“Being with my clients, helping them to get deals done, building new relationships is what breathes life into me and gets me excited.”
Ask Christina Bresani, Wells Fargo’s head of Mid-Cap Investment Banking, about a recent client visit and she’ll tell you about climbing into the cab of a semi-truck in high heels and passing a driving simulator test to show her client that she understood their business. That story captures everything about how she approaches her work: with genuine curiosity, a willingness to go wherever the client takes her, and an infectious enthusiasm that has sustained nearly three decades in investment banking.
After 25+ years as an M&A banker at two previous firms, Bresani joined Wells Fargo in 2024 as head of Mid-Cap M&A within the firm’s Global M&A business. In November 2025, she took on the expanded role of leading the firm’s Mid-Cap Investment Banking Practice focused on serving mid-cap clients and delivering investment banking products and services to the bank’s Commercial Banking clients. It’s a dual mandate she wears proudly, and one that plays an important role in Wells Fargo’s Corporate & Investment Banking growth strategy.
“When you love what you do, it’s easy to put your head down and keep doing it,” says Bresani. “But what I saw in Wells Fargo was a new challenge to do what I love and help build a leading corporate and investment bank that can bank companies along the whole spectrum of their growth – from mid-cap to large-cap and beyond.”
Building Something That Lasts
The challenge of building out and developing the Mid-Cap Investment Banking team is one that Bresani finds genuinely energizing. “Creating a strategy, building a team that’s going to be successful in the near term and the long term, is really inspiring to me right now,” she says. “That’s hiring people. It’s getting the strategy right. It’s keeping people motivated because when you are building something, it’s not always a straight line.”
She notes that the foundation of any great team comes down to one word: trust.
“The goal is to build a team with a talented group of people who have the same values and want to lock arms to be successful together. It’s not only about individual success, it’s about elevating the entire team and constantly learning from our collective successes and failures,” she says. “This has always been important to me as a leader and it’s central to Wells Fargo’s culture.”
A Career That Kept Saying Yes
Bresani started out as an analyst, fully expecting to spend two or three years in banking before figuring out what she really wanted to do. Nearly three decades later, she’s still there — and still surprised by it. “Every year I would say, ‘wow, I want to do this, I want to learn this, I want to get better at this,’” she says. “And I just kept going.”
She credits a great deal of that staying power to the mentors who showed up early and stayed. “I was really lucky in my early days to have two amazing mentors: both men. That’s important for young women in the industry to know – you don’t have to only have female mentors.” Those relationships, she says, were as much personal as professional. ” They were ‘work dads’ in the sense that they really guided me and cared about my professional and personal growth. To form those kinds of relationships really makes a difference in this business which can sometimes be tough”
The Moment That Tests You
When asked about setbacks, Bresani reflects on one of the most universal and quietly defining moments in a banker’s career: the first time a client pushes back hard.
“There is always a point in your career where a client doesn’t like you or doesn’t like the advice you’re giving,” she says. “The first time that happens, it’s really hard not to take it personally.”
Just recently, she watched a director on her team navigate exactly that situation. Rather than letting it become a crisis of confidence, Bresani chose to reframe it. “I told him: this is your pivotal moment. Here’s how we help you pick yourself up. Here’s your opportunity to really do your job.” She recalls her own version of that moment as a first-year director, when a mentor stepped in, defended her and then told her precisely what she needed to do better. “You have to learn that not everyone is going to agree with what you say, and you have to have a thick skin. But ultimately, this is a client service business. Not every client is the same, and you have to adjust.”
Fueling the Long Game
How does someone sustain nearly 30 years at that pace without burning out? Bresani takes it one day at a time and deliberately so. “It’s easy in this job to get overwhelmed with everything that has to be done,” she says. “I’m very focused on what needs to get done today, what can wait until tomorrow, and making sure I am prioritizing what is important versus being driven by what is urgent.”
But the off switch matters just as much.
“I have three children, an amazing husband, a menagerie of animals, and I am committed to exercise even if it means a 4.30am workout. I find a way to exercise because I need it. Whatever it is, it’s important to find those things outside of work that make you happy and fill your energy cup.”
Another factor to staying happy and healthy she attributes to friendship, a group forged at an all-women’s college that has stayed tightly bound across careers and time zones. “We have a text chain,” she says, laughing. “We build each other up. We laugh and say, ‘You will never believe what happened today,” She pauses, then finds exactly the right phrase for it: “It’s a group hug via text.”
Still Having Fun
When Bresani’s kids ask her about her day, they don’t want the deal mechanics. They want to hear about the people. “I come home and my kids say, ‘Mom, tell me about the people you met today,’” she says. “I meet the most interesting people.” That, more than any title or transaction, seems to be the through-line of her career. She still operates by a simple rule she set for herself long ago: “I’ll stop doing it when it’s not fun anymore. It’s still really fun.”
By Nicki Gilmour, Founder and CEO of theglasshammer.com and Evolved People Coaching.
