Justin Tabone,
Senior Vice President, Originations,
EverBank

Mike Zambetti,
Senior Vice President, Senior Credit Officer,
EverBank

Carmen Delfi,
Senior Vice President, Operations,
EverBank

LEADERSHIP – BEST COMPANIES IN EQUIPMENT FINANCE

Marking its 20th year in operation in 2024, EverBank’s Vendor Equipment Finance (VEF) business continues to develop its leaders through an impactful cross-functional model dedicated to fostering long-term, authentic and sustainable relationships.

Collaborative Leadership Team
EverBank’s VEF team includes Justin Tabone, senior vice president, originations; Mike Zambetti, senior vice president, senior credit officer; and Carmen Delfi, senior vice president, operations.

Foundation of Trust and Expertise
These leaders can nurture EverBank’s collaborative ecosystem because of a long-standing foundation built on trust, respect and expertise spanning decades. Teamwork is at the center of this model, and no strategy is created in a vacuum. This specialized leadership team is dialed-in to the markets they serve, the unique needs of each client and fostering an environment of information sharing internally with associates and externally with clients.

A Holistic Approach to Opportunities and Challenges
The leadership culture at EverBank and within its VEF business is successful because leaders apply this cross-functional mindset and approach to all opportunities and challenges holistically. This not only drives this culture of leadership and performance across the bank, but it’s also behind personal and team growth within the VEF business.

Leadership Insights
As collaborative leaders, Tabone, Zambetti and Delfi have discovered a lot about themselves and their leadership styles through EverBank’s culture.

Respect, Integrity and Empathy
Delfi describes her leadership style as one founded on respect, integrity and empathy, all while driving her team and leadership peers towards their collective goals. This style of leadership, Delfi says, is a combination of her own values and many learned experiences through new roles and responsibilities while adapting to change and circumstance. She cites her leadership style as serving herself, her team and EverBank’s cross-functional leadership team well, as all work together to outline strategy, with a clear path of execution, to achieve their goals.

“In practice, this looks like celebrating all wins and the milestones achieved on the way, recognizing hurdles and seeking solutions through unexplored avenues and maintaining a level of flexibility,” Delfi says. “It looks like regular check-ins with fellow functional leaders to ensure alignment and addressing conflict head on to move on and towards our collective goal.

The Value of Listening
Zambetti says he leads with the goal of remembering to listen. “There is tremendous value in that and also in being open to different perspectives,” Zambetti says. “By listening to my credit team, the sales and operations/servicing team, I become a better leader. These collective cross-functional points of view give me a holistic view of the business and a better context for decisions.”

A Holistic View for Strong Leadership
Becoming knowledgeable cross-functionally has increased Tabone’s credibility with the overall team, and this credibility has helped him build strong relationships with other leaders. “Taking a pragmatic approach to leadership results in a more holistic view of the business and provides leaders with the essential context to better understand the perspectives of others,” Tabone says. “Strong leaders look out for the best interests of their organization as a primary objective and know that is impossible to achieve in a silo.”

Over the course of Tabone’s career, he says he’s come to realize that there are different approaches to accomplishing a single goal. “I’ve become more receptive to alternative approaches of conducting business through this realization, which has continued to strengthen relationships in our cross-functional environment,” Tabone says. •