Chase exec sees roles for women changing

Corrine Burger leads operations for Jpmorgan Chase’s Columbus hub, which is the bank’s largest employment center at nearly 20,000 workers and a place known for innovation.

The CPA has held essential roles across the bank during her career. She was the accounting mind charged with balancing the books on Jpmorgan Chase’s acquisition of Washington Mutual Bank from FDIC receivership the weekend of Sept. 26, 2008, resolving the largest bank failure in U.S. history. Burger is credited with dramatically improving Chase’s customer experience following the housing crisis and the many challenges the company faced at the time.

Locally, through her work as a board member of Columbus 2020 and Columbus State Community College, Burger is involved in projects to advance the region’s workforce and strengthen the talent pool available to Chase. Columbus CEO talked with the executive about how she got to where she is today and what people say when they imagine moving to Columbus.

Q: So you’re an Ohio native?

A: I grew up in Canton and went to Ohio State University. I went to a private school in Canton, and so (for college) I wanted to go to a big school and experience all of the things that a big school could offer you. And it was a fabulous experience. I started out in engineering but switched into business when I thought about having a family. It seemed accounting would provide me a little bit more flexibility. I’ve had lots of flexibility, and I still go back to Ohio State. I’ve been involved in the accounting faculty there and participated in some advisory councils there.

Q: What was your first role in your career?

A: I graduated from Ohio State in the mid-1980s and went to Phoenix to take a job in public accounting at Deloitte. I’m a traditional accountant by trade, a CPA. I worked there for six years and decided I wanted to come back closer to home because we were ready to start a family.

I had an opportunity to come work in (Bank One’s) corporate headquarters here in Columbus. I worked Downtown at 100 E. Broad Corrine Burger

Position: Columbus location leader and managing director for consumer and community banking and asset and wealth management, Jpmorgan Chase & Co. Age: 55

Previous: Managing director roles with Jpmorgan Chase involving mortgage banking, risk management, operations and regulatory compliance Education: Bachelor’s degree in accounting, Ohio State University, 1985 Hometown: Canton

Resides: Dublin

Personal: Married with four adult children; three sons and one daughter

St. back when all the senior leadership was based there. I looked at lots of different companies . ... I would not have picked a financial institution in particular, but the company was really entrepreneurial and pretty innovative. (Bank One built the first ATM in 1970 and was an online banking trailblazer in the early 1980s.)

Q: The bank you started with in 1991 was very different from the one where you work today, right?

A: When I started at the bank, I think it was around $29 billion in assets. We’re $2.5 trillion today. I think it Corrine Burger says of Columbus: “It has the Rust Belt connotation against it. But our stature as a city is definitely growing.”

was 10,000 people who were here in Columbus back in the day. Now we’re at 20,000.

Q: Was there a time when you realized you were on a leadership track?

A: Yes. During the First Chicago-banc One merger was the first time I really broke into a leadership role. (In 1998, Columbus-based Banc One Corp. merged with Chicago-based First Chicago NBD to form Bank One Corp. The new company placed its headquarters in Chicago.) I was a controller for one of our divisions and had finally gotten to that level where I saw what was happening at the senior leadership level. Jpmorgan Chase & Co. CEO) Jamie Dimon joined Bank One (as CEO) in 2000. So I was able to see his leadership style and how he impacted the bank. And then of course as we merged with Jpmorgan Chase & Co. in 2004 I was still in that accounting role.

My pivot really happened in 2011. I had taken a new role as a CFO of one of our smaller operational divisions. It was right during the (fallout from the) financial crisis, during the mortgage crisis, and I was very quickly asked to move into operations itself and lead up some efforts to help improve the experiences that our customers had in the mortgage business. (You can imagine the challenge of changing processes quickly when you) think about the scale of our business. One in two households in the United States has some kind of relationship with Jpmorgan Chase.

Q: What do you hear from people you’re recruiting to move to Columbus?

A: They’re hard to convince. I think it's the Midwest. It has the Rust Belt connotation against it. But our stature as a city is definitely growing. You're starting to be able to say Columbus and they're like, “Oh, yeah, that's where Ohio State is. What else is there? What can my family do?” I think once people get here, they're like, “Wow, what a great place.” It's collaborative. It's a family-oriented place. You know I look at my colleagues in New York, who have to deal with some of these horrendous commutes, and I think about the opportunity to watch my kids on the baseball diamond and being able to get to the basketball games. This is a really livable city. And I’m very fortunate to have grown my career here.

Q: You’ve had an extraordinary career — and in banking, a place where women aren’t in leadership positions as often.

A: Jamie Dimon is deliberate in everything he does, so he has been very deliberate in making sure that women have as much and equal opportunities as men in our firm. His operating committee, I think it's almost 50/50, male versus female. Our board is starting to feel a little closer to that level. He brought in Mellody Hobson from Ariel Capital, who is an African-american female, as is our CEO of consumer banking, Thasunda Duckett, who is one of the top 10 most influential women in financial institutions. We're very focused on women in leadership roles and improving the representation of black leaders. It’s been very deliberate on the part of the firm.

Katy Smith is the editor of Columbus CEO, a sister publication to The Dispatch.