Executive Vice President, Group Head of Small and Medium Enterprise Banking
After the first two frenzied rounds of Paycheck Protection Program lending in 2020, Michelle Di Gangi kept a core team together to refine the technology that Bank of the West had used to make nearly 18,000 loans.
As a result, the bank was ready for round three in early 2021. It made another 11,464 loans using a fully digital, automated process that did not require the 600 volunteers from other departments who pitched in during the first two rounds.
“The demands of these past 15 months could not have been met without some level of agile business transformation,” said Di Gangi, group head of small and medium enterprise banking at Bank of the West.
Di Gangi wants to extend that agile approach to PPP to other parts of the bank’s business, something she considers a key to long-term viability.
“This allows us to respond quickly without perfection and to constantly modify as we execute and learn,” said Di Gangi, who has turned the small and medium enterprise banking unit at Bank of the West into one of the bank’s most profitable since she took it over in 2008.
The bottom line is not Di Gangi’s only concern, though. She wants to enact policies that reduce the burdens of COVID-19 on women and their careers. She recently began leading panel conversations designed to open discussion on how to alleviate the pandemic’s disparate impact on women in the workplace — a phenomenon that has been called “the shecession.”
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“The pandemic has taught us so much about the importance of connecting and communicating often with people, the unseen demands that may be bringing stress into our team members’ lives, and the impact that empathy and flexibility can have,” Di Gangi said.
Di Gangi has deepened the bank’s relationship with the Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, a San Francisco nonprofit that serves entrepreneurs from around the world through events, education and mentorship. She joined the center’s board of directors in March, and Bank of the West has partnered with the center to bring education and mentorship to diverse entrepreneurs.
