Private Banking & Regional Banking Director and Chairman, Huntington Michigan
Sandy Pierce has been the face of Huntington Bancshares in Michigan since 2016. But her influence spreads beyond the Wolverine State.
Last year, Pierce led the development and launch of a five-year, $20 billion effort by Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington to invest and ramp up its philanthropy in communities where it does business. The effort — the largest in the bank’s history — includes an additional $5 billion to help boost economic opportunity in Michigan, Huntington’s second-largest market.
The new initiative adds to an already impressive slate of responsibilities. In addition to leading Huntington’s Michigan operation, Pierce oversees the bank's in-house insurance agency, its vehicle finance business and its $100 billion-plus private banking business.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, she led her business units to new milestones. Pierce and her team digitized the entire process for vehicle financing and enhanced the digital experience for private banking clients. Pierce also worked alongside Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to create an emergency-assistance program for small businesses in Detroit.
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Within the $175 billion-asset Huntington, Pierce has been a leader in emphasizing diversity, equity and inclusion across the organization. She supported the addition of three new inclusion councils within her business units and is particularly interested in blunting the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s careers.
“It pains me to witness any woman having to decide between taking care of her family and missing out on an opportunity for promotion or professional development,” she said. “When it comes to gender equality, we cannot lose our ground. In fact, we need to be more intentional and relentless and learn from the women who came before us.”
Pierce is also supporting diversity and inclusion more broadly; her fundraising helped bring the World Leadership Conference of the International Women’s Forum to Detroit in 2020, though in a virtual format.
The event is scheduled to return to Detroit in 2023 as an in-person gathering.
