SUZANNE SHANK

Suzanne Shank serves as a member of BPC’s Executive Council on Infrastructure. She is vice-chair, president, CEO and a co-founder of Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co., L.L.C., the top-ranked minority- and women-owned municipal bond underwriting firm in the U.S. and the first minority-owned firm to be nationally ranked in the top 10 among all such firms in the country. Founded in 1996, Siebert Brandford Shank has had aggressive growth with 21 offices and managing deals for state and local governments across the country totaling over $1 trillion in municipal transactions. Shank is a principal and member of the board of directors of the firm.

A 27-year veteran of the industry, Shank has crafted financing plans for large-scale infrastructure projects for a variety of issuers across the nation. Shank’s dedication and expertise have helped the company grow from a small start-up into a national financial powerhouse, establishing itself among the nation’s leading underwriters in funding projects for education, housing, health services, transportation, utilities, capital facilities, redevelopment and infrastructure.

Shank has won numerous awards and honors throughout her years in the public finance industry. Most recently she was inducted into the 2014 Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni at Georgia Institute of Technology, named to NBC’s Grio 100 list, which honors African American leaders nationally, has been recognized by U.S. Banker Magazine as one of the “Top 25 Women in Finance”, by Essence Magazine in their Power List, by Black Enterprise as one of the “50 Most Influential Black Women in Business” and one of the “75 Most Powerful Blacks on Wall Street.” Shank was also selected by the Wharton School of Business from among 100,000 graduates as one of its “125 Influential People and Ideas.” She has also appeared on CNBC and Bloomberg TV promoting the strength of the municipal bond market.

A municipal industry advocate, Shank formerly served as a board member of the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board and the Municipal Executive Steering Committee for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

She is active in numerous industry and civic organizations and serves on several boards, including the Wharton Graduate Board of Trustees, Spelman College board of trustees, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board to the President, the New York Citizens Budget Commission, Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Michigan Chapter of the International Women’s Forum, among others.

Prior to her public finance career, Shank was an engineer with General Dynamics, Electric Boat Division, where she worked as a design engineer on various design projects.

Shank is a graduate of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania with a Master of Business Administration degree in finance, and the Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering.