Most Powerful Women in Banking | Top Teams 2021: Huntington Bancshares

Most Powerful Women in Banking | Top Teams: Huntington Bancshares

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

As part of American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking and Finance program, we have selected five "Top Teams" for 2021. Huntington Bancshares is one of the team honorees.

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To see the evaluation criteria for the Top Teams category, please scroll to the end.

Huntington Bancshares
Headquarters: Columbus, Ohio
Assets: $175 billion
Female representation among corporate officers: 46%
Female representation on operating committee: 33%

Diversity initiative

Huntington, which just grew its assets substantially via a merger with TCF Financial, has redoubled diversity and inclusion efforts with new policies around how the bank hires, mentors, promotes and compensates minority employees. Its Social Equity Colleague Plan, launched in October 2020, commits to increasing diversity in its management as well as keeping the average base salaries for women and minorities within 2% of their white, male colleagues. One of the goals is for management at the middle and executive levels to be 35% female and 15% ethnically diverse by the end of this year, up from 31.2% female and 13.5% ethnically diverse as of the end of 2020. Huntington also aims to increase diversity of senior- and executive-level successors to 50% by the end of 2023. To that end, it has expanded programs to give women and minorities exposure to executive leaders and has required that each slate of candidates for job interviews be at least 50% diverse.

Selected executive highlights:

Maggie Ference

Director of Business Credit, Operations, and SBA Lending

Huntington is the No. 1 Small Business Administration lender in the nation (by volume), much to the credit of Ference and her team. It also has a program called Lift Local for Business that provides minority-, women- and veteran-owned businesses with low-cost capital, financial literacy education, free deposit account services and free treasury management to thwart fraud.

Last fall, it extended 24-Hour Grace to businesses, which helps them avoid overdraft fees by alerting them when a withdrawal exceeds their balance and giving them a day to replenish the account. It previously offered 24-Hour Grace only for retail customers.

Linda Brown

Shellee Fisher

Corporate Internal Communications Director

Brown spearheaded efforts to arm 15,000 colleagues with information about Huntington’s five-year, $20 billion Community Plan, which launched in September 2020 and is designed to boost economic opportunity through affordable housing and capital access for individuals and small businesses.

In June, a week after Huntington’s merger with TCF Financial, the company announced a new Community Plan that upsized the amount to $40 billion. It devised the new plan with community leaders and National Community Reinvestment Coalition members across seven states.

The plan allocates about $16 billion to help advance racial and social equity, with special emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Cinthia Chaves

Senior Vice President, Enterprise Integration

As program manager for the Community Plan and the Social Equity Colleague Plan, Chaves created and managed the governance to implement this work. She developed an overall road map with tasks, owners and dates; supported colleagues leading various parts of the initiatives; facilitated communication and coordination across teams; and provided updates to senior leadership and the steering committee.

Carrie Rosenfelt

Community Development Outreach Director

Rosenfelt led a partnership with the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing to launch the Huntington Digital Inclusion Fund, a $2.5 million investment in digital inclusion for low- and moderate-income residents throughout Ohio. The fund provides up to $500,000 a year to support technology infrastructure and training to advance economic mobility through digital access. In 2020, Huntington distributed $350,000 in funding to 13 partners across its footprint.

Sharon Speyer

Director of Economic Inclusion for Regional Banking and President of Northwest Ohio

Speyer works with public-sector and community-based organizations to execute the Community Plan. She also played a role in implementing a series of measures to help customers impacted by the pandemic, including deferred payments, suspension of late fees on loans and a halt on foreclosures and repossessions. Within the first month of announcing these measures, Huntington had provided some form of relief to 51,000 consumers, 3,000 business customers and 700 commercial customers.

What it takes

In the Top Teams category, each bank is evaluated based on:

The presence and influence of women in the senior ranks
The performance of women-led business units
Demonstrated commitment to and progress toward fostering diversity (and specifically female participation) in senior leadership and key roles with P&L responsibility
Improvements shown in the representation of women in the pipeline
Programs, policies and practices that are effective in fostering success in the areas above