Melissa Donaldson is senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Wintrust Financial Corporation. She is the first chief diversity officer at Wintrust, which operates chartered community banks in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.

Prior to joining Wintrust, Melissa was director of diversity networks and communication for Walgreens, where she implemented diversity councils, set strategies to enhance employee engagement, spearheaded the award-winning Walgreens Diversity & Inclusion Annual Report, and produced the inaugural Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA) Global Executive Women’s Conference for the company’s top 250 global women leaders.

Previously, Donaldson served as CDW Corporation’s first director of inclusion practices and led the company to earn the Exemplary Voluntary Efforts Award from the U.S. Department of Labor in 2008.

In 2019, Donaldson was named a Champion of Diversity by Women of Color magazine.

During the 2019 Women of Color (WOC) Conference, a popular seminar discussed strategies for getting more female talent into the executive pipeline and increasing the number of students in the financial field.

WOC fintech career workshops focus on how tech is transforming the financial landscape and examine practical steps that can be taken to keep moving women forward in the industry.

They also look at how sustaining a diverse leadership culture is critical to the success of the financial sector.