeting with other CEOs, heads of state, or clients," she says.
Tan, now a top executive at BlackRock, has built a reputation for anticipating change and finding ways to get ahead of it. She advised the Bank of Greece during its debt crisis, helped craft the firm's sustainability strategy in 2020, and has sped up product innovation to find tools to help investors navigate growing market complexity.
A member of BlackRock's global executive committee, she has been a driving force behind new products for investors, including the launch since 2024 of more than 60 exchange-traded funds. The firm has added private-market investments in target-date funds, and expanded into digital assets and tokenization.
Racquel Oden, U.S. head of international wealth and private banking at HSBC, was also a chief of staff early in her career, working for the president of UBS. She credits the role for giving her a view into how the business operated and a window into profit and loss decisions. Previous honorees have stressed the importance of acquiring P&L experience to get into the C-suite.
The steady progress of women into the top ranks of corporate executives appears to have stalled, however. Only 9.1% of chief executives at Fortune 500 and S&P 500 companies were women last year, down from 9.7% in 2024. The share of female chief financial officers fell to 16.5% from 17.6% in 2024, according to an annual report from CristKolder Associates, an executive search firm.
The data look better over the past decade, when the number of female CEOs at these companies doubled to 61 from 28. The financial-services industry logged the second-biggest improvement in CEO representation behind services, with 14 female CEOs last year, up from five in 2015.
Some of the women in those seats are on Barron's 2026 list, including Jane Fraser, who runs Citigroup; Adena Friedman at Nasdaq; and asset-manager chiefs including Abigail Johnson at Fidelity, Jenny Johnson at Franklin Resources, and Mellody Hobson, co-CEO at Ariel Investments.
Women are making great strides in the wealth they hold. The number of female billionaires globally more than doubled to 406 last year from 197 in 2015. By 2030, women are expected to control about $113 trillion in global wealth, or more than 40% of investible assets, up from about a third today, a result of entrepreneurship, time in the workforce, and inheritance.
Men and women both prize wealth creation, but there are nuances in their attitudes toward wealth that will shape how companies like HSBC cater to their clients, Oden says. For example, she says, 43% of women in an HSBC survey said they prioritize ensuring financial security for others, compared with 33% of men. The genders also approach philanthropy differently. Some 40% of women surveyed in a different report by the bank said they want to be physically involved with the organizations to which they donate, compared with 5% of men, Oden says.
Oden is focused on "financial fluency," she says, to help clients gain comfort with investing. Given recent market volatility, she favors diversification and a more active approach. "We are in a market where you can't drop it and leave it," she says, noting the impact of higher oil prices on various industry sectors.
Oden views the recent decline in stocks as "a repricing opportunity" and favors tech stocks beyond the so-called Magnificent Seven. "We are in the early innings of AI," she says.
Lauren Kolodny, co-founder of Acrew Capital, sees similarities in the market to the setup that led her to be an early investor in fintech Chime Financial, after a hundred other venture capitalists passed. Kolodny, new to the list, saw enough evidence to suggest that a financial company could make money catering to the masses, not just the wealthiest customers.
Mobile-savvy millennials were entering the workforce distrustful of financial institutions after the 2008-09 financial crisis, she reasoned. That was a positive backdrop for a mobile-banking app like Chime.
Today "AI is the unlock" for a generation of people beginning their financial lives, Kolodny says. That will help to automate the service layer of financial services. Kolodny has taken a stake in Alix, an AI-powered estate settlement platform that streamlines the tedious work of settling an estate after a death.
Kolodny studied international relations at Brown University and started her career working on a clean tech project in India before joining Google. She sees more opportunities as Gen Z demands more-personalized financial services, enabled by AI. As agentic AI moves into transactions, she expects new "rails" or infrastructure needed to facilitate payments, and possibly a new iteration of Stripe. Other opportunities will arise as companies deal with problems exacerbated by AI, such as fraud.
Kolodny says she and her peers debate whether people will have many AI agent relationships, or whether these agents will be consolidated. The answer will have significant implications for her investments, she says. She leans toward multiple agents, which would leave room for startups that provide the connective tissue between agents -- companies offering orchestration, shared context, and infrastructure that allow data and workflows to move across agents.
Many of the women on our list look to nurture rising generations in their respective fields. When Deena Shakir, a venture capitalist and partner at Lux Capital, sought a book to read to her daughter's class to explain what she does, she couldn't find a children's book about entrepreneurs. So she delved into picture-book publishing and created her own: Leena Mo, CEO.
Hilda Applbaum is known inside Capital Group as the dividend queen; she has helped run the Income Fund of America for several decades. But she has also built a reputation for developing the next generation of investors. "What stands out most is that her influence comes from her example, not her words -- steady conviction and advocacy," says Anne-Marie Peterson, an equity fund manager at Capital Group. "In a business that often celebrates the loudest voices, she is quietly excellent."
Excellence in all its forms is the hallmark of this year's honorees.
Write to Reshma Kapadia at reshma.kapadia@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 13, 2026 11:00 ET (15:00 GMT)
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