They’re uncommon achievers, whether as entrepreneurs, CEOs, nonprofit leaders, visionaries critical to their companies’ success or, in some cases, all of those roles. This year’s Top 25 Young Professionals figure to continue making a difference professionally and in their communities for years to come.
Read on to learn about the 2023 Top 25 Young Professionals and to see the list of this year’s top 50 finalists.
National Business Banking Merchant Sales Leader, KeyBank | Denver
As KeyBank’s first National Business Banking Merchant Sales Leader, Kelly O’Donnell has helped build out the Business Banking Merchant Sales team, playbook, incentives, goals and more. O’Donnell leads a team spanning 21 states, and has helped pave a successful strategic plan within each market. She took a team that partnered with branches and business bankers across the bank’s coverage area and built a high-performing team focused solely on partnering with business bankers and working with business banking clients.
A top-performing salesperson, O’Donnell jumped into leadership three years ago. She was very thoughtful in her approach and quickly adapted to the world of leadership. She has now led two different high-performing teams and continues to help KeyBank evolve as a merchant sales organization. Leading a team of 18 across 21 states is not an easy task, but it is one that O’Donnell has been able to do successfully while leading different product rollouts and participating in employee groups across KeyBank.
O’Donnell has helped lead, develop and mentor more than 100 future professionals and leaders across Colorado during her time with KeyBank. Her partnerships and direct supervision have created many leaders across KeyBank and within other businesses. She is involved with Ronald McDonald House charities and in an annual Neighbors Make A Difference Day at The Action Center.
Food Bank of the Rockies and KeyBank announced a $450,000 grant from KeyBank at a mobile food pantry hosted by Food Bank of the Rockies last week at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.
Since its founding in 1978, Food Bank of the Rockies has been a leader in the fight against hunger. The organization serves about half of Colorado and all of Wyoming, providing food and other essentials to over 800 Hunger Relief Partners and through signature programs like their monthly 70-plus mobile pantries.
The KeyBank grant will aid Food Bank of the Rockies in purchasing fresh and nutritious produce and additional culturally responsive food for partners serving their communities through the Culturally Responsive Food Initiative, which impacts approximately 10,000 households annually in the Metro Denver area. During the next three years, Food Bank of the Rockies plans to scale the program to serve approximately 30,000 households through 10-20 Hunger Relief Partners and their 70 plus mobile pantries.
“The work Food Bank of the Rockies is doing through the Culturally Responsive Food Initiative will change lives in our community by offering nutritious food, and also delivering training to Hunger Relief Partners serving food insecure populations,” said Mike Katz, president of KeyBank’s Colorado market. “KeyBank is proud to help scale this meaningful community program over the next three years.”
In addition to food distribution, the Culturally Responsive Food Initiative offers an Inclusive Capacity Building Program to Hunger Relief Partners, which includes best practices and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training for agency staff members and volunteers, an implementation plan for operational changes and capacity building projects, and completion of a six-month progress report detailing participation with the program.
“Inflation is currently at a 40-year high and is hitting Food Bank of the Rockies’ budget with some staple items costing as much as 70% more than last year. To meet the needs of our neighbors experiencing hunger, we are spending $1.3 million or more on food purchasing every month – more than triple what we were spending pre-COVID,” said Erin Pulling, President & CEO of Food Bank of the Rockies. “We’ve been able to meet the increased demand, thanks to the generosity of companies like KeyBank. Their gift will help fuel our culturally responsive food initiative and allow us to distribute food to our diverse communities while honoring their needs and preferences with respect. We are grateful for KeyBank’s inspired support in answering the challenge of hunger across our communities.”
About Food Bank of the Rockies
Food Bank of the Rockies is the largest hunger-relief organization in the Rocky Mountain region. Since 1978, we’ve put the power of community to work for our neighbors in need. Through partnerships. Through programs. Through people. Through you. Everything we do is fueled by the support of our community and donors, and 96 cents of every dollar goes directly to distribution. With support from our community, we distribute enough food daily for over 178,000 meals. For more information, visit foodbankrockies.org.
About KeyCorp
KeyCorp’s roots trace back nearly 200 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $190.1 billion at September 30, 2022. Key provides deposit, lending, cash management and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of approximately 1,000 branches and approximately 1,300 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications, and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank is Member FDIC.
ColoradoBiz caught up recently with Michael Walters, who in September was named Keybank’s head of business banking across a 15-state footprint. Walters, who was named a ColoradoBiz Top 25 Young Professional in 2020, previously served as executive vice president and west regional retail executive, overseeing KeyBank’s retail branch network across the Western U.S.
In his new role, Walters leads a national team dedicated to serving the needs of small and medium-sized businesses, their owners, and employees with customized, industry-specific banking solutions.
Michael Walters: I started in Cleveland more than two decades ago as an underwriter as part of a training program I enrolled in right out of college. Interestingly, I had a degree in Management Information Systems (MIS), but there weren’t any jobs for MIS majors at the end of the dot com bubble, so I thought I’d try my hand at banking. I kind of fell into it, and now in hindsight, I’m really glad it worked out the way it did!
CB:What brought you to (or attracted you to) KeyBank?
MW: I’ve been at Key for five years now, and the big thing that attracted me to Key is the combination of national banking capabilities with a community banking feel. Key has a culture similar to a community-based bank, but we have the resources and capabilities of a national bank. For me, it’s the best of both worlds.
CB:You’ve been named head of business banking for KeyBank. What does that role entail?
MW: I am responsible for Key’s Business Banking segment, nationwide, which specializes in providing products and services to owner-operated small and mid-sized businesses. We are focused on companies from pre-revenue, generally up to $25 million in annual sales across our 15-state footprint and nationwide on certain KeyBank business lines, like our franchise business and Small Business Administration (SBA) lending. We are nationally ranked as a national top 10 SBA Lender and have a lot of expertise when it comes to small business lending.
CB: How would you describe the current state of business banking?
MW: We’ve been incredibly busy helping our clients to grow their businesses and focus on their financial health, as they navigate uncertain times. We have a great team of specialists in place, and we help thousands of business owners improve their cashflow and run their businesses better every day. It’s a line of business that has been around for a long time and is positioned well for continued growth.
As an industry, it’s a challenging time to be a business owner. The economic environment is tough, from trying to find and retain talent, to supply chain challenges, to rising costs. I think that’s why small and mid-size business owners need a strong experienced banking partner like we have on our team at KeyBank. We specialize in helping business run better, navigating difficult times, and helping these clients grow. We’re proud to help the businesses in the communities we serve.
CB: What’s next in the evolution of business banking? Do you see growth in the recovery from COVID?
MW: Business banking has been and continues to be an advice-based product offering.
Business owners often choose their bank based on the expertise of the relationship manager in front of them, and they want people who are able to provide a range of knowledge and guidance as their business grows. We want to continue to show up in that fashion for our clients.
At the same time, business owners want a lot more capabilities when it comes to banking, specifically when it comes to digital platforms. We need to continue to give good advice, but also deliver a variety of digital tools, whether helping them automate their accounts payable and accounts receivable processes, or just helping them run their businesses more digitally every day. It’s still a people-based business, but now we need to be able to deliver digitally.
This past spring we launched a new interactive tool called the KeyBank Small Business Check-in, which helps small business clients assess where they currently stand financially, evaluate their goals, and discover how Key can help open new opportunities toward their path forward. Coming out of the considerable challenges of the pandemic, with inflation and labor shortages we wanted to ensure that small business owners had convenient access to the tools, resources, and advice they needed to be successful.
In terms of COVID recovery, there are still a lot of headwinds to growth. The war for talent and rising costs are real challenges facing our clients. The pandemic and its effects of the past few years certainly have been a disruptor, but we’ve also found new and better ways to serve our clients that arose out of these times.
CB: KeyBank has quite a few executive-level leaders based here in Colorado. What’s behind the investment in corporate leadership in this market?
MW: Denver is a tremendous economy with a great growth story, and we recognize that, as a regional bank, we need a big presence in Colorado in order to be successful in the West. As a result, we’ve had some executives relocate to be here and a part of this great community.
We’ve also learned a lot since COVID about how you don’t always need to be in the same city as corporate headquarters to be successful in a leadership position. Within Business Banking, we’ve looked across our entire footprint for talent, even when we look to promote people into critical leadership roles. We’re intentionally creating opportunities to attract and retain talent through the expansion of our recruiting efforts and the evolution of some of our virtual channels. These changes allow many of our teammates to work from locations that are best for them and their family. We’re finding that in many parts of our business, we can be very successful virtually with our clients and while working within teams. At the same time, we will continue to maintain a local presence for our clients that rely on us across our many geographies.
CB: This is a competitive banking market. How does KeyBank differentiate itself?
MW: A bank’s true product is really advice and partnership. We are not in the transaction business, we specialize in relationships. We differentiate ourselves by helping businesses achieve their goals and helping them grow. We do that with sound advice and capabilities that deliver on the advice we give.
Last Thursday, KeyBank announced that Michael Walters has been named Head of Business Banking, overseeing Business Banking across Key’s 15-state footprint. Walters previously served as Executive Vice President and West Regional Retail Executive, overseeing KeyBank’s retail branch network across the western U.S.
In his new role, Walters will lead a national team dedicated to serving the needs of small and medium sized businesses, their owners, and employees with customized, industry-specific banking solutions. He will also be responsible for collaborating with executives within Key’s Consumer and Commercial bank to help establish and deploy strategic priorities for KeyBank and its Business Banking clients. He will report to Victor Alexander, KeyBank’s Head of Consumer Banking.
“During his time with Key, Mike has proven to be a strategic thinker and growth-oriented leader who partners with teams across Key to deliver strong results,” said Alexander. “Mike is passionate about our clients and teammates, and I’m excited to watch our business and our clients thrive under his leadership.”
Walters joined KeyBank in 2017 as Senior Vice President, Retail & Mortgage Banking Executive and was named West Regional Retail Executive in 2020. Prior to joining Key, he spent 14 years in positions of increasing responsibility with PNC Financial Services, including serving as Senior Vice President and Network Transformation Executive, where he designed the Retail and Business Banking operating model for PNC’s Consumer Bank.
Walters earned his bachelor’s degree in management information systems from Ohio University and his MBA in international finance from Florida Atlantic University, where he was also named “Alumni of the Decade” for the 2000s. He was also honored as a Denver Business Journal 40 Under 40 and ColoradoBiz Magazine GenXYZ.
About KeyCorp
KeyCorp’s roots trace back nearly 200 years to Albany, New York. Headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, Key is one of the nation’s largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $187.0 billion at June 30, 2022. Key provides deposit, lending, cash management, and investment services to individuals and businesses in 15 states under the name KeyBank National Association through a network of approximately 1,000 branches and approximately 1,300 ATMs. Key also provides a broad range of sophisticated corporate and investment banking products, such as merger and acquisition advice, public and private debt and equity, syndications and derivatives to middle market companies in selected industries throughout the United States under the KeyBanc Capital Markets trade name. For more information, visit https://www.key.com/. KeyBank is Member FDIC.
This year’s Top 25 Young Professionals vary in their backgrounds and their professional pursuits – they’re leaders in banking, real estate, nonprofits, law, entrepreneurship and architecture, to name just a few.
Some are lifelong Coloradans who couldn’t conceive of living anywhere else; others are transplants from the East and West coasts or somewhere between. What they have in common is a relentless achiever’s mindset, a can-do spirit and a desire to do good for others as they do well for themselves.
Read on to learn more about this year’s GenXYZ finalists.
Adeeb Khan, VP of Corporate Social Responsibility & Executive Director at Delta Dental of Colorado Foundation
Shortly after joining Delta Dental of Colorado in January 2020, Adeeb Khan had to quickly shift the strategy for the nonprofit dental-benefits company’s foundation because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the measures he undertook: helping to craft the foundation’s $30 million COVID relief plan, which included $2 million in funding to 55 of Colorado’s 64 counties. The plan also included a low-interest loan program for dentists who provided relief support during the shutdown, marking the first time the foundation used investing as part of its strategic approach to community impact. By September 2020, Khan began working with the foundation’s board to set a new strategic direction in support of its mission to elevate the well-being of all Coloradans by advancing oral health equity.
Khan also designed and launched the foundation’s impact investing strategy that includes offering low-interest loans for nonprofit/public dental clinics for capital expenses. In 2021, the first year of this strategy, the foundation awarded $2.7 million in loans for the development of three new clinics across the Denver metro area.
Khan has dedicated his career to working in the nonprofit sector. In 2020, he was appointed by Gov. Jared Polis to serve on the Early Childhood Leadership Commission for Colorado. He is currently chair-elect of the Denver Metro Chamber Leadership Foundation board and serves on the advisory board for the Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver and the board of directors for Executives Partnering to Invest in Children (EPIC).
Khan, whose parents immigrated from Pakistan, was raised in Wyoming and has been in Colorado since earning his undergraduate degree here. He’s visited his parents’ home country numerous times, and that experience has made him grateful for having been raised in the United States where opportunity abounds. It’s also clearly fueled his desire to give back.
Denise Gomez, VP of Strategic Impact & Integration at Rocky Mountain Communities
As a Denver native, Denise Gomez has positively impacted thousands of individuals and families, displaying leadership that was evident in her teens when she was student council president at Denver East High School. Professionally, she’s worked with several organizations, including Latino Community Foundation of Colorado, Emily Griffith Foundation, Kellogg Fellows Leadership Alliance, and Nonprofit VOTE, among others.
Gomez came aboard Rocky Mountain Communities (RMC), an affordable-housing nonprofit, in early 2020, initially as director of fundraising and equity. Shortly thereafter, the pandemic hit, and her role shifted to meet the needs of the community; in little time, she was elevated to vice president of Strategic Impact and Integration for the organization.
Because some employees left RMC amid the pandemic, the organization’s resident-services team went from six people to one—Gomez. Through her role as the leader of resident services (which she was not hired for but eagerly took on) she took the services to a new level. For example, to support those living in RMC’s affordable housing communities and to provide equitable access to vaccines for its residents when vaccines became available, she connected with other community organizers to host vaccine clinics for residents and staff at the organization’s properties.
At the same time, she supported the organization’s quest to bridge the technology gap that became apparent when the pandemic hit. Gomez worked to design and implement a vision for a laptop program, which started as a pilot at one property and expanded to offer all 1,000 RMC residents a laptop, tablet and Wi-Fi.
The fact that Gomez’s family had lived in Townview, the affordable-housing community that she now supports, makes her work even more rewarding and fulfilling.
“If we can impact our residents in the way my family was impacted all those years ago, we know that what we are doing is working,” she says.
As one of the earliest new hires at the new SmithGroup Denver office in 2019, Rachael Yee stepped in to build and nurture the new office culture of this rapidly expanding arm of the international architecture, engineering and planning firm. Currrently she is the chair of a combined Denver and Phoenix SmithGroup Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee and is helping create and build a human-centric and empathetic industry.
Yee has been a part of two architecture firms in her young career: Huelat Davis (an expansion to Denver’s Davis Partnership) and SmithGroup Denver. Both were budding office locations that brought her on to help establish a working and productive studio, where she has helped build programs and culture. At Davis Partnership, she helped develop and maintain a robust involvement with the Denver Architecture Foundation Cleworth Architectural Legacy Project (CAL) Project, which brought architecture education to K-8 classrooms, inspiring students to think critically about built environments. She continues this leadership role at SmithGroup, originating and leading the SmithGroup CAL volunteer cohort.
The University of Denver graduate also stepped into leadership roles with AIA Colorado, (American Institute of Architects) including co-chair for its Justice and Equity Task Force. She also served on the AIA Colorado Advocacy Task Force to help build a culture of belonging across the state for widely dispersed membership and representation.
Yee currently serves as AIA Colorado’s past president, assisting the board in implementing and activating its imperatives and goals.
Previously at Davis Partnership, where she was recognized as a rising star, Yee was asked to move cross-country to help build the architecture department at the firm’s new East Coast office location. As a small team, and with Yee as the youngest professional of the group, they developed a client base, nurtured relationships, collaborated with the existing interior design discipline at the new office and helped pilot a series of new virtual collaboration tools. Upon returning to the main Colorado office, she helped mesh the two office cultures together and strengthen relationships among colleagues.
Chris Picardi, Senior VP & Commercial Banking Sales Leader at KeyBank
Chris Picardi has a unique ability to see a better way of doing something – and take action to make it happen. For example, he saw a gap in the market when it came to servicing Colorado-based private equity groups, so he spearheaded KeyBank’s effort to become a leading provider of credit and banking services to these groups. As a result, KeyBank is filling a niche of financing the purchases of portfolio companies for the city’s most prominent investor groups. Picardi and his team have established themselves as a go-to resource for these complex transactions.
He’s also taken an active role in helping Key redefine the way it provides small business financing to minority-owned businesses. Until now, the process has been decentralized and handled on an ad hoc basis in each market. Picardi is one of a small group of company leaders currently working to centralize this program, with the goal of making it more impactful to underserved small business owners by making it more structured and strategic. As the middle-market liaison for this initiative, Picardi is attending national conferences, serving on the planning committee for how the company tracks the investments it is making, and having a hand in reshaping the way the company meets the needs of small business owners across its footprint – all just seven months into his new, expanded leadership role in Colorado.
Picardi joined KeyBank as a licensed retail banker in 2012 and has been promoted six times since, most recently in July 2021, when he was named senior vice president and middle market manager for the KeyBank Colorado Commercial Banking team. In this role, he oversees seven commercial bankers and has responsibility for KeyBank’s entire middle market portfolio in Colorado. At 38, he is one of the youngest middle market team leaders in all of KeyCorp, leading one of the largest teams both in terms of employees and book of business.
Picardi describes transitioning from an individual producer to a team leader as his greatest professional challenge so far, but it’s one in which he is clearly thriving.
Phil Dumontet’s entrepreneurial zeal was evident when, fresh out of Boston College, he launched a service called Dashed, which grew to be one of the largest independent restaurant delivery services in the Northeast. Shortly after being named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30,” he sold Dashed to Grubhub in August 2017.
Impressive stuff, but Dumontet was just getting started. Less than a year later, in Boulder, he co-founded Whole Sol Blend Bar, an organic and whole-food eatery and smoothie bar that was an outgrowth of his passion for running and healthy living. Dumontet is an avid marathoner who consistently finishes in the top 20 for his age group. In fact, the idea for Whole Sol came about in training for the New York City Marathon with Alexa Squillaro, who holds a master’s of science in nutrition from Columbia University. Together they launched Whole Sol. The concept has grown to five locations with two more in the works. Three of the new Whole Sol openings occurred during the pandemic, and the company hired 64 new employees during the labor shortage.
Dumontet is also an accomplished and passionate writer, having contributed to The Washington Post, Business Insider, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He’s also passionately involved in the Boulder community, currently serving on the Downtown Boulder Partnership board. In addition, he created the “Boulderthon,” a movement whose goal is to produce a world-class marathon in Boulder with a downtown finish.
Jonathan Munro was raised by a single mom who immigrated from Peru with little English but an abundance of determination — a role model who helped set up her son for success.
Being tapped to lead KeyBank’s Colorado retail bank operations in May 2020 was just the latest in a rapid succession of promotions for Munro, who has been redefining KeyBank programs since joining the company just three years ago, supervisor Michael Walters says.
“One of Jon’s core beliefs is that we are all called to a higher purpose beyond our jobs,” Walters says. “He believes that as he finds more success, he has a greater responsibility to give back to the community – that the two go firmly hand-in-hand.”
Munro chairs the board of Intercambio, a nonprofit providing cultural integration and English classes to immigrants in Boulder County, and sits on the board of Latin American Education Foundation, which provides higher education scholarships to Hispanic students in Colorado.
Munro says his definition of success has changed throughout his life, particularly when he moved into management.
“Leadership challenged my selfish needs for personal recognition,” Munro says. “These needs evolved into a mentality that recognized the importance of success for the individuals who counted on me to lead them in their own careers.”
His No. 1 goal: “To continue to help the people I’m leading achieve their full potential.”
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