Tag Archive for: transformation

Nicole Young: Head of CRE Portfolio Management, Wells Fargo

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Nicole Young“At the end of the day, the impact I care about most is on people, helping them achieve what they didn’t think was possible and elevating the organization to new levels,” says Nicole Young. “The efficiency, output, and success that result from bringing out their best work are just byproducts of that focus.”

Young is a leader whose passion lies in transformation: unlocking potential in people, teams, and entire organizations. She shares how this mindset has guided her career, from CMBS to consumer lending and back to commercial real estate, where she now leads Wells Fargo’s portfolio management organization.

Building from the Ground Up

With nearly thirty years in commercial real estate at Wells Fargo, Young has navigated multiple facets of the business, from underwriting and origination to credit approval and even workouts during the Global Financial Crisis. Each role sharpened her expertise and resilience, but more importantly, it revealed her talent for building and shaping something from the ground up.

“I was fortunate to be asked to start from scratch and lead our small loan CMBS (Commercial-Backed Mortgage Securities) program, which focused on loans between 1 million and 15 million,” she recalls. “I started the group, structured how it would work, hired the people, developed the process. That was really fulfilling…it’s where I got the taste for building something from the ground up.”

After fifteen years in CMBS, Young made a pivotal decision to move to Wells Fargo’s consumer side, leading underwriting for the home lending group. The transition required scaling her leadership from 20 people to more than 1,700 while transforming the organization to be more efficient and effective. “That was a steep learning curve,” she says. “I had to really learn to lead with data… and understand how standardized processes are critical to making an organization of that size run efficiently and effectively.”

When Kara McShane, Head of Commercial Real Estate, asked her to return five years later to take on a role that demanded both large-scale leadership and efficiency shaped from the start, the decision was an easy one.

“I had always admired Kara’s leadership and knew I would love to work for her. When she contacted me about coming back to CRE, I was thrilled.” She continues, “Wells Fargo had recently consolidated its commercial real estate lines of business, but no one was managing the portfolio as a whole and making sure those businesses were acting and making decisions as one. There was a huge opportunity to create efficiencies through standardization, and I got to build the new Portfolio Management organization from the ground up.”

Today, Young’s group of nearly 400 professionals oversees capital strategy, underwriting, closing, and portfolio management, bringing consistency, efficiency, and risk mitigation across the organization.

“Kara’s vision of bringing those groups together and leading them as one unit has really paid off given that we are rated the #1 Global Real Estate Bond Bookrunner, #1 CMBS, #1 Bank Agency lender, #1 Construction lender, and #1 in Loan Syndications.”

Learning to Lead at Scale

As Young progressed into senior leadership, she quickly realized that success required developing new skills, most notably, learning how to lead at scale and communicate effectively across large, complex organizations. When she transitioned to leading a team of 1,700, she remembers her boss giving her valuable advice that fundamentally shifted her mindset.

“He said, ‘I need you to lead the people, not the work’…it really shifted me from feeling like I needed to be the subject matter expert to recognizing that I’m here to lead the people. They can be the subject matter experts. My job is to guide them, give them the vision, and make sure the organization is moving in the right direction.”

Young notes that another key part of leading at scale is mastering communication in many directions: down to the team, out to the organization, and up to executive leadership.

“With my team that means ensuring they understand the vision, are aligned around the priorities and the mission, and are inspired to do their best work to deliver for our clients. To do that, I spend a lot of time with the team individually and in groups.”

In communicating up and out to executives, regulators, and the board, Young explains, “It’s about taking the complex and making it simple, understanding your audience, and tailoring your message with the right level of detail.” For Young, effective leadership at scale depends on both connecting with her team and translating that insight for the broader organization.

Authenticity and Grit

Young’s experience learning to lead at scale also reinforced a few key traits that have consistently supported her success. Young attributes much of her leadership growth to a willingness to embrace new challenges and learn continuously. “I’ve taken on different roles throughout my career where I didn’t necessarily have deep expertise,” she says, “but I was always willing to dig in and figure it out. That willingness to learn and to tackle hard challenges is important.”

Young also points to authenticity as foundational to her approach. “I don’t put on a façade…I’m direct and frank, which some people like and some may not, but this is the real me. I lead my team that way, and I try to always be honest and transparent.” That straightforward approach, combined with high expectations, has helped her bring out the best in the people she leads. “One of the things I’m most proud of is the team I build and what I can help them achieve.”

Finally, grit and drive are an important part of the mix. “You can’t underestimate the power of hard work,” she notes. “It has served me well throughout my career.”

Believing in Others as They Believed in Her

While Young’s drive, authenticity, and willingness to take on challenges were essential building blocks to her career progression, she is quick to credit the support she received from both Wells Fargo and the people around her. Early on, she balanced career ambitions with family responsibilities, working part-time as a young mother while continuing to excel in her role.

“People saw my potential and believed in me—Wells Fargo believed in me—and were willing to wait until the time was right for me to step into bigger roles…I appreciate that I was given the time and space when I needed it and I try to do the same for my team.”

Now, Young pays that support forward. “When I see someone’s potential, I bring them in, help them develop, and give them a platform to grow. Sometimes that even means helping them move to other parts of the organization where they can expand their skills.”

Bringing Out the Best

The commitment to lifting others up naturally extends into how Young leads her own team. A defining principle of her leadership is written clearly on her whiteboard: What did I do today to make the team better?

“I spend time really trying to figure out what motivates people individually and collectively as at team to bring out the best in them. I give stretch assignments that get them to do more than they think is possible,” she explains. “When they’ve done the work, I make sure they’re the ones presenting it. They deserve the visibility and the access to other leaders.”

That people-first philosophy is both Young’s leadership signature and her source of fulfillment. She finds meaning in seeing her team grow, whether it is employees she once hired fresh out of college who are now thriving across the organization, or former team members who choose to come back and work for her again. “That to me is amazing,” she says. “Seeing people’s success and knowing you had a part in getting them there is truly fulfilling.”

Even after building multiple teams and functions, Young remains motivated by challenge and transformation. “We have a few more years before this group is a completely well-oiled machine… but it’s exciting to see the impact. Ultimately, success isn’t just efficiency—it’s the growth and fulfillment of the people I lead.”

By Jessica Robaire

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Erica Klinkowize: EVP, US Treasurer, TD Bank

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Erica Klinkowize“I thrive on change as opposed to shying away from it,” says Erica Klinkowize. “By honing the skill over the years of accepting that nothing will stay the same, I have been able to weather storms and adapt.”

Previously profiled in 2022 as the CBNA Treasurer for Citi, Klinkowize has since continued her transformative journey in the financial industry, bringing her passion for complex challenges and people-focused leadership to her current role as EVP and U.S. Treasurer at TD Bank. She speaks to how she views resilience, adaptability, and intentional leadership as foundational to her career evolution.

Thriving in Transformation

Energized by opportunities to make an impact, Klinkowize is as much a leader who embraces challenge as she does change. Consistently choosing to push her boundaries throughout her career, Klinkowize acknowledges, “I’m not drawn to easy paths.” This penchant for challenge has defined her career and leadership, from her years at Goldman Sachs and Bank of America to her current role as EVP and U.S. Treasurer at TD Bank.

“I gravitate towards these challenges. Whether it’s transitioning to Citi when they are in transformation, or specifically taking this position at TD to help enhance and build out the US Treasury organization, I strive to make a visible positive change.”

Klinkowize’s passion for transformation is matched by her deep interest in the complexities of the financial industry and the dedication of those who thrive within it.

“Treasury is an unbelievably exciting space. There are an incredible number of topics, a multitude of risks you’re managing,” she explains. “I’m constantly learning and leading.”

Beyond the intellectual demands, Klinkowize is inspired by the people she gets to work with, “they are very passionate, and it resonates with me. I want to support them and help them as they navigate a very complex environment…there is so much to accomplish, and there are so many people to help.”

A Change Agent with a Vision for Leadership

As a leader, Klinkowize embraces the role of a change agent, acknowledging, “I can’t accept the status quo. I can’t let myself not ask a question.” It’s that continual strive for improvement that motivates her, “it’s less about innovation and more about what else is out there, how can you be better at what you do.”

In driving transformation, Klinkowize underscores the ability to navigate and support multiple levels of change, from the individual to the team to the organization.

“It’s about guiding a large group emotionally and intellectually through change while recognizing you are part of a larger whole. You can’t make a change and think it won’t have downstream impacts—you have to stay mindful of upstream dynamics within the company.”

She continues, “Being a change agent is causing the change, but then also managing the emotional, intellectual, and organizational side. The internal and external clarity on what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it.”

Klinkowize emphasizes that effective change also requires being skilled at collaboration and leading with influence.

“I’m a big connector of people. If there’s a problem at hand, it doesn’t matter if you work for me or not, let’s come together to solve the issue.” She continues, “it’s important to be able to inspire people who don’t work for you, lead without directly managing them.”

Building Resilience

Even as Klinkowize embraces change and the transformation that can come from it, she recognizes that there were times in her career where she felt more like she was weathering the storm than riding on a wave of opportunity.

“I want to be honest and open about my experiences, so that women don’t feel that it was all straight shot up, because it certainly was not.”

She recounts moments in her career that might have deterred others—embarrassing missteps in meetings, even an instance of demotion. But rather than dwell on these experiences, Klinkowize speaks to the importance of navigating those difficult moments and emerging stronger on the other side as key to developing resilience and adaptability.

“It comes from learning and paying attention to how you act in those situations. How you act under stress, under duress, in moments where you’re embarrassed—you keep building up that stamina.”

Klinkowize also points to the power of mentorship and empathetic support in weathering challenging periods. “It’s important to have mentors you trust, both inside and outside of work because you need a voice of reason,” she advises. She maintains that the support of others is critical no matter how high one climbs up the ladder of leadership.

“The more senior you become, the greater the risks in your career. Not everyone will be nice, and not everything will be fair. That’s why resilience and stamina are essential—and why surrounding yourself with the right people matters.”

Intentional Leadership

With her breadth of leadership experience, Klinkowize is thoughtful in her approach to building a team culture, seeing it as a deliberate, ongoing process. When she steps into a new role, she takes time to think about what she wants to bring to the position and how she can improve from her previous experiences.

“As I’m gearing up to start, I’m very intentional about the person that I want to be and the environment I want to create around me. I prepare…I don’t wing it.” This intentionality is evident in the steps she took to establish her team’s culture at TD Bank.

“I made it clear that integrity was my number one standard, setting the tone for everything. I approached it very deliberately—I changed the team name, created a distribution list. Also, I helped craft a story, like an elevator pitch, to clearly describe what my organization does. Everything was very purposeful.”

She notes that her goal is to create an environment where everyone understands their role and feels connected to the larger mission. “I want the rest of the firm to understand what we are becoming,” she explains. By fostering a sense of clarity and collaboration, Klinkowize ensures that her team is aligned and motivated. Her approach underscores her belief that effective leadership is about more than strategy; it’s about creating a shared vision that everyone can rally behind.

A Legacy of Positive Impact

Beyond building the culture, Klinkowize is intentional in striking a balance between driving excellence without compromising the well-being of her team.

“We have to balance how hard we make people work,” she states, acknowledging that while finance is a high-pressure field, it’s essential to create a sustainable work environment.

Klinkowize also recognizes that not everyone will embrace change in the same way, and as a leader of transformation she wants to “help people understand that we will come out the other side.”

Looking ahead, Klinkowize hopes to leave a legacy of positive impact, both in her organization and in the people she leads.

“I want to contribute to the financial safety and soundness of the company, innovate, and bring excellence. I want to continue to be a role model as an empathetic and accountable leader.”

Outside of work, Klinkowize immerses herself in science fiction and fantasy books, cherishes moments with her family and dogs, but admits with a laugh, “I still struggle to find enough time to exercise.”

By Jessica Robaire

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Personal Transformation in 2022: What are You Harmonizing With?

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transformationThe transformational story of caterpillar to winged butterfly has arguably become an overused and often abused analogy for rebirth. Yet, the crux of the journey is neither the caterpillar nor the butterfly, but the dissolution and uncertainty in the void of the chrysalis.

The messy process of transformation, the surrender of what has been for what will come, both terrifies and excites us. As humans, we face uncertainty in the transformation journey many times in our cycles of personal growth.

It is partially the willingness to go the liminal place of uncertainty that determines our capacity for personal evolution.

We also face a challenging matter the caterpillar does not: how resistant the human ego can be when it comes to letting go of who we have perceived ourselves to be, and the worth and value we have attached to it.

Separate Your Worth From Your Roles

Identity, according to Psychology Today, “encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships, and values that create one’s sense of self.”

In her book Warrior Goddess Training: Become the Woman You Are Meant to Be, Heather Ash Amara speaks to how we often attach value or self-worth to the roles we play within our lives. Any role that we identify with, no matter how valuable it may be to our sense of self, also becomes a too narrow script to ultimately live in.

A role can range anything from a “loving mother” to a “successful executive” to a “good friend” to a “resilient entrepreneur.”

We tend to have a script for every role we play, one that was often written before us. How you perceive yourself and how others perceive you can become a trap. Being stuck to being something you have been proud to identify with can be as much of a cage as being boxed into a role that you never asked for, if you have to keep acting out the script of that role to feel worthiness.

If you’ve attached to the image of being a world traveler, you might buy a ticket when you truly crave a home. You may not even be able to admit to yourself that you crave a home. If you’re attached to being a loving mother, perhaps your script does not include taking the personal break you really need. If you’ve attached your worth to being a good friend, you may have written yourself into a contract of being available more than what is now kind to you.

In order to be free to move authentically in our lives between roles, to both redefine who we are and to expand, we must be able to release ourselves from any script we’ve attached our worth and value to.

So take stock of the roles you are playing:

  • What roles have you currently attached some sense of worth or value to?
  • What is the script you have defined for each?
  • What worth do you derive from playing these roles?

When it comes to change, we have to be willing to question where we have displaced our sense of worth. We rather come to source it from our inherent selves and sometimes tear up or simply re-envision our scripts to fit who we are now.

As Brené Brown often speaks to, we have to stop hustling for our worthiness, which ultimately comes from shame and fear we are not enough. We must realize, as Meggan Watterson writes, “Worth is not given, it’s claimed.”

From a place of knowing our inherent worth, we give ourselves permission to shed who we have been without losing our sense of value in the world, and more importantly, our connection to ourselves.

Harmonize To Where You Want To Be

Inside of personal change, there is often a time of dissolution between a previous reality and the one that you are moving towards. And while you might not be able to see it, you can still harmonize towards where your inner awareness is taking you.

Imaginal cells are like the blank slate of the becoming inside the chrysalis. The caterpillar is gone. Possibility exists. At first, imaginal cells operate like disconnected islands and appear to be a threat to the organism. It is only once enough imaginal cells begin to vibrate at the intrinsic tune of butterfly and communicate with each other that they reach the tipping point of collectively becoming the butterfly.

Often, a time of transformation does involve re-imagining our lives. It’s not only new outcomes we might envision, but begins with our beliefs about ourselves, others and how the world works, as these are often shaping the reality we are operating within. If all the cells still vibrated at caterpillar, the change would never occur.

As Joe Dispenza writes in Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, “a state of being means we have become familiar with a mental-emotional state, a way of thinking and a way of feeling, which has become an integral part of our self-identity.”

Just as with roles, the truth is that we can derive worth and value and reward from our limiting beliefs about ourselves and the world, even if that value is the ability to stay comfortable inside of our limitations. We must not only be able to see the pattern, but desire to evolve, by actively challenging the more well-oiled perceptual pathways within so that we shift to and harmonize at a new level. As we begin to do this, we notice change begins to happen.

In her book How To Do The Work, Dr. Nicole LePera, also known as “The Holistic Psychologist”, shares her writing practice of leaning into growth through her Future Self Journaling prompts she used to ground new experiences in her body.

For the new experience she wishes to cultivate (eg restoring balance to her nervous system), LePera writes what she is practicing today, why she is grateful to be practicing it, what she is doing, how will she know when she is doing it and what the change will allow her to feel.

This journaling practice is a way to resonate more with the woman she is becoming and with the balanced nervous system she wishes to cultivate. Often we need to practice not only thinking in the direction we are moving, but feeling into it. This act of attention is infusing the conversations happening within the cells with a new way of being within the body.

Even when we don’t know our next big landing place, we can often feel the internal pull to evolve from within even as we must overcome ourselves, just as the being in the chrysalis must release the caterpillar to the open possibility of the imagination of cells.

Are you able to release yourself from the bounds of roles in which you have previously cast your worth? Are you able to harmonize more of your feelings and thoughts and actions with the being you can feel you are becoming?

In the uncertainty of the chrysalis and transition within a human life, this may look like nothing. But little by little, these small practices become the change.

By Aimee Hansen

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