VO: Welcome to Women Wisdom Worth, the podcast series from Uplevel, where we learn from women around the world about what they're doing to find success and joy in this digital age. For show notes and free bonus resources, simply visit www.uplevel.com/podcast. We'd love it if you subscribe like. Leave a nice review and share the show with your friends and colleagues and remember to check out.
Uplevel. Uplevel is the global leader of women trained generative AI transforming society and business featuring women centric data inputs, insight and advice. You'll find all the answers you need and a way that works for you. As you navigate the complexities of modern life, check it out on uplevel.com.
Let's get started with your host, Sarah Bole. Over to you, Sarah.
Sara Bhonsale: All right. I am so excited to beyond excited today on Women Wisdom Worth. We are thrilled to host Jennifer Smith, the Transformative Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Zion Span Core. She is recognized as one of the most powerful women in banking.
Jennifer has led a 10 year overhaul of Zion's core technology infrastructure, assuring in a new era of digital banking for the institution, and we are gonna be talking about that today. Jennifer has an extensive background at Wells Fargo. A passion for sustainable tech solutions. She has been instrumental in building Zion state-of-the-art technology center, which prioritizes energy efficiency and community wellbeing.
I. A true leader in financial technology and for women all over the world. Jennifer is not just an innovator, but also a vocal advocate for tech, education and gender diversity in the field. So couldn't have chosen a more perfect person to speak to today. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you for being, oh.
Jennifer Smith: Thank you, Sarah, for having me.
I am, um, just, it's a pleasure to be here and I'm so excited to be in this dialogue with you and your listeners. Um,
Sara Bhonsale: excited to have you here. It's such a timely conversation. Um, lots of opportunities for us to, to tap into your knowledge and your experience. So again, thank you. Thank you. Uh, let's just start by your journey.
I'd love to. Learn about your journey from start to now where you are, CIO at Zion, and how your past roles have shaped who you are today and your approach to leading technology. Yeah. In, in, uh, banking and finance.
Jennifer Smith: Absolutely. Um, my, my path to CIO is an unconventional path. Um, I've been in this role for nine years, uh, which is a long time in the technology domain, and I did not come up through the traditional engineering ranks.
I, uh, I have brought significant expertise in risk management, operation and leadership. With a technology lens. Uh, early in my career, I was fortunate enough to be in roles where I had, I was engaging with the board of directors sometimes in small capacities, and now on a much, you know, very frequent basis.
That gave me a very unique perspective on the str strategic drivers of the company. And how everything was fitting together, what was important to our organization and how are we serving our communities. Um, this experience really forced me to connect dots between business drivers risks. Technology processes and people.
And in a nutshell, in a nutshell, that has been my, uh, journey to where I'm at now and being in the CIO role coming up through nonconventional. Uh, paths, uh, has, has been super beneficial, uh, because I'm applying this business lens, but technology's always been, um, at the core of the work that I was doing as well.
Sara Bhonsale: I think, uh, uh, non-conventional, but also. As I'm listening to your story and your journey, it sounds organic because you're taking all of these small parts right and putting them together to have a, a very holistic understanding and seeing where technology can, um, make these processes more efficient or, or better or, uh, more effective for our, your users, your customers.
Um. I think it's actually pretty organic and, and what we should all strive to do is like take these pieces of experience and build them into an area of where our expertise can actually make change. So, I mean,
Jennifer Smith: oh yeah, thanks for naming that. I, it's, um, it's. I just think about the power and being able to do that as we look at some of the complexities of problems that we have an opportunity to solve that air in front of us.
And, um, if we just appoint, if we approach it from one angle, um, we'll miss so much. And the yes,
Sara Bhonsale: exactly that. And so to have all of, all of your personal experiences. Spill into this. Yeah. Mm-hmm. That's exactly, exactly that. And, and I think it's important for us to speak about women in particular. We talk so much on this podcast about all the experiences.
Um. That women bring to the table and how typically, you know, they're not always at the C level, they're not always at the C-suite, and, and the majority of work that women do traditionally is, you know, lower management. Mm-hmm. But to have that knowledge, to have that experience, be able to bring that up and up, I mean up level, for lack of a different word.
But to uplevel that and, and be able to drive the change or the real work in an organization is, is really inspiring. So I wanna talk about your work at Zion. I wanna talk about so much with you actually today. But, um, but what you've done at Zion has been a massive decade long tech transformation. Mm-hmm.
And I, I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. So can you walk us through like. I'm sure that it's changed over the last decade, but, uh, but the main goals that have always been there and the challenges that you've encountered in the transformation and, and ultimately its impact on the customer experience.
Yeah.
Jennifer Smith: You, most people don't think as banks as being highly innovative. So I get that. Um, what's really, you know, contextually interesting, uh, is that. Financial services, aside from big tech industry, spends more on technology than other industries across the board. So we're like one of the biggest spenders in technology and we were the earliest innovators in technology bringing mainframes and in the nine early 1960s for large commercial use.
Um. However, those mainframe, and we kept building new technologies on top of it. So banking has every kind of technology imaginable. It's such a great place to come if you want to, uh, to experience any type of technology. Um, but these mainframe centric event investments are still deeply embedded in these legacy organizations.
Banking, banking being one of them. And those legacy investments have caused us, uh, being creative and innovative. To create a patchwork of systems, um, in order to make it all work, work together. So our goal was to modernize this environment, to pull out a lot of that complexity and that older technology that, um, just plagues, plagues banking.
And we are one of the. Uh, largest banks in the country, um, probably the. Uh, only US based bank to, uh, to take on this kind of transformation task of wow out all of our core systems. And our core system in banking is consumer lending, commercial lending deposits. All of our accounts for our customers sit here.
And so the reason banks don't tackle that to the extent we have it is just really risky. Um, so it, so you go, we go into it with. A larger risk profile and uh, but we knew in order to be ready for the future, to be able to move with much greater speed for our customers. Taking out that complexity, taking out a lot of the, um, you know, the bump, the, the, um, the bailing wire and the bubble come that holds some of these things together was really important for us to do.
For the next few decades. And so we aim to create a modern data and integration ecosystem, a real time environment, um, which is, is unusual in banking. Most things are done Sure. In batch, um, processes. 'cause they were designed for decades ago. Environment. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So then we bring these things. So we've come to, you know, our impact is we move things faster to market.
And the challenge, uh, the biggest challenge was just engaging on a dec decade long project was to keep, quite frankly, the hearts and minds of everyone engaged for that period of time. From the board, clear down to the person, um, who's doing hands-on keyboard work to make it all, to make it all function.
Sara Bhonsale: Is that still the challenge, just keeping that communicate? Yeah. Well,
Jennifer Smith: we completed it in July. Um, and so now we're, our challenge is actually okay, we have been in this development mode for a while now. We've gotta bring it into business as usual and extract the value mm-hmm. From it. But, uh, the, the ability to maintain, it's just change management.
Um, was a big deal and then the technology was changing as we went. Sure. Along. And so, sure. You know, a decade ago thinking about how are you gonna take something in the cloud was not, um, a primary driver for us. So things have changed in that last decade.
Sara Bhonsale: Things have changed, the speed at which things are changing and you, you said the word maintenance and so I just think, you know, that development probably never stops.
And, and even though it is, um. And, and customer facing were, uh, investor facing or whatever user facing. Um, I'm sure that that work continues. There was, uh, something that you said that I, I thought was really important to come back to, and that was the idea that, um, uh, actually, let me, let me go back. We were talking about.
The consumers. Oh, we were talking about how the technology was built for batching, right? Yes. Now it is in real time. And so I'm curious, you said you were the, the only bank that has really integrated, um mm-hmm. To this level. Are other industries or other banks or other financial organizations looking to you for, uh.
Advice, guidance.
Jennifer Smith: Absolutely. Um, I mean our story has definitely been watched and we have had some great successes and we've had some challenges and I think it has informed how other banks are approaching this. And I think what we're seeing from larger banks, the very large national banks is a, a recognition that they aren't gonna be able to do.
To pull out all of their core systems at once that they're gonna do, they're gonna take a much more incremental approach and maybe not address all of that technical debt because that's what they need to, to manage it. They're also recognizing I. That some of these smaller chunks are important just from a change management standpoint.
Because to maintain a CEO and a board's commitment for a decade is unusual to have that level of commitment. Mm-hmm. And so I do think we're informing the industry. We are sharing what we've learned with, um, our peers, uh, to help them. 'cause we actually think that, um. That this is important for the banking industry to address overall.
And so if we can be of assistance, we want to be helpful.
Sara Bhonsale: Uh, the, the ultimate maverick in finance and banking, I just think that's really cool and, and how fortunate, um, that you get to be the center of that. And when we talk about like sustainable change, I think it's really important to have leaders in this space and.
How fantastic that, that you're able to do that. And like you said, a decade long commitment for a board and like any organization is, is not the norm. And, and to have that consistency all the way through is really cool
Jennifer Smith: there. One thing you'll really like that's also not the norm is on this project, the, uh.
52%. I think of the, this is a major technology project. 52% of the, of the people on the project were female, and 62% of the executive leaders, senior leaders were female, which is unheard of. On a technology project. Um, and I, it just speaks to the power of having, um, equity on your teams because what. What we saw was the strength.
We kind of, we spoke earlier about the connections like that. I've had the, the great, um, blessing of being able to, uh, to build across my career and see strategic drivers, but that, you know, that connection and relationship and long-term commitment that we, that we saw, that resilience that we saw some of our team members bring, and then we saw our other team members bring.
This laser focus on execution and the mix of that, which, you know, it's some, those kind of skills show up differently in men and women. But the mix of that together, I think enabled us to accomplish something that was unique and had a wife over, uh, multiple years.
Sara Bhonsale: So. As much as I want to. Well, I am going to attribute that to having the majority of women engaged in the conversation.
Um, I know you're a very strong advocate just from what I've read about you, for increasing the repre, the representation mm-hmm. Of women in tech, especially in finance. Um, so this is a bit of a loaded question, but how can we. Encourage and get more women to engage with AI and the tech fields in banking.
Jennifer Smith: Yeah. You know, I, uh. I think, and it's easy for me sitting in a place where I'm just immersed in it every day. And I, I definitely think there's more research needing needed to be done of why, um, women aren't as engaging as much as men are in this space. But I think there's some leverage points that are important, um, when we.
Spoke about how important it is to have diverse, not just perspectives, but disciplines coming into the AI or into technology. Um, and I see, you know, those disciplines and I think widely accepted that. Disciplines around engineering are incredibly important, but disciplines around ethics and philosophy and creativity and um, and being able to have balance to ensure all of the different perspectives are, are needed or are represented and sociology and, and that we are creating with as AI continues to advance.
Um. That, you know, it, just taking it to an extreme, uh, of thinking about this as, you know, as, you know, LLM, some convergence potentially happening there and not potentially, I, I would predict a lot of convergence happening in the years ahead. And this really, uh, for simplicity sakes a digital brain that people are using, um, to inform and create knowledge.
Um. We need all those disciplines represented. Yeah. And so I think being able to get more women involved is, is being able to talk about the why and why the engagement's so important and not get so focused on. Like the, the mechanics of the architecture. And that can be intimidating 'cause it changes every single week that you don't have your head in it by minute, minute by minute by minute.
Exactly. So, um, I think that becomes important is being able to think about the, why it's so important, what the future looks like, and why women need to be present. Because the, our future really depends on it. The quality of our, you know, our lives depend on, um, this representation. In my view,
Sara Bhonsale: we talk so much on this podcast about, um, engaging women because at the speed in which the AI is integrating and developing, um, yes, every day, minute by minute, right?
It is. Mm-hmm. Um, un it's historical, right? Um. And AI as we know it today, has the possibility to be the great democratizer, right? Yeah. And the more diverse voices, um, and those perspectives of like the sociology of it and the, the why behind it, I think, um, is going to be that lever that mm-hmm. Allows that to be the great democratizer.
Mm-hmm. I think that's where we need the women. Um, I wanna, there's so many things I wanna cover today. Um, your work at Zion. So speaking of this idea of, of the why, right? You've, you've been a champion of sustainable and community focused projects, which I just love, uh, like the Zions Technology Center. So I'm curious how you're able to balance that.
Why, like the environmental, the social, the governance priorities with the innovation and. How does AI play into that area? Yeah,
Jennifer Smith: you know, I know the term ESG can be like a loaded topic and um, and I think at the end of the day it comes down to just creating long-term trust. Stakeholders and, uh, we, I have loved being involved, building out the Zions tech Center, which, uh, I'm really proud of that.
It's like the largest platinum lead workplace, um, in the state of Utah. Um. Just kind of, we have 180 EV chargers, for example, and Wow. It's just, it's just something that we just love people coming in to see, to see and experience. And, um, so one, uh, when we, when I think about AI and balancing these other things, foundationally, everything about banking is trust.
Everything Wow. Is about trust. And when I think about what we do, um, in the ESG space and let me break that down a little bit from the environment, and we recognize that there are scarce resources and that we have to be good stewards of, of that, and. We are members of a community where people live and they want their quality of life to be, to be, um, strong.
And so we, you know, we need to contribute to that and have, um, maintain our responsibility around that. And we also know as we look forward. Um, and to, uh, our workforces in the future. We know demographics are changing rapidly. Yeah. And that if we wanna have the talent pipelines to fill the roles that we need, I.
In every position that we have to be building relationships with people of all backgrounds. And by the way, our customers come from all backgrounds as well. So we have to be aware of that and we have to be nurturing it just for our own kind of long-term viability as well. And then, um, by governance standpoint.
We manage our customers money and again, they have to trust us to do the ethical thing. And so yeah, we are regulated, we are heavily regulated. Um. We need to do things like make sure that we're not extending credit to customers that can't afford it with kind of excessively high rates or hiding fees in the way we disclose things.
So those are things we can't do, we don't want to do. We don't wanna create harm. And so all of that is really core to our. To our work and as we think about ai, um, that's going to inform where we are willing to. Um, use ai. So we're not gonna use AI in places that we like Gen ai. We're not gonna use Gen AI in places where there'll be bias created by it and potentially harm customers.
So those are guiding principles that we already have in place. We have policies around responsible AI that were, before we started doing anything, particularly with gen ai, um, in our
Sara Bhonsale: organization. So what I'm hearing is every large financial organization needs a Jennifer Smith at the helm. This you are, I I love that you're guiding light or your North star is trust in banking.
Mm-hmm. Um, and what that specifically means in terms of like predatory Yeah. You know, opportunities for pre. Predatory behavior and making sure that that trust is, is at the core of what we do and how to manage this shifting technology. There's something you said earlier about, you know, 10 years ago even just putting something to the cloud was a very complex.
I, uh, thought and now it is, you know, that development every day. So keeping up, being able to leverage your services, your products, um, your relationships with your consumers, but also keeping that trust at the forefront, um, and managing that balance of, of ethics with we've got it. Keep up with this. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. And, and utilize this, leverage this to again, make lives better for our Yeah,
Jennifer Smith: yeah. Absolutely. Uh, yeah, it's, yeah. If we aren't able to maintain trust, um, then, you know, our organization doesn't, doesn't last. And so it is core of what we, what we do. I think that that's, that's true particularly of community banks, um, regional banks that, um.
They are so close to what's happening in their customers communities as well. Um, and so it's a, it's an industry that I'm just really pleased to be part of.
Sara Bhonsale: Well, I did wanna talk about this idea that, uh, 20 trillion the. The 20 trillion economy on technology and artificial intelligence in particular. But I'm gonna save that because I think that is a whole other conversation that we need to have and how women can be a part of, of that, how women can capitalize on that.
Yeah. Um. That is a whole other conversation. It's such a great topic. Yeah. I'd have to continue this. Um, but, uh, I heard your outlook. I heard your outlook dig, and I said, oh no, she's got another meeting. So I wanna be mindful of your time, but if we could close out and if you could just share, um, any advice that you would give to young women who are entering either finance or, or technology, or maybe similar experiences that you have where you did all these things.
And we're able to bring them together. Yeah. What advice would you give?
Jennifer Smith: Well, first off, in the technology space, um, the gender gap is real. Yeah. And it is so important that we understand our why. And then two is we have to have our network of support, um, and people. That we can rely on, that we can talk to.
If we're in, in, um, a like higher education, pursuing a, a degree and we're underrepresented, well go find your allies, your friends, that, that can support you when you're in business, make the investments. And building up your network. And it won't feel like sometimes it's going to feel draining, like it's one more meeting or one more lunch.
But it is so worth it long-term for stickiness And, uh, these are careers that will economically support its long-term. And so hang with it. Build that network and just that, and know that that investment will pay
Sara Bhonsale: off. I think that's fantastic advice. We, we talk about that a lot on women wisdom worth, and that is about finding your mentors, finding your people.
Mm-hmm. Uh, building your network and also upskilling yourself. Right. And just making sure, yeah. Which, which happens through networking. Yeah. Uh, having conversations, like the conversations I, I'm having mm-hmm. Today and just learning about, um, different perspectives from different women in the field. I think that's, that's great advice.
Um, and. The gender gap is real. So, uh, yeah, never a better time than now to take advantage of the opportunities while they exist and, um, and build our network. Because I, I think about like growing exponentially and the more conversations we have, the more networking. It just builds that web for us as women and, uh, and helps us to stay fresh and engaged with, with what's happening.
Um. I agree. So thank you so much. How can we find you? Um, anything you wanna share, like the, the Zion's tech center or anything that you think our listeners should go check out?
Jennifer Smith: Uh, well you can find me on, uh, on LinkedIn, um, uh, Jennifer Smith, which is there a lot of Jennifer Smith. Jennifer Smith Science.
Okay, perfect. Uh, look for me there. And, uh, love to connect with other. Other women who are interested in continuing, continuing this conversation and or men too, of course. Um, and then in terms of fun things to check out, just check out Utah. There's so much, so many fun things happening here. And, uh, we love to have people come and visit us here, especially
Sara Bhonsale: this time of year.
Yes, it's beautiful. And um, Jennifer just shared that they have snow. Yes, it's coming. It's coming. Coming. Lovely. Thank you so much for your time, and thanks for being here and sharing your wisdom and your experiences. It was such a lovely conversation.
Jennifer Smith: Thank you, Sarah. Had a great time.
VO: Thanks for joining us today on Women Wisdom Worth, the podcast series from Uplevel, where we learn from women around the world.
About what they're doing to find success and joy in this digital age. For show notes and free bonus resources, visit uplevel.com/podcast. We'd love it if you subscribe, like leave a nice review and share the show with any friends and colleagues. Who are looking for fresh ideas on how to help women find success and joy in this digital age?
And remember to check out Uplevel Uplevel is the global leader of women trained generative AI transforming society and business featuring women's centric data inputs, insight and advice. You'll find all the answers you need in a way that works for you as you navigate the complexities of modern life.
Thanks and see you soon.