Obituary | Apr 27,2025
In the domestic financial sector, a field defined by the pinstripes of a "boys’ club," a cohort of women is rewriting the ledger. For this holiday edition, our focus shifts from earnings tables and boardroom performance to female executives in the middle and upper-middle ranks of top financial institutions. Their answers strip away corporate varnish and turn to questions that expose character, such as the childhood fashion mistakes they hope their children never repeat, the festive dish they dislike but still eat for the sake of tradition, and the rituals that steady them when finance grows exacting.
None of these women describes leadership as conquest, spectacle or cinematic triumph. Again and again, they portray finance as a profession in which women have had to prove themselves twice, measure their words, prepare more thoroughly than everyone else and build authority through competence rather than swagger. They return to family, mentors and inner discipline as stabilisers. They challenge one of the profession’s myths. Finance, in their telling, is not reserved for prodigies. It is a business of judgment, energy, communication and nerve. Yet the unity ends there.
The differences are tonal, and they give the collective portrait depth. Melika B. Mohammed and Meseret B. Abebe speak in the language of duty and institutional purpose. Aster S. Neway and Lishan G. Girmay sound more self-authored, emphasising visibility, self-belief, and deliberate growth. Biruktawit Tesfaye frames her place in the field through productivity and practical contributions rather than through symbolic gender contestation. Sebasegel S. Gemeda is direct about imposter syndrome, self-care and the regulator’s role. Lealem Getachew answers with a hard-earned modesty almost allergic to grandiosity.
However, there is more than one way to arrive near the top of the domestic financial hierarchy, and almost none resembles the glossy myth sold by feel-good self-help books. No one claims she was born to lead in a power suit with a spreadsheet in one hand and destiny in the other. Instead, these women speak of long corridors, difficult rooms, second-guessing, overpreparing, family duty and grounded in spirituality, along with the distinctly female instruction to be confident, but not too confident. One chose growth over comfort. Another learned that confidence does not come from approval. Another never saw herself as competing with men at all. Another credits merit and competence, plain and unfussy, for bringing her here.
The barrier was not only overt, though that appears often enough. It was the higher threshold of proof, the closed networks, the pressure to remain agreeable, the suspicion that authority in a woman is borrowed or somehow too expensive to trust. Several return to the same ritual of endurance to be heard. They had to be better prepared, more careful, more consistent and more resilient. Equality, in this telling, arrives less as a trumpet blast than as homework done twice.
What finally emerges is not a tidy sisterhood of identical views but a fuller chorus. These women refuse cliché. Leadership is not framed as a crusade of perfect heroines, but as something human, an unwanted branch assignment, a role accepted before readiness, a father who listened, a husband who helped, a mentor who opened a door, a mother remembered, a 30-minute nap, a swim, a prayer, a family meal at 3:00am on Fasika. In their hands, finance becomes less a science of genius than a test of temperament. Certainly, the structural barriers have not vanished, but more women are learning to outlast them, outthink them and sometimes laugh at them.
You can read the full story here
PUBLISHED ON
Apr 10,2026 [ VOL
27 , NO
1354]
Obituary | Apr 27,2025
Agenda | Aug 23,2025
Commentaries | Jun 22,2024
Fortune News | May 24,2025
In-Picture | Jul 14,2025
Radar | Aug 26,2023
In-Picture | Dec 13,2025
Delicate Number | Oct 18,2025
Covid-19 | Apr 07,2020
Radar | Nov 16,2024
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