74 Millennium - A Marquis Who’s Who Magazine BUSINESS, FINANCE AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP ERIKA L. WHYTE, MBA VICE PRESIDENT, DIRECTOR OF DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION Janney Montgomery Scott LLC Drexel Hill, PA Erika L. Whyte is the vice president and director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Janney Montgomery Scott LLC. For the last decade, she has built her career in diversity and inclusion for corporate leaders across the financial and insurance sectors, cementing her reputation for big-picture thinking and strong communication. Ms. Whyte began her professional journey in media communications, studying broadcast journalism at Temple University. She completed a Bachelor of Arts in the subject in 1991 and pursued opportunities in the field, including internships with Fox 29 Philadelphia and CBS Radio. Ms. Whyte considers her CBS Radio internship a formative experience, recalling projects such as editing clips for anchor Walter Cronkite and being part of the Press Corps that interviewed Nelson Mandela upon his release in 1990. While her passion for the industry remained strong, Ms. Whyte found the hours and pressures of the field grew increasingly demanding, particularly after she became a parent. By the late 1990s, she had begun transitioning out of the communications and media sector in search of a position with greater stability and predictability. She entered the financial services sector in 1998 as a systems integration manager for PNC Global Investment Servicing, then PFPC. Ms. Whyte excelled in the role until 2005, when she was promoted to project manager for the company, a position she would hold for an additional five years. Ms. Whyte’s earliest roles included file-transfer projects, and she learned on the job, relying on her notes to guide each step before recognizing her work as a form of project management. These early projects grew into larger ones in tandem with credentialed IT teams, and she continued to gain a larger profile as she took on more responsibility. From 2010 to 2014, she served as the director of client services and vice president at BNY Mellon, developing an internal project management office and progression system with three tiers of project management professionals. Overseeing a team of 12 project managers, Ms. Whyte led the company successfully through a major market downturn, consistently delivering projects on time and under budget despite largescale constraints.
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