When Erin Piacenti When she walked into Bank of America on Monday after five months of maternity leave, she found pink daisies on her desk. There were welcome signs around the office she shared with a few teammates. Piacenti showed them photos of Madison, her newborn daughter, before reading case law.
That afternoon, Piacenti was fatally stabbed in Times Square in what police described as an unprovoked attack. She was 32.
Although Piacenti only started as vice president in the company’s Americas Business Selection and Conflicts group a year and a half ago, she had already made an impact on the small team. Hallie Ziesmer, the head of the group of about 20 people, described Piacenti as a “superstar” in conversations with senior management before her death, and recalls interviewing Piacenti in late 2024.
“It was probably one of the shortest interviews because I think I wanted to hire her in three minutes,” Ziesmer, Piacenti’s immediate boss, said Friday. “She was clearly very intelligent and very capable. She was polished but down to earth.”
Piacenti was attacked by Pamela Cisneros, 49, who also injured another victim before officers shot her and killed her on the spot.
Since the event, there has been an outpouring of support on and off Wall Street GoFundMe to help her daughter has raised more than $800,000. Many Bank of America employees contributed, a bank spokesperson said.
Before joining Bank of America, Piacenti spent more than three years at the Davis Polk law firm, where he focused on mergers and acquisitions for part of that time. She began her career as a buyer at Bloomingdale’s and graduated magna cum laude from Fordham Law. Piacenti had a niche focus at the bank, helping investment bankers prepare disclosure documents for companies gearing up for an M&A transaction and clients as they navigated a tangle of regulations. A colleague remembers her as resourceful, who always found creative solutions herself.
Piacenti would mentor more junior teammates who did not have the same legal expertise, Ziesmer said. Many of them spent time in Ziesmer’s office this week and remembered how detailed and caring Piacenti was with her assistance. A junior employee sitting across from Piacenti said in an email that she discussed much of their work and had offered personal advice as well as professional tips during their occasional coffees.
“She could have left the office some days to go home, but she spent time with the juniors. She wanted them to understand and share the passion for what she did. She really enjoyed it,” Ziesmer said.
Piacenti often talked about visiting her four younger children siblings, or books, or Disney. When the team attended a cooking class last year, the same colleague who admired Piacenti’s ingenuity said she created the best dish (and helped them save an inadequate chef). When another colleague met her on the Q train one morning, she was happy to introduce them to her husband Frank, whom she talked about all the time.
Around the holidays, Piacenti brought dozens of cookies to the office after she and Frank hosted the family’s Christmas cookie party at their new home in New Jersey.
Ziesmer says the team now plans to bring in cookies every year.
