After 31 years at JPMorgan Chase, Rob Holmes took on a Dallas bank in need of a rebuild. His plan joined Wall Street experience to a very Texas belief: the important decisions should be made close to home.

After building brands at Chase, TIAA and Sundae, Susan Canavari has taken on a stranger brief: make the invisible machinery of retirement feel human.

From campaign planes to the United Nations, JPMorgan and NBC News, Mark Kornblau learned that the hardest communications job is not producing more messages. It is finding the one story an institution can keep proving.