President, Key Commercial Bank and KeyBank Real Estate Capital
In 2019, Angela Mago saw an opportunity for KeyCorp to expand its affordable housing business nationwide.
Under Mago’s leadership, the company leveraged the platform of its real estate capital group to develop broad banking relationships with for-profit owners active in the affordable housing market. The move helped Key maintain its top-five status among lenders in the affordable housing sector, according to Affordable Housing Finance magazine. As recently as 2014, it hadn’t even been top 25.
Mago is also president of Key Commercial Bank, and in that role she implemented a new sales process and management framework that increased revenue and positioned the business for the onslaught of demand for loans from the government’s Paycheck Protection Program.
Mago’s team secured more than 3,000 loans, totaling $3.3 billion. Roughly a fourth of those went to borrowers in low- and moderate-income communities.
“No company can say it was fully prepared, but I can say that Key’s focus on data and technology and collaboration positioned us well both for the challenges our clients suddenly faced and our ‘new normal,’ ” Mago said.
Last year Mago led the creation of a reverse mentoring program in which 23 junior members of her team were paired with 34 senior leaders, including Mago herself. The initial goal was to share knowledge about technology platforms like Tableau and Salesforce and cultivate understanding of how to improve business operations. But the program accomplished much more by breaking down the traditional walls between junior and senior leaders.
Younger employees learned how Mago and other senior leaders think about strategic issues and approach their work. Mago gained a better understanding of barriers to the retention and promotion of minority employees, which dovetails with her recent appointment as executive sponsor of Key’s Hispanic-Latinx Business Networking Group.
For the first time, American Banker's Most Powerful Women in Banking celebration is open to the whole financial community. Join us virtually October 6-8 to hear our 2020 honorees' stories and experiences.
