When Katie Pries, President and CEO of Northern Trust Canada, learned about winning the Leadership Award at Markets Media Group’s 2024 2024 Women in Finance (U.S.) Awards, she was thrilled.

“I was honored to be recognized, especially for leadership,” she shared with Markets Media.

Pries has been involved with the women in leadership Business Resource Council at Northern Trust since its launch, and she has stayed involved in mentoring and providing practical advice to others.

Over her 35 years career at Northern Trust, she’s held roles in operations, asset servicing, and working with clients in asset management. “I have never run out of exciting things to do for the company,” she said.

Prior to her current role, she was chief risk officer for the asset servicing business globally. “I learned a tremendous amount as a chief risk officer, global leadership skills and appreciation for risk management and the importance of growing business in a resilient way,” Pries said.

“In my own career, I’ve been really open to opportunities, not looking at career progression as a straight line, which I think is really key,” she stressed.

As head of Canada, her focus on risk management as a foundation for growth has aligned well with the market and helped the company achieve a 130% increase in Canada assets under custody over the last five years (as of December 31, 2023).

Pries shared that she is someone who likes to get different views on topics, and not someone who wants to go and talk to someone who just reflects back to her what she thinks. “I believe in ensuring that you have mentors and allies that are not always like you. I think you can learn a lot from people that are very advanced in their career, and you can also learn a lot from people that are young in their career.”

Pries said that the best advice she has ever received was “not to focus on the issue itself”.

“Obviously, you need to focus on it to get it to correction or resolution, but very quickly pivot and focus on what you’re going to do about it in terms of lessons learned, and how you can take that situation and learn the lessons and don’t let that situation be wasted,” she said.

“I have applied that in my entire career, and it has served me very well,” she added.

Pries claimed that she is very practical leader: “I want to help people see things practically and help them see tangible examples of how they can achieve the broader goals, the strategic goals.”

She added that her leadership philosophy is practical and very hands-on, connecting the dots and communicating so that all team members have a sense of how they contribute to the broader mission.

“Our team strength is crucial to executing on client needs, and this leads to positive referrals for new business. Our clients speak highly of how myself and my team advocate for them,” she commented.

Pries said that when you’re looking at making decisions, it’s really important to understand the difference between tactical decision making and strategic decision making.

“I think people get caught up sometimes and confuse the two,” she said.

Pries further said that she is a big stakeholder person. “If you can understand who the stakeholders are in any situation, and then look at the decisions that you need to make through the lens of those stakeholders as you’re making those decisions that will lead to much better outcomes,” she said.

She added that she believes in being aligned with the organization in terms of culture and values. “The most important is being authentic, and I’m an authentic leader,” she stressed.

“I want to be myself and I want to work in an organization where I can lead with authenticity. When you can be authentic and have the support of your organization, it makes doing your job so much more successful and enjoyable, and our clients can see that as well in how we advocate and execute on their behalf. So to me, authenticity is paramount,” Pries said.

She added that in the future, she is going to continue mentoring: “I’m a big fan of that.”

“I’ve worked with many individuals who say they want to be at this level by this time frame. And while that’s great, and I love aspiration, I think that that can be incredibly limiting,” she said.

The big advice that she thinks has helped individuals is the advice around their career progression and not limiting themselves.

“I implore people to be very open to moving across as well as up. It gives you so much rounding, it gives you so much experience,” she said.

“It gets you into situations and scenarios that you never would have anticipated, which is exciting. And I think that is the biggest piece of advice that I would give individuals starting in their career in finance,” she concluded.