Susana Meza
Advisory & Faculty Roles
Susana is also civically involved and currently serves as a board member for the Illinois Chamber of Commerce and played a key role in their strategic planning committee.
She is also on the board of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce and a board member of the Hispanic American Construction Industry Association.
She is an adjunct faculty member of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management teaching Strategic Vision to other executives in the Chicagoland area.
She also gives of her time to mentor MBA students at Loyola University.
Susana Meza
HACIA Board Member
Vice President Wintrust Financials
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/susanamezachicago
Career Highlights
Developed the Business Diversity Ecosystem strategic engagement plan for a nationwide PwC fellowship --2022 CEO Action for Racial Equity.
Developed Corporate Purpose Strategy and launched the ESG/CSR Practice for a company with $50billion in assets
Led philanthropic and impact investing efforts at 2.5% of annual revenue
Can stand up departments/ areas of practice and propose growth plans to boards to be adopted by department leads
Cross department partnership and indirect management influence
Financial experience, M&A’s, economic trends and served as chair of the International Business Council
Recognize how to transform data into impactful and strategic decisions and serve on strategic planning committees via board service
Susana is an executive leader with 22 years of professional experience and regularly speaks on setting corporate strategy by linking profit and purpose. She has deep experience in preserving values while ensuring future profitability. She built the ESG/Corporate Citizenship area at Wintrust Financial Corporation, now known as the Community Impact department. Susana is currently the Vice President of Community Impact.
Susana works across communities and collaborates with non-customers and customers, internal/external stakeholders. Under her direction this area of practice started to maximize new reporting mechanisms and developed thoughtful diagnostics to ensure community partners fit strategic goals and could lay the groundwork to attract new customers and generate revenue.
Susana developed three impact pillars that embrace the strategies and values of the organization:
1. Strategic Initiatives
2. Economic Development
3. Civic Engagement.
She pioneered a profitability model for partnership giving and integrated marketing to keep and attract customers. Susana also introduced and launched an improved practice of impact investing and impact giving metrics and reporting. Her unique value proposition is to advise organizations on strategic vision, business diversity, ESG Reporting frameworks including SASB/ISSB, TCFD, CDP, GRI. Most recently Wintrust’s CEO nominated Susana to serve as an executive on loan from 2020-2022 as a fellow for CEO Action for Racial Equity, a policy do-tank to close the racial wealth gap for 47 million Black Americans.
In her immediate-past role as a Founding Fellow for CEO Action for Racial Equity, she was busy identifying, developing and promoting scalable and sustainable public policies and corporate engagement strategies that will address systemic racism, social injustice and improve societal well-being. Her goal is also to leverage this fellowship within categories such as financial drivers, strategic imperatives, cultural priorities and leadership commitments. She was a founding member of the Economic Empowerment Pillar Committee alongside Crowe, Team Rubicon, S&P Global and Mass Mutual.
She initiated and refined community engagement strategies and philanthropic pillars while collaborating with over 80 nonprofit organizations, giving her a valuable perspective that allows her to help develop dozens of tactics to advance corporate social responsibility, environmental, social and governance standards and racial equity impetrative to close the wealth gap.
Her unique framework introduced an asset based community development strategy when entering new markets unique to her home organization. This deliberate engagement model featured a proven step-by-step plan to serve the African American, Chinese, Indian, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities. She continued to refine her partnership profitability model to include a deliberate focus to invest in programs and underlying systems via first of its kind pillars of support, such as ‘Contributing to Building Strong Communities and Contributing to Building a Stronger Economic Climate’, to partner with purpose and collect better data and report on specific metrics.