Sarah Grooms knows that for an organization to thrive, its leaders must have the vision and commitment to constantly innovate bigger, faster, and better. As Program Director of Digital Transformation, Grooms leverages her Wintrust experience, her relationships across the company — and her curiosity — to help all departments execute on technology that maximizes everyone’s banking experiences.

With over 20 years of experience at Wintrust under her belt, Grooms is grateful for how her career has evolved during her tenure. Her previous roles at the company span treasury management, business development, commercial lending, and credit — all of which led her to the impactful, hands-on leadership role she plays at the company today.

Currently, the bulk of Grooms’ role involves orchestrating Wintrust’s many departments to strategically design, integrate, and implement strategies that make banker and customer experiences simple, elegant, and seamless. Looking back to when she first started with Wintrust, technology has come a long way — there were no smartphones, much less extensive digital banking tools for customers. But after two decades of watching the company grow its capabilities, she is proud of Wintrust for being a consistent innovator in banking technology.

For Grooms, being a leader at work extends beyond just making an impact for Wintrust team members and customers — it involves being a positive influence on her colleagues as well. She’s passionate about sharing her knowledge through speaking, teaching, and mentoring opportunities across the company, because doing so helps further her ultimate goal of embedding useful applications in all team members’ daily lives across the Wintrust footprint to maximize efficiencies and elevate client interactions.

Her knack for leadership doesn’t stop there, either. To say Grooms is active in her personal and professional communities would be an understatement; when she’s not busy researching what’s new and possible, she spends her time serving on the finance committee of the Ronald McDonald House of Eastern Wisconsin, Chairs the policy board of the Waukesha County Business Alliance, and contributes to the advisory boards of both of her alma maters — Marquette University’s Finance Department and Carroll University’s School of Business and Technology. She is also a member of the Association for Financial Professionals.

As far as where her focus lies these days, Grooms devotes as much time as possible to learning Web 3.0 — the next iteration of the internet, led by emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — and beginning to strategize for the unlimited innovation opportunities and changes on the way. Looking to the future, Grooms is fascinated by the potential applications for this technology across banking and traditional finance (TradFi). The possibilities are vast, and she’s keen on using this knowledge to Wintrust’s advantage.

While technological innovation comes in many forms, to Grooms, it means purposeful change. Innovation starts with listening to all parties to identify an area for improvement and creating change in a simple, useful manner, and then building upon that solid base. But in order to take it further, true innovation must benefit everyone involved — and Grooms is excited to continue innovating in banking for the benefit of her colleagues and the customers of Wintrust.