At Wells Fargo, Sherrie B. Littlejohn is EVP and head of NSO

For the past six years, Sherrie Littlejohn has served Wells Fargo (San Francisco, CA), the diversified financial services supplier, as a dedicated executive. She leads the network services and operations (NSO) group that provides planning, architecture, engineering and operations for voice, video, wireless and the data network, as well as telecom expense management for most network components in the company. She manages more than 350 team members and a $175 million dollar budget.

Littlejohn focuses on ensuring that NSO reaches its primary goal of reliably, securely and efficiently connecting people and businesses to the Wells Fargo community. Her group functions in areas of network planning, engineering and ops, and telecom service delivery.

Another responsibility for Littlejohn is to grow talent, improve processes, influence a service-delivery culture, and evolve the Wells Fargo network. "We are moving from a static network to a dynamic one that offers more services for our partners and our customers: VoIP, video over IP, data anytime, anywhere, anyhow, and mobility," Littlejohn says. "Ultimately we see these services converging to provide a secure, information-rich experience for all our customers."

Littlejohn combines African American, Creole and Italian ancestry. She grew up in New Orleans, LA, where she got her BS in math at Xavier University of Louisiana. Then she moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology for an MSCS. She also has a certificate from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. "My education and the career path I followed prepared me well for my current position," she notes.

Before joining Wells Fargo, Littlejohn worked at AT&T Bell Labs, dipping into R&D, architecture and all development phases related to the network. She has nearly thirty years of experience in telecom and has led efforts in voice, data, apps, systems, instrumentation, network and overall IT technology development.

"Wells Fargo has several women leaders in IT," Littlejohn notes. "I work for a woman who works for a woman, and I work in an organization where the management team is nearly all women," she says.

"I would say Wells Fargo is doing a good job of hiring and retaining women in IT," she reflects. "I think the overall challenge in the IT industry is in hiring African American leaders and other people of color. At Wells Fargo we’ve acknowledged this challenge and are working toward attracting technologists of diverse backgrounds."