Company: TIAA
Title: President & Chief Executive Officer
Industry: Financials
Hometown:Â Rochester, New York
Notable in 2023: Raised awareness of the racial retirement gap and the women's retirement gap.
Since joining TIAA in 2021, Duckett, one of only two Black female CEOs of a Fortune 500 company, has pushed to make the retirement industry giant's expertise available to more Americans.
TIAA, which began in 1918 as a retirement program for teachers founded by Andrew Carnegie, manages over $1 trillion in assets and now reaches millions of Americans beyond the eduction sector and across demographics that often go underrepresented, as well as over 12,000 institutional partners.
In 2023, the company saw record-high operating margins and the rapid adoption of its RetirePlus investment product, which offers a guaranteed income in retirement in addition to investment growth. Assets in the program are now over $30 billion across 400,000 individual participants and nearly 500 institutional partners. The asset growth represents a tripling of the $10 billion in assets two years ago.
Sometimes I am the 'only' in the room. But that doesn’t dim my light because I know that, while I’m not the first to introduce my melanin or gender to corporate America, by just being authentically and unapologetically Thasunda Brown Duckett, I can continue to put cracks in the ceiling for the next generation of leaders.Thasunda Brown DuckettPresident & Chief Executive Officer, TIAA
Duckett's focus on improving retirement outcomes for those who are often marginalized by financial institutions, and her efforts to close both the racial and gender retirement gaps, have led to creative partnerships beyond traditional financial marketing campaigns, most notably through an original song called Paper Right performed by musical artists including Pusha T and Wyclef Jean, and intended to prompt conversation about wealth-building.
Before joining TIAA to leads its retirement push beyond the education sector, Duckett spent 17 years at JP Morgan Chase, eventually rising to CEO of its consumer bank and auto finance businesses. Earlier in her career, she worked at Fannie Mae on initiatives to improve outcomes for Black and Hispanic homeowners. Duckett is also a prominent figure on the broader corporate landscape, serving on the board of directors at Nike and at the Business Roundtable.
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