The Most Powerful Women to Watch, No. 17, Zewditu Tizu Menelik, Huntington National Bank

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Zewditu Tizu Menelik, head of corporate, specialty and government banking for Huntington National Bank, said she's been drawn to the excitement of banking and finance since early on in her 28-year career.

"It's very intellectually stimulating; you're always solving problems," said Menelik, who took on the CSG role for the $208 billion Columbus, Ohio-based bank in 2022. "Working on the deal that you may have worked on for weeks, and it ultimately hitting The Wall Street Journal because it's an acquisition financing—that's always icing on the cake. It's like: 'I'm really enjoying this.' This is something that continues to energize me and keep me interested," she said.

In her three years at Huntington, Menelik has launched CSG services for eight new verticals: fund finance; corporate mortgages; aerospace and defense companies; power and utility companies; financial institutions; Native American tribal and corporate banking; a deposits platform for homeowner associations and a mortgage originators deposits platform. She's outpaced the bank's goal of adding one or two new verticals per year, and CSG now has about $40 billion in loan commitments and $18 billion in earning assets.

In building out the new verticals, Menelik said she aims to develop "integrated ecosystems" where the bank can reach clients with services from several business lines. For example, Huntington can serve private equity sponsors through coordinated fund finance, leveraged lending and capital markets services.

"All of these businesses run independently, and they all do what they need to do independently," Menelik said. "However, if we can bring them all together, it's definitely a more powerful platform and a value proposition."

"It's that much more profitable and strategic to the sponsor and to the portfolio company, but also super lucrative for the bank versus individually operating in a silo or just delivering that balance sheet."

In the current environment, supply chain financing has been a particularly busy area for the bank, as companies seek new working capital solutions, Menelik said.

"With the activity around tariffs and companies looking to source their raw products from different geographies and even move to alternatives, there's a desire to be more efficient in how they finance that," she said. "We've seen a lot of activity. This is prime time, as you think about supply chain management."

Navigating the interest rate environment and the macro uncertainties of the bank's clients will be her main challenges over the next few years, she noted.

"We're creating or developing solutions and helping our clients maneuver through them," Menelik said. "Our plan of attack there is building a diversified portfolio. All of these businesses are pieces of the puzzle that complement each other and can perform through the cycle."

"We're continuously thinking about the value map here: Where are we from a risk perspective; where are from a rewards perspective?" she added.

Technology development will present another key challenge. "We've got to make sure that we're keeping up with products and services that are competitive," Menelik said, and her team will need to work closely with the bank's payments, technology and innovation teams to consider AI and other tools.

"Thinking about innovations for the various industries that we lend into, how do we think about new products or services that are cutting edge, that have not come to market, to help differentiate ourselves in the market,? "she queried.