Business Women Awards 2025
INDUSTRY LEADER FINANCIAL SERVICES:
Kimberly Peckham, Webster Bank N.A. senior managing director
COLLABORATION IS KEY for day-to-day operations at Webster Bank N.A. to be successful under Kimberly Peckham’s watch.
Peckham, the bank’s senior managing director working out of the Providence office, likes that whole-team approach at Webster Bank, where everybody has each other’s backs. It’s not that colleagues are competing against each other, she says, but rather working together to get the job done.
“I want to make sure that everyone has a voice as well, and that everyone understands that their voice is important,” Peckham said.
In her role at Webster Bank, Peckham oversees underwriting and portfolio management and is a team lead for portfolio management and middle market for Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The group of 10 that Peckham manages is a mix of seasoned professionals and early-career employees, all focused on helping empower people.
Empowering her team to step up is cherished by the bank’s credit partners, Peckham says.
“We’re the ones in the weeds looking at all the financials,” she said. “We’re doing a lot of the credit analysis and risk mitigation analysis. When we’re working with our credit partners, they want us to step up and have a voice.”
Peckham also instills in her team a good feel for work-life balance. While everyone strives to be the best bankers in the industry, she says, family comes first at the end of the day.
“I always try to support a good work-life balance. That’s how I have operated in the almost six years I have been in a management role,” Peckham said. “So far, things continue to go really well.”
For early-career employees, Peckham also serves as a mentor through the bank’s credit rotational program, an innovative way to introduce young bankers to a variety of financial opportunities. Recent college graduates rotate four times through different lines of business within Webster Bank over a two-year period.
Peckham is instrumental in interviewing candidates and choosing just six to eight young men and women among the 500 or so candidates who apply. Typically, she has at least one of the rotational program participants join her team, and she acts as a senior mentor to other members of the program.
Gregory Romer, Webster Bank’s senior managing director and head of underwriting and portfolio management, describes Peckham as a model employee – the “gold standard” of what a company wants in an employee.
The workplace culture Peckham has helped build is exemplified in areas other than camaraderie, Romer said. And Peckham’s leadership extends beyond her team at Webster, he says.
“A lot of our salespeople and people in operations, really everyone, always comes to her for whenever there’s questions, comments, suggestions,” Romer added. “So just from a day-to-day perspective, and team leader, she’s fantastic.”
Romer said Peckham also serves as a prime representative for the company. When Webster Bank needs someone to be at nonprofit galas, client outings or industry conferences on the bank’s behalf, they usually call Peckham first for help, he said.
“We always want to champion her to be the face of Webster at events like that,” Romer said. “She’s a model citizen in a number of different areas outside of Webster.”
Peckham is also a contributing member to Webster Bank’s Providence Christmas Drive. She and the bank’s middle market team volunteer in Boston to support Veterans Services and in Rhode Island to support the Rhode Island Community Food Bank.
“It is really nice to be acknowledged for your hard work and especially by a group of your peers,” Peckham said. “I was very humbled by it, but at the same time, you have to take a step back and say, ‘You have been doing this for 27 years.’ This [businesswomen] award is a sign that I have had a very positive impact on others around me, whether it’s just kind of in the work environment or being important to them as they kind of spring ahead in their career.”
