Her Story
About Adrienne
Adrienne Dew is a seasoned financial services professional based in Charlotte, North Carolina, with more than 17 years of experience spanning banking, mortgage operations, commercial credit, and enterprise risk and compliance. She is known for her strong analytical skills, attention to detail, and ability to manage time-sensitive reporting and complex datasets while maintaining accuracy and accountability. Her professional approach is grounded in intentionality, purpose-driven growth, and a commitment to building positive, collaborative work environments.
She began her career in banking in early operational roles supporting HELOC and mortgage services during the 2008 financial crisis, which helped shape her expertise in financial resilience and risk awareness. She later progressed through roles at major institutions including Bank of America and Wells Fargo, working in areas such as quality assurance, document control, commercial credit analysis, and operational risk management. Over time, she transitioned deeper into enterprise risk, specializing in conduct, reputation, and regulatory risk frameworks. She has recently joined American Express, where she contributes to culture and conduct risk management within a compliance-focused environment, further expanding her experience in organizational risk strategy at a global level.
Alongside her corporate career, she is actively engaged in community service and leadership initiatives in Charlotte. She participates in employee resource groups and supports outreach efforts addressing food insecurity, homelessness, and educational needs through local nonprofit partnerships. Known for her collaborative leadership style and strong interpersonal skills, she consistently builds meaningful relationships across teams and senior stakeholders. Her career reflects resilience, adaptability, and a sustained commitment to both professional excellence and community impact.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Adrienne
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to a combination of inner drive and the support of people who have believed in me along the way. I’ve always felt a strong responsibility to honor that support while also continually pushing myself to grow, stay curious, and explore how I can better understand my purpose and what I can contribute. At my core, I see myself as an advocate and lifelong learner—someone who is naturally inclined to support others, stay open to new perspectives, and remain committed to personal and professional growth. A major influence has been my mother, who has modeled service, compassion, and resilience throughout her work in mental health and substance abuse counseling. The values she instilled in me, especially treating others the way I want to be treated, continue to guide how I show up in every space.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
My broader advice is not to be afraid to pivot. I mentioned throughout my career, I've kind of had jobs, and worked this job, and worked this job, but I hadn't realized that I was actually building a career for myself, especially within the last 5 or 6 years. Throughout my career, I've been hired, I've been fired, I've been laid off, but throughout all of that, I've been determined to persevere, to continue on, not just to get a job to take care of myself and maintain my independence, but really wanting to carve out a space for myself in banking and finance. One of the pieces of advice that I also give mentees and younger people that I talk to, interns that I've connected with over the years, is a lot of people give the networking advice around it's not about what you know, it's who you know, but for me it's always been more centered around who knows you. Not even with the intention of being so deliberate about networking and rubbing elbows with certain people, but really genuinely building relationships, having a genuine curiosity about people and the work that they do and what's important to them, but also being able to take certain nuggets of their careers and embed that into yours. People remember you. People remember how you make them feel. People remember the things that you say and do. I think that's been a common theme throughout the course of my career, just different leadership opportunities that I've been awarded where my name was brought up in rooms that I didn't realize was being talked about, simply because of the relationships that I had built. I'm really proud of having built some really genuine partnerships and relationships with people, just building on a human level, making those connections, even though you're meeting in a workspace, it's also about meeting and connecting human to human being.
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