Vice President, Strategic Technology, GreatAmerica Financial Services
Member, Monitor Editorial Board
President, Managed Print Services Association
Technology & Operations Committee Member, Equipment Leasing and Finance Association
In her role as vice president of Strategic Technology for GreatAmerica Financial Services, Tawnya Stone is responsible for the overall strategic direction, oversight and implementation of customer-facing technology tools and products across all business units. She works in close collaboration with the business units and functional leadership, as well as external technology partners.
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VISION FOR THE FUTURE: “Looking at my 16-year-old daughter and her environment, there is an overall acceptance towards people outside traditional molds and roles. Characteristics that would have been something notable just aren’t even relevant to them. This gives me great hope for our future and the equality of all — not just women.” |
Stone joined GreatAmerica in 2011 as an IT project manager and eventually moved into roles that blended technology and customer-facing activities. Prior to joining GreatAmerica, she worked for Philips Electronics and Verizon Communications in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
“Tawnya has a wonderful combination of technical knowledge and business knowledge. This has allowed her to connect dots over the years in ways that have allowed us to bring leading edge innovations to our vendor partners,” says David Pohlman, GreatAmerica’s chief operating officer. “Tawnya also has a very good thought process, and many of her ideas have been incorporated into our future technology roadmap. She not only spots opportunity, she also has a way of tactfully encouraging people to get things done.”
Throughout her career, Stone has worked with great mentors and taken elements from each one, aligning them with her own personality and strengths and developing her own style. She tries to pass on some of that knowledge to others, including her children, living by the mottos: “Never let an opportunity pass you by; anything worth doing is worth doing well; and they won’t say yes if you don’t ask.”
Along with her work for the Managed Print Services Association and ELFA, Stone has also served as past chair of CompTIA’s Managed Print Services Community and on the executive council of CompTIA’s Technology Lifecycle Services Community.
Looking to the future, Stone believes that, despite the equipment finance industry’s reputation for falling behind from a technological perspective, there are pockets where progress is being made; however, she wants to work toward a dramatic shift in the business, seeing the industry that always seems to be working from behind moving into the lead of the innovation train.
