Raquel Ettrick Thompson serves the Global Head of Governance & Control for one of the most critical engineering divisions at BNY Mellon—America’s oldest bank. In this role, she provides end to end governance, control and risk management for all enterprise solutions leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as manage the operations and engineering control functions for all Enterprise Payments functions. Under her leadership, her function drives the cross disciplinary groups enterprise wide to govern the trustworthiness, efficacy, accuracy and risks associated with AI/ML products, services and systems. This includes evaluation and implementation of industry frameworks, laws, rules and regulations globally related to emerging technology solutions enterprise wide. Her role is pivotal in creating cutting-edge scalable enterprise solutions that accelerate delivery, automate manual processes, and implementing large language model solutions to accelerate business growth across the Firm, while responsibly managing the associated risks.

She also serves as the division’s Data Privacy Officer, where she acts as the first line of defence in protecting company assets, reputation, and brand by enforcing necessary controls to uphold privacy rights, protect information, and align to leading industry standards. In addition to her responsibilities related to the BNY Mellon Artificial Intelligence Hub, Raquel provides embedded technology risk and control leadership for BNY Mellon’s Clearance and Collateral, Markets, Treasury Services and Digital businesses, which encompass five of the twelve priority business services at the Firm (the greatest quantity owned by one division).

Raquel has over 20 years of experience in the technology audit, risk, management consulting and compliance area, having served in global leadership roles across multiple industries including financial services, communication, and big four public accounting. Raquel is a strong advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) and leads by example in driving positive change in the workplace.

She currently serves as the Global Co-Chair for the Women’s Initiative Network (WIN), the largest employee resource group for BNY Mellon. She is also an active member of the Information Technology Senior Management Forum (ITSMF) groups and participates in BNY Mellon’s IMPACT, Women in Engineering, Hispanic / Latinx Leadership Forum (HLLF) and Diverse Tech employee resource groups. Because of her career accomplishments and commitment to the next generation of talent, Raquel was named a 2022 and 2023 HITEC 100 awardee, which recognizes the most influential and notable Hispanic professionals in the technology industry. In addition, she was recognized as a 2024 Empower Role model sponsored by YouTube for her contributions in the equity, belonging and inclusion space in the workplace. Raquel was also a finalist for 2024 Technology Executive of the Year – Enterprise Edition.