Witad Awards 2023: Technology leader of the year—Tracy Kerrins, Wells Fargo

Most mornings and weekends, you’ll find Tracy Kerrins running, surrounded by a group of friends who’ve joined her on this routine for the last 25 years. On weekdays, she’ll drop her youngest daughter—Kerrins is the mother of three teenage girls—off at middle school, then head to work at Wells Fargo, where she’s CIO of consumer technology at the firm.

The leader of a global technology team 8,000 members strong, she oversees the technology that supports the firm’s banking center, ATMs, and contact centers, as well as its credit card, home and auto lending, personal lending, and payment products—a portfolio of products and services that helps support the one-third of US households Wells Fargo serves.

Her days commonly end with a sporting event, participated in by at least one of her children, followed by a late dinner, before it’s almost time to do it all over again. “I don’t think you can ever have it all, but you can do it all,” Kerrins says. “And you can do it with integrity and feel good. I feel good about the role I play at work as a professional, as a mom, and as a wife. It just takes balance, organization, and a desire to do it.”

Part of that balance involves feeding her passion for technology and problem-solving. The projects she looks upon most fondly are the ones started off as the most problematic and carried the highest stakes, she says.

Having joined Wells Fargo in 2019, Kerrins has held senior roles at Antares Capital and Bank of America Merrill Lynch; she worked at Bank of America for eight years prior to the merger. In that time, she’s seen technology trends emerge, shapeshift, die, and emerge again. Today, she’s most interested in the rise of new and innovative data insights powered by AI, as well as the changing nature of how consumers and customers receive information, evaluate sources, and form judgements.

She grew up with print newspapers on her doorstep and Encyclopedia Britannica at her school, which served as the authoritative voices on the world around her. Her daughters’ generation, however, has been reared in the Internet age, dominated by social media giants, which have largely usurped that authority.

“The physical reality is less important to them. It’s just a way to transact, get information, collaborate, even talk and interact,” Kerrins says. “I’m very interested in that collaboration and data exchange and looking 20 years out at how that will change the world.”