As managing director of The Bank of New York, where she has worked since 1986, Wanda Hill is division manager for the Trust and Investment Advisory Services Group. Her functions include overseeing the administration and asset management of more than 2,600 personal trust and investment accounts, chairing a Trust Investment Committee that meets weekly and managing a team of trust officers and portfolio managers.

The graduate of Wesleyan University also is a member of the bank’s Diversity Council, the steering committee for its Women’s Initiative Network and the Women’s Bond Club. Prior to joining the bank, Hill was the sales promotion manager at Connecticut Mutual Financial Services and marketing manager at the Calvert Group in Washington, D.C.

When it comes to community service, she is an active member of the Union Baptist Church in Stamford, Conn., where she co-chaired a committee to raise $1.8 million to build a new church. She was once a treasurer of the Wesleyan Black Alumni Council.

With such heavy professional and social obligations, it’s easy to understand why Hill, a mother of two sons, says that if she had the time and requisite funds she would “take a one-year sabbatical, visit family and friends around the country, and travel the world with my husband and children—exposing my children to as much as I could to broaden their perspectives.”

For motivation, Hill says she turns to the words in 1 John 5:14-15 in the New Testament: “And this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth. And if we know that He hears us, whatso-ever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.”

She prides herself on being a woman of “tremendous faith,” which, she says, helped sustain her family when her husband underwent a double lung transplant last August. Hill lost her mother in 2000, but she believes that both her parents knew how much she appreciated their role in her life and accomplishments.