The new chief information officer of TD Bank NA, the U.S. subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion Bank, said her priorities include encouraging women to pursue tech careers and making her staff of engineers feel supported.
Judy Dinn, who started in the role Nov. 1, succeeded Janice Withers, who has retired. Ms. Dinn said her goals take on even more importance given nationwide talent shortages that make hiring and retaining tech employees increasingly difficult.
With the labor market as competitive as it is, Ms. Dinn said, “I really, really always want to make sure that female representation—whether they’re in grade school, high school, universities—that that funnel is always full.”
A study by AnitaB.org, a nonprofit organization aimed at increasing the representation of women technologists, found that women made up about 29% of the U.S. tech workforce in 2020, up from about 26% in 2019.
After graduating from the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Ms. Dinn co-founded Think About Math, a program at the university that encourages high-school girls to consider careers in science, technology, engineering and math. She said she hopes to work on similar programs in her new role.
“Judy has a passion for supporting women in technology, is known for building strong technical teams, and is recognized for her ability to deliver innovative strategies,” TD Bank Chief Executive Greg Braca said in a statement.
Ms. Dinn joined TD Bank last year as chief architect and CIO of U.S. credit cards. From 2017 to 2020, she was CIO of credit-cards technology and retail banking enterprise databases for JP Morgan Chase & Co.
“I really view myself first and foremost as a technologist engineer,” Ms. Dinn said, adding that she is focused on “making sure that the voice of the engineering community in technology is heard and understood.”
One focus will be to make sure that tech employees have the training necessary to continue the bank’s modernization effort, which includes leveraging data to make products more customer-focused, she said.
“We will support them. We will invest in them,” Ms. Dinn said about the company’s engineers. “People want to feel continuously invested in.”
In the retail banking sector, improving customer experience through modernization is a key priority, said Jerry Silva, vice president for financial insights at market researcher International Data Corp., but banks face challenges in those efforts, including finding the right security-technology and artificial-intelligence talent.
Employers in the U.S. listed roughly 360,000 technology job openings in October, an increase of about 76,000 from September, according to an analysis by IT trade group CompTIA.
Ms. Dinn, who also has training as a nutritionist and yoga instructor, said that having a mindfulness mind-set and taking time to meditate helps her approach work problems from new angles.
“I have brought [yoga] to the office every now and then,” she said, although for now the TD Bank workplace is remote due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “I just encourage people to do it,” she said, “whether it’s one minute or five minutes or 10 minutes. It goes a long way to actually just getting more balance in your life.”
This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text
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