Senior EVP, Chief Credit Officer
Comerica Bank
When then-Michigan-based Comerica acquired a community bank in Texas in 1988, Melinda Chausse was asked to develop training and recruitment programs in Dallas.
Chausse was halfway through Comerica's two-year training program for commercial bankers, but she took the assignment anyway.
She did not intend to stay more than a couple of years. "But I got here and very quickly loved the entrepreneurial spirit of being on the ground floor of a bank that was going to be built from that original acquisition."