Wendy Cai-Lee is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Piermont Bank, a women-founded, entrepreneur-led, technology-fortified commercial bank. Piermont is digitally-enabled and human-delivered, providing an unprecedented banking experience that blends the best of financial services and agile startups.
As a successful entrepreneur and executive, Wendy has 25 years of management and business-building experience in commercial and consumer banking, mergers & acquisitions, and cross-border investment advisory services at Fortune 500 financial organizations as well as start-up companies.
Prior to spearheading the formation of Piermont Bank, she was an Executive Vice President at East West Bank, responsible for its Commercial and Consumer Businesses in the U.S. During her tenure, she was instrumental in helping the bank grow from $22 billion to $36 billion in total assets. She also helped build de novo lending business units in several new industry sectors and in new geographies, including the Greater New York area and Texas.
Prior to East West, Wendy was a Managing Director at Deloitte LLP, where she managed its U.S./China cross-border M&A business. She started her banking career with JP Morgan Chase and held various management positions at both Chase and Citi.
Wendy is a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s New York State Committee for the Advancement of Women in Leadership in Financial Services, and leads the FinTech Task Force for the Committee. She is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Friends of UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) since 2007 and served as its chairperson for seven years. She serves on the Dean’s Advisory Board at
Douglass College.
Wendy is a recipient of numerous industry honors, including “50 Most Important People in Commercial Real Estate Finance” by the Mortgage Observer in 2015 and frequently invited to speak at industry forums and media programs including CNBC. Wendy received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Rutgers University.
