FWA Voices: Hermina 'Nina' Batson

October 17, 2025

Resilience and perseverance are the two traits that have come to epitomize Hermina 'Nina' Batson, a strategic, mission-driven global executive recognized for her impressive track record in financial services and regulatory engagement.


As a senior business leader, Nina possesses invaluable expertise and a distinguished background in regulatory relations, risk management, corporate finance, and successful securitization deals. With over 30 years of experience, she has worked at Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, MetLife, and JPMorgan Chase. Most recently, Nina served as the Global Head of Regulatory Engagement for Barclays' Internal Audit. She holds Series 79 and 63 certifications and has earned a Bachelor of Business Administration, as well as a Certificate in Accounting from Hofstra University.

As a facilitation leader who brings clarity and strong negotiation skills to complex transactions, Nina manages and oversees diverse global teams, delivering top-tier services within large international financial institutions. As a change agent and problem solver, her confident mindset, combined with effective executive communication skills, has enabled her to build and lead collaborative, high-performing cross-functional teams across various regions, consistently achieving and delivering exceptional results, often during times of significant change.


Nina leverages her extensive skills to collaborate with senior management, business leaders, and various departments, including legal, compliance, accounting, audit, tax operations, and risk management. She fosters positive, lasting change, effectively resolves issues, promotes regulatory readiness and transparency across the organization, builds credible relationships with global regulators, and earns trust with key stakeholders and executive leaders. Her ability to synthesize important information into actionable strategies and navigate supervisory environments has led to revenue growth, cost reductions, improved expense planning, optimized headcount, streamlined processes, better workflows, and increased efficiency.


Nina is also committed to doing the right thing and giving back to the community. She is a member of the Department of Financial Services (DFS) Equity & Opportunity Advisory Council and the Hofstra Zarb School of Business Dean's Advisory Board. She received the Hofstra Zarb School of Business Alumni of the Year Award in 2024. CIO Views Magazine named her one of the ten Most Successful Black Businesswomen Making a Difference in 2023. In 2022, Crain's New York Business recognized her as one of 105 Notable Black Leaders and Executives. She also received the Markets Choice Awards’ Women in Finance: Excellence in Social Responsibility Award.


Though Nina has received numerous accolades in her career, she does not define success in terms of awards or recognition. Over the years, Nina has defined success in many different ways. In terms of promotion, becoming a leader and a manager of many while successfully navigating and balancing her career as a single mother, her daughter recently graduating college, and pivoting her career post pandemic, are a few of her most recent additional success stories. Now, Nina defines success by building knowledge, fostering a sense of family, mentoring, and finding a sense of purpose.


“It also means being passionate about something, working toward that mission, personally and professionally, and achieving it — sometimes laterally and sometimes taking two steps back to leap forward while realizing that you are making a difference by changing the world one person at a time (if not yourself),” Nina said.


Nina first started attending FWA events as a non-member in 2007 during the financial crisis. After attending many events, that FWA President invited her to get more involved, so she joined the FWA and one of its committees. Since 2009, she has been very active, including (in no particular order) serving as:

  • First Black and 58th President of the FWA (2021–2023)
  • President Elect and Leadership Council Chair (2019–2021)
  • Executive Vice President (2018)
  • Vice President of Membership and Engagement Division (2017)
  • Membership Chair (2016)
  • Membership Co-chair (2015)
  • Head of Membership Committee’s Ambassador Program (2014)
  • MUFG/FWA President’s Circle Relationship Manager (2009–2021)
  • FWA Member at Large (2009–present)
  • FWA Immediate Past President (2023–2025)
  • Co-chair of the upcoming FWA 70th Anniversary Gala


“Having the privilege to provide executive oversight over dozens of personal and professional development initiatives, featuring and honoring thought leaders that enrich the careers of financial services professionals, and having orchestrated hundreds of events, including an international business conference to Bermuda and the 65th anniversary celebration, both in 2023, have been a few other successes that I’m proud of. The FWA has changed my life. I am honored, proud, and happy to give back via this illustrious organization. We’re here for you throughout your financial services career,” she says.




The FWA Voices Committee, chaired by Leya Yusupov, celebrates and amplifies the voices, stories, and accomplishments of the FWA community. Follow FWA on LinkedIn for more FWA Voices stories featuring our members!

Global Capital Leadership: Rethinking Strategy in an Uncertain World

May 14, 2026
By Sherree DeCovny Back in 1785, Scottish poet Robert Burns wrote, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” The line still resonates today: even the most carefully constructed plans can be disrupted. What ultimately determines success is not perfect foresight, but adaptability and the ability to pivot when conditions change. That lesson was brought into sharp focus for this year’s International Business Conference. Originally planned for the UAE in April, the event had to be completely reimagined when conflict with Iran escalated in February. Months of preparation were set aside, and the format was rebuilt in a matter of weeks. The result was a hybrid approach: a virtual lunch panel on May 5, followed by a half-day in-person gathering in New York City on May 6 — hosted at Akin in partnership with ABANA.co, with hospitality from HE Amna Almheiri and the UAE Consulate in NY — bringing together nearly 100 participants.

Financial Literacy Isn’t Just About Money - It’s About Possibility

April 30, 2026
By Robert Brown The student stayed behind after the workshop. While others filtered out, she walked up quietly and asked for an extra set of materials. Not for herself, but for her mother, who didn’t speak English. She wanted to take the lesson home. That moment says more about financial literacy than any definition ever could. For many young people, the question isn’t just Can I afford this? It’s Do I understand how money works at all? And more importantly, Can I use that knowledge to shape my future? That gap between access and understanding is where confidence is either built or lost. The reality is, most students are never taught these skills in a meaningful way in school. And for many, this is the first time anyone has explained it in a way that actually sticks.

When the World Shifts, You Shift with It

April 23, 2026
For months, FWA Executive Director Alissa Desmarais and I had been building toward something incredible: a six-day International Business Conference in the UAE, complex and high-stakes, the kind of undertaking that requires you to hold a hundred things in your head at once while also holding your team together, your partners together, and yourself together. The FWA has more than 40 years of experience organizing international conferences around the world; what we were doing was not new. But as we stepped into our new roles as the conference organizers, with the support of a great IBC committee, this one felt different. More meaningful, because it was ours. We were proud of what we were creating. And then the world changed around us. I won’t pretend the decision to pivot was easy, because it wasn’t. There is a particular kind of grief that comes not from losing something you already had, but from letting go of something you had worked so hard to build and had not yet gotten to experience. We had to look at the geopolitical reality of the region, at what was happening, at what we could not control, and make a call. The kind of call that no planning document prepares you for. We chose to pivot. On May 5th and 6th, FWA will host the Global Capital and Leadership Forum in New York. A virtual lunch panel, followed by an in-person morning program at Akin, right in the heart of the city. Smaller in scale, yes. But not smaller in purpose. We kept the questions we had always meant to explore: how shifting alliances and energy transitions are redrawing the map of global capital, what resilient leadership looks like in a world that will not hold still, how women are shaping the future of finance across cultures and geographies. Her Excellency Amna Almheiri, Consul General of the United Arab Emirates in New York, will close our forum. The relationship did not end when our plans changed. The dialogue did not stop. It just found a different room. What I have learned from this experience is something I keep coming back to: a pivot is not the opposite of commitment. Done with clarity and care, it is one of commitment’s truest expressions, because it means you care more about the mission than about being right about how you planned to serve it. It means you can look at the people who gave months of real effort to a plan that changed and help them see that nothing they did was wasted, because it wasn’t. It means you can let go of the version of success you had pictured and trust that a different shape can carry the same substance. I think about the women in this community who have had to do this in their own careers and lives. Who had to walk away from something they had built toward for years, not because they failed but because the world shifted and they were honest enough to shift with it. That takes courage. It takes the kind of steadiness that is very easy to admire from the outside and very hard to practice from the inside. The forum is still taking shape. The work continues. And I am proud of what we are making, not in spite of how we got here, but because of it.

SAVE THE DATE: Global Capital & Leadership Forum

April 9, 2026
The MENA Capital Landscape: Risk, Resilience & the Road Ahead May 5–6, 2026 Join the Financial Women's Association for a timely conversation on sovereign capital, energy transition, AI, and the geopolitical forces reshaping global finance. When our UAE trip was cancelled, we immediately looked for ways to bring the experience to our community here in NYC - this forum captures the spirit, substance, and strategic importance of that journey. Registration details coming soon - save the date on your calendar now! Virtual Lunch Panel · Tuesday, May 5 In-Person Morning Program in New York City · Wednesday, May 6 One registration. Two experiences. One conversation.
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