Heather Ellison brings more than 20 years of financial services experience to First Citizens Bank. As senior vice president and head of originations, Ellison combines strategic vision with exceptional operational expertise. She provides strong leadership to her teams, which support all stages of new transaction originations from onboarding, closing and booking deals to ongoing program management.
Her teams are also responsible for capital markets activities, including syndication deal closing and end-to-end management of the lender finance portfolio. Ellison plays an integral role in several major equipment finance control and technology initiatives and successfully consolidated various originations teams under one umbrella with streamlined and consistent processes and controls.
Ellison was recognized as a ‘Top 40 in Their 40s’ professional by the Los Angeles Business Journal and was most recently celebrated in 2023 as a ‘Leader in the Banking Industry’ by Women in Banking. Her goal is to continually promote an inclusive work environment where everyone feels comfortable engaging in open and honest dialogue. She is proud to be an enterprise champion for First Citizens Bank’s diversity, equity and inclusion program, its business resource group for women and a local liaison for its LGBTQ+ Together business resource group in Jacksonville, FL. She leverages her previous experience serving on various non-profit boards to contribute to these groups.
Ellison is a proponent of servant leadership. She places her team, customers and the greater organization first so that all voices are heard and respected. She strives to create a culture where associates feel valued and, in turn, take phenomenal care of their vendors and customers.
Her business curiosity is ever-present and fuels thoughtful questions to challenge the status quo. Her sharp focus on goal attainment, expense control and revenue growth lead to achieving profitability targets. Ellison gauges success by the difference she makes and the lives she impacts, and she is thankful to be a part of the equipment finance and leasing industry.
Mike Jones, president of the Equipment Finance business at First Citizens, met Ellison when he was in need of strong leadership. He was initially impressed by her communication skills, discipline and acumen, and later on, by her work in overseeing a new team while in a new role and in a new industry. “The obstacles that Heather needed to overcome were not small,” Jones says. “The company was navigating a merger while calling our associates back into the office and experiencing employee turnover as part of the great resignation. Additionally, the equipment finance organization was preparing for a significant automation investment that would change every aspect of how Heather’s new team did business, including all of their processes and how they support their clients.”
According to Jones, Ellison not only handled these challenges exceptionally, but also took on another team of 45 associates and similarly turned it around in months, resulting in reduced processing times, turnover and conflict between other functions. “A number of our customers reached out to me directly asking what changed in the last year that caused service levels to increase so much in such a short amount of time,” Jones says. “They asked how we went from being middle- of-the-road to best-in-class in serving our business. The answer was easy: leadership.”
“Make people your priority. There will be distractions taking you away from spending time with your teams and listening to them, but the further you get from the people you lead and serve, the further you get from achieving success. Being genuine and authentic will set the foundation for a fruitful and industrious career.”