The Charlotte Regional Business Alliance focuses on everything from business recruiting and retention to public policy matters such as taxes and regulations to issues of equity, mobility and inclusion.
With that in mind, Ally Financial Inc. executive Ali Summerville seems like an ideal fit as the organization’s incoming chair for 2024.
Summerville’s job title at the bank is business administration executive. It’s a role that touches almost every aspect of Ally’s business and community roles.
She is responsible for finding and developing company wide efficiencies; ensuring the bank’s executives have the processes in place to collaborate effectively; overseeing the company’s real estate and facilities portfolio; and leading corporate citizenship and community relations, including the Ally Charitable Foundation.
CLT Alliance selects a different business executive every year to lead its board.
She came to Ally in 2009.
Summerville, who spent this year as first vice chair, will replace Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) Charlotte President Kieth Cockrell as chair.
She wants to keep CLT Alliance — and the region — on a similar path.
“This remains a very strong market to attract talent,” she said.
“I don’t think there’s anything massively missing. I think what we need to be careful of — we can’t take our eye off the ball. We don’t want things to get too far away from us, where we’re growing in a way that’s unsustainable, or we are concentrating in one kind of market where we need to diversify.”
Population gains in recent years for the Charlotte region affirm those strengths, she added.
This year, CLT Alliance and the board focused heavily on what became a successful campaign to pass a $2.5 billion school bonds package. Sixty-three percent of voters approved the bonds on Nov. 7. It is the largest bond package in state history, surpassing Guilford County’s $1.7 billion for schools passed last year.
Summerville said that a proposed expansion of Charlotte’s transit system — estimated price tag: $13.5 billion — will likely be a focal point in 2024. Overall, she said that her approach will be to help CEO Janet LaBar and CLT Alliance get stronger. Summerville believes the organization has a strong foundation to build from.
The formal transition of board leaders occurs as part of CLT Alliance’s annual meeting. This year, the annual meeting is Dec. 12 at The Revelry at Camp North End. During an interview this week at CLT Alliance’s uptown offices, Summerville spoke to CBJ about what she and the board hope to accomplish in the year ahead. To read excerpts from that conversation, click here.
