Bio

Prior to the forming of SWS in 2019, Ms. Shank was Chairperson and CEO of Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co., L.L.C., a firm which she co-founded in 1996 as a start-up investment bank and grew to become the first MWBE firm to rank within the Top 10 of all U.S. municipal debt underwriters and the first MWBE to lead a municipal underwriting over $1 billion in principal amount. Ms. Shank is active in various industry and civic organizations and serves on several boards. She serves as a Director of Pensare Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ:WRLSU), CMS Energy Corporation (NYSE: CMS) and Consumers Energy Company. She is on the boards of the Skillman Foundation, the Bipartisan Policy Center Executive Council on Infrastructure, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Detroit Regional Chamber, and Global Citizen. Ms. Shank is also a member of the Wharton School’s Graduate Executive Board and Spelman College’s Board of Trustees, and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. Ms. Shank serves on the SEC’s Fixed Income Market Structure Advisory Committee. Ms. Shank has won numerous awards and honors throughout her career including receiving the 2017 Shot Caller Award presented at the BET “Black Girls Rock!” Ceremony, the “Austin Koenen Career Achievement Award” by the Municipal Forum of New York in 2017, and the “2016 Freda Johnson Award for Trailblazing Women in the Private Sector” by The Bond Buyer. She was named one of the “100 Most Influential Women in 2016” by Crain’s Detroit Business. Ms. Shank has received the “Whitney M. Young Jr. Service Award” by the Greater New York Council of the Boy Scouts of America and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Engineering Alumni at Georgia Institute of Technology. Ms. Shank has been recognized by U.S. Banker Magazine as one of the “Top 25 Women in Finance”, by Black Enterprise Magazine as one of the “50 Most Influential Black Women in Business” and one of the “75 Most Powerful Blacks on Wall Street” and by Women in Public Finance as “She’s Our Hero”. Ms. Shank was selected by the Wharton School of Business as one of its “125 Influential People and Ideas”. She has appeared on Wall Street Week, CNBC and Bloomberg TV. Ms. 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.