Chelsea Wood is the vice president and funding manager for Wintrust Specialty Finance. She runs a highly scaled team that funds more than 4,000 contracts a year and is responsible for hiring and building a team of professionals who provide funding capacity, controls and efficiencies to Wintrust’s partners. Through her efforts, the business delivers strong service levels to customers, helping the business meet and exceed its goals. Wood says being one of the founding members of Wintrust Specialty Finance and building the entirety of the company’s funding processes and team has been one of the top accomplishments of her career.

Shortly after helping build Wintrust Specialty Finance, Wood went on to earn the Certified Lease & Finance Professional designation. She says earning the designation opened her up to many opportunities and allowed her to gain a better understanding of the equipment finance industry as a whole.

“I think the greatest part of this industry is the ability to adapt to the market and customers’ needs,” Wood says. “As time goes on and technology continues to play a bigger role in the daily workflow of businesses, I have made a conscious effort to implement these tools to improve and increase the productivity while helping to build and manage our division.”

When Wood started in the industry, everything was done via paper documents and wet signatures, which she says made for clunky, messy and slow processes and required excess space for file storage.

“Now, with the implementation of e-signatures and e-docs, we are able to provide a quick and convenient yet secure option to all customers for their acquisition needs,” Wood says.