Editor’s Note

I was an Investment Counselor in the Beverly Hills office of Citi Private Bank. I was investigated over a <$50 cab expense that resulted from a misunderstanding between me and the Private Banker I supported. The HR investigation was heavy-handed, and the firm informed me that my bonus would be withheld until the matter was…

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS Citi Ethics has been known to ask employees during investigations whether they’ve made reports to regulators or blown the whistle with outside parties. Citi’s own policies state that company policy does NOT prohibit employees from speaking with regulators. So why is the Ethics team quietly asking employees whether they did exactly that…

On Staying in the Room — A Response to Story 242 and a Continuation of 246. I responded in Story 246. And now let me be clear about what I am doing. Very early in my career I was almost always the only woman in a pack of men. I was put off by women…

Unemployable Elsewhere: How Tribalism Breeds A Parasitic Culture There is a particular kind of organizational failure that accumulates in meetings that resolve nothing, in systems built without use cases, in team members that cannot self-manage because no one above them is managing either. An Agile coach, brought in to assess team productivity, estimated approximately thirty…

A male MD told me that what I was complaining about at Citi is the same at every other large bank. He questioned whether I’d ever worked at one before — implying I was naive or uninformed about how the world works. At my age and level of experience, I am neither naive nor uninformed…

In CCAR-adjacent functions — processes subject to federal oversight and with direct implications for how a bank represents its financial stability to regulators — governance exists precisely because the stakes of getting it wrong extend beyond the institution to the broader financial system. What happens when Citi leadership in those functions does not understand the…