KeyCorp Vice chair, head of community banking division
“I leave my Windex at home,” Beth Mooney laughs. “I’m not polishing the ceiling, I’m trying to break it.” The KeyCorp executive is obviously used to the question what it’s like to be a powerful female in the field of banking — nationally, as well as locally. Since arriving here two years ago, Mooney has become one of the highest-profile female executives in town. Earning $1.56 million this year in salary and bonus (with long-term compensation bringing that figure to nearly $3.4 million), she has grown KeyBank’s community banking division with a steady, confident hand: iPod nanos in exchange for new checking accounts (that promotion brought in 120,000 new accounts), letting go of the McDonald Investments brokerage division in favor of refocusing on community banking, and a plan to modernize two-thirds of the company’s 1,000 branches in the next few years. “I think there’s an interesting linkage between this concept of community service that’s civic, and what I’m building for KeyBank,” she says. “I’ve really spent the majority of my time in the last two years building this community bank model.”
