A new senior leader makes Truist’s ambitions crystal clear.
Truist got bigger in its landmark 2019 merger. Kristin Lesher’s job is to make it better.
She left a 25-year career with Wells Fargo and predecessor Wachovia to join Truist in February 2024 as chief wholesale banking officer, reporting directly to CEO Bill Rogers. The title may undersell her broad responsibilities as the leader of corporate and commercial banking; investment banking and capital markets; wealth management; payments and commercial real estate.
Those areas already represent nearly 60% of Truist’s loan balances and 53% of its annual revenue, while about 7,500 employees report to Lesher. But Rogers and other bank executives have emphasized their desire to significantly expand the company’s corporate banking businesses to complement its retail and small business banking units.
Lesher’s compensation reflects the Charlotte-based company’s high expectations. Upon taking the job, she received a $3.5 million bonus and $5.15 million in restricted stock that vests over three years. Including other stock and pension awards and her base salary, she received $14.57 million in total compensation in 2024, which exceeded Rogers’ $13.95 million.
“I was really recruited to generate growth in what was a newly formed wholesale banking business,” she says. “The challenge was to bring the businesses together and build a growth engine that serves our clients well and drives shareholder gains.”
Not that switching jobs was an easy decision, she adds. “Anytime you are 25 years at one place, it’s a tough decision, no question. But I think it was the right decision with the right opportunity. I’m really lucky that I loved everything that I learned at the first place, and I love the opportunity we have ahead of us here.”
Rogers, who is in his late 60s, was “absolutely instrumental” in Lesher’s move, she says. “He has a strong commitment to seeing the performance that we desire and expect come to fruition. He’s a huge developer of people and talent, and he’s highly generous with the amount of time he’ll spend with you.”
Time to Accelerate
Growth is a word that Lesher repeated constantly during a 30-minute interview. For decades under CEOs John Allison and Kelly King, BB&T ranked among the fastest-growing large U.S. banks.
That pace slowed after its combination with Atlanta-based SunTrust in 2019. In addition to the historic challenges posed by big mergers, Truist also faced a tragic pandemic that inhibited the integration.
Six years later, the company’s senior leadership has turned over as it operates offices in 17 states and the District of Columbia and builds a national business in corporate banking to challenge its larger rivals.
The key holdovers in the executive suites are Rogers, who became SunTrust’s CEO in 2011 and succeeded King as Truist’s chief in 2021, and Dontá Wilson, the chief consumer and small business banking officer. He joined BB&T’s executive leadership team in 2016.
Truist’s wholesale banking group hired more than 300 employees in 2025, joining what Lesher calls “an already super capable team.” Those new hires include people in treasury management; corporate, commercial and middle-market banking; new industry teams; and wealth management.
In some ways, Truist’s capital markets push mirrors Wachovia’s efforts when Lesher joined the North Carolina company in 2000, the year she earned an MBA from Northwestern University. Less than a year later, First Union CEO Ken Thompson brokered the merger with Wachovia CEO Bud Baker, raising the combined company’s ambitions in competing with New York’s banking industry leaders.
“I would say the parallel is that we’ve got a big opportunity for growth that’s out there and the way we need to get at it is in delivering in a really integrated way to the clients that value that,” Lesher says. “We’re a bank that has all the capabilities, products and solutions that clients need and want, but we’re also small enough to be pretty nimble in how we serve them.”
While smaller than megabanks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, Truist ranks in the super-regional tier with U.S. Bancorp and PNC by offering a similar range of products and services. Truist has 20,000 commercial clients with at least $10 million in revenue.
Now, its leaders see a fresh opportunity in what Lesher calls “the upper middle market.” That was labeled as businesses with $500 million to $2 billion in revenue in a Truist presentation at an industry conference in November.
“It’s not a place that we’ve prospected as actively previously, and now we’ve got an intentional effort about making sure that we’re acquiring new clients that fit that profile, where they can get a lot of value out of the products and services that we deliver,” she says.
Managing wealth for well-heeled clients is also a priority. “We have a huge opportunity in front of us in that only 2% of all of our clients, both consumer and commercial clients, are also wealth management clients. We’ve got a lot of folks that already know us and trust us where we’ve got the ability to deliver wealth management to them and their families.”
Overall, Lesher’s businesses are pivotal for Truist to meet its revised target of a 15% return on common equity by 2027, which Rogers announced last year. “A big piece of that is the fee growth that we’re going to deliver, inclusive of wealth management growing at a higher rate than it has grown historically,” she says.
Truist says it is showing momentum, with investment banking and trading revenue growing 46% in 2024, compared with the prior year. Payment revenue gained 10% in the same period, according to the American Banker newspaper.
Lesher spent much of her Wells Fargo career in New York and Washington, D.C., where she and her husband plan to live until her 15-year-old son graduates from high school. But she considers herself very much a North Carolinian. Lesher is a Duke University graduate, while her two older children attend Wake Forest University, where she and her husband are on the parents’ advisory council.
“My job is in North Carolina, I spent 15 years in North Carolina, I had my (three) kids here, and my job is based here. I’m here every single week and I love being in North Carolina. For us, it absolutely feels like home.”
What are key attributes for your career success?
I’ve been fortunate to work in a lot of different areas of banking over the last 25 years, so I’ve had experience in M&A and investment banking, in corporate development, as an adviser to senior management, and then working in commercial banking in a few different roles. I’ve had experiences across many business lines as well as learning from great leaders during a time period in the banking industry where there were all kinds of different crises.
What are your key messages for younger bank leaders?
I focus on helping people understand that you’ve got to do a really good job in the job you’re in. You need to position yourself to work underneath leaders who have a lot to teach you and are willing to invest in you. That can include taking you with them when they pursue additional opportunities. And it also really looks like making sure that they are giving you more challenges so that you learn a lot about how to do the next job before you get in it. I’m a big believer in getting promoted when you are ready, versus when you think you are ready. I encourage people to seek out leaders that take the personal time to invest in them, and teach them to get some capabilities for the next thing. ■
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David Mildenberg is editor of Business North Carolina. Reach him at dmildenberg@businessnc.com.