To date, the pair are the only two Black people to run major banks.
So when Wilson told former Bank of America executive Mike Dulan that he wanted to run a major bank, Dulan had to warn him.
“I told him ‘Are you ready to go on that path? Are you truly ready for that?'” Dulan, who is Black and has served as a mentor to Wilson, said in an interview. “Ninety-nine percent of people out here, you tell them what that path is and they tap out. There’s no margin for error. Once you get on it, the spotlight is so bright on you. It’s intense.”
The data on diversity in banking is awful, but it’s awful for almost all industries, according to Lissa Lamkin Broome, a law professor and director of the Center for Banking and Finance at UNC-Chapel Hill.
At Truist, about 12% of senior leadership are racially diverse. At Wells Fargo, that figure is about 13%. For Bank of America, it’s 19%.
This lack of diversity starts with the educational discrepancies that children of color face versus white kids, and only continues from there, Broome said.
“Are you recruiting at historically Black colleges and universities? Is the pipeline full at the beginning or does it have holes in it?” Broome asked.
From there, do people of color get the support they need to make it in a white-dominated space?
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