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Avid Modjtabai: Leading Change at Wells Fargo

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Junctures in Women's Leadership
This chapter is in the book Junctures in Women's Leadership
125Avid ModjtabaiLeading Change at Wells FargoAmanda Roberti and Dana M. BrittonBackgroundImagine yourself an immigrant, having come to the United States at the age of seventeen, now heading up consumer lending at Wells Fargo, one of the four largest banks in the United States. This is Avid Modjtabai’s journey. She is currently responsible for over sixty thousand employees and team members and customers in more than thirty-three million households. Having risen through the ranks at Wells Fargo, she was chosen to lead the company’s tran-sition to online banking at a time when the idea of moving and managing money through the Internet seemed unthinkable, and the technology did not yet exist to make it possible on a mass scale. Then, when Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia, in what Modjtabai describes as “the most impactful transition in the 160-year history of the company,”1 she was called on to meet the challenge of inte-grating the two companies’ technical operations and teams. How would Modjtabai’s strong sense of Wells Fargo’s culture guide her choice of strategies in the transition to online banking? How would her emphasis on collaborative leadership help her to build a team from two diverse companies? Ultimately, what leadership strategies were fundamental to her success?Early Life and EducationIn 1979, at the height of the Iranian Revolution, seventeen-year-old high school senior Avid Modjtabai left Iran for the United States. Modjtabai had always wanted to attend college in the United
© 2019 Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

125Avid ModjtabaiLeading Change at Wells FargoAmanda Roberti and Dana M. BrittonBackgroundImagine yourself an immigrant, having come to the United States at the age of seventeen, now heading up consumer lending at Wells Fargo, one of the four largest banks in the United States. This is Avid Modjtabai’s journey. She is currently responsible for over sixty thousand employees and team members and customers in more than thirty-three million households. Having risen through the ranks at Wells Fargo, she was chosen to lead the company’s tran-sition to online banking at a time when the idea of moving and managing money through the Internet seemed unthinkable, and the technology did not yet exist to make it possible on a mass scale. Then, when Wells Fargo acquired Wachovia, in what Modjtabai describes as “the most impactful transition in the 160-year history of the company,”1 she was called on to meet the challenge of inte-grating the two companies’ technical operations and teams. How would Modjtabai’s strong sense of Wells Fargo’s culture guide her choice of strategies in the transition to online banking? How would her emphasis on collaborative leadership help her to build a team from two diverse companies? Ultimately, what leadership strategies were fundamental to her success?Early Life and EducationIn 1979, at the height of the Iranian Revolution, seventeen-year-old high school senior Avid Modjtabai left Iran for the United States. Modjtabai had always wanted to attend college in the United
© 2019 Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Foreword to the Series vii
  4. Preface xi
  5. Acknowledgments xvii
  6. JoAnn Heffernan Heisen: Enabling Women’s Leadership at Johnson & Johnson 1
  7. Sara Blakely: Reinventing Women’s Shapewear with Spanx 19
  8. Madam C. J. Walker: Leadership Grounded in Social and Racial Uplift 39
  9. Diane McCarthy: Responding to Crisis through Connected Leadership at Verizon 57
  10. Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh: Changing the World through Participatory Design 75
  11. Ursula Burns: Restructuring an American Icon at Xerox 92
  12. Alice Waters: Transforming American Food 110
  13. Avid Modjtabai: Leading Change at Wells Fargo 125
  14. Martha Stewart: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of a Brand 140
  15. Barbara Krumsiek: Putting Social Responsibility on the Investment Agenda 153
  16. Roseline Marston: Navigating Transition in an Employee-Owned Firm at A. D. Marble & Company 170
  17. Subha Barry: Changing the Cultural DNA at Merrill Lynch 186
  18. Contributors 205
  19. Index 211
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https://doi.org/10.36019/9780813565958-011

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter i
  2. Contents v
  3. Foreword to the Series vii
  4. Preface xi
  5. Acknowledgments xvii
  6. JoAnn Heffernan Heisen: Enabling Women’s Leadership at Johnson & Johnson 1
  7. Sara Blakely: Reinventing Women’s Shapewear with Spanx 19
  8. Madam C. J. Walker: Leadership Grounded in Social and Racial Uplift 39
  9. Diane McCarthy: Responding to Crisis through Connected Leadership at Verizon 57
  10. Jane Ni Dhulchaointigh: Changing the World through Participatory Design 75
  11. Ursula Burns: Restructuring an American Icon at Xerox 92
  12. Alice Waters: Transforming American Food 110
  13. Avid Modjtabai: Leading Change at Wells Fargo 125
  14. Martha Stewart: The Rise, Fall, and Comeback of a Brand 140
  15. Barbara Krumsiek: Putting Social Responsibility on the Investment Agenda 153
  16. Roseline Marston: Navigating Transition in an Employee-Owned Firm at A. D. Marble & Company 170
  17. Subha Barry: Changing the Cultural DNA at Merrill Lynch 186
  18. Contributors 205
  19. Index 211
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