Hear how leading CMOs in the retail banking world tackle their biggest strategic challenges and fuel growth in these exclusive in-depth interviews.
Explore the Forum 2025 Agenda
The Three Pillars of Marketing
Pam Piligian 
Chief Marketing Officer
Navy Federal Credit Union (Vienna, VA)
$178 billion in assets
Pam Piligian oversees all marketing, communications, branding, advertising and PR for Navy FCU, the largest credit union in the world, with 13.8 million members and more than 360 branches. As the steward of one of the most admired brands in the financial services sector, she manages a vast array of agency partners and leads an in-house marketing team numbering over 200 people.
Hear how Pam leverages the three pillars of her strategy — relevance, authenticity, and differentiation — to grow the Navy FCU brand in an increasingly commoditized category. She’ll explain how she maximizes marketing ROI with data, technology, culture, and agility, and the discipline required to execute a differentiated marketing strategy at the highest levels.
Aligning Marketing with Business Outcomes
Sue Hermann
Chief Marketing Officer
BOK Financial
$50 billion in assets
Sue Hermann has served as CMO for BOK Financial since 2022, where she oversees marketing strategy with a focus on enhancing brand visibility, customer engagement, and driving growth across all the bank’s various lines of business. With over two decades of experience in marketing and financial services, Sue has become a key player in the banking industry.
At the Forum 2025, you’ll hear how her passion for culture, creativity, and marketing ROI strengthens BOK’s market position and fosters deeper relationships, as she shares her innovative approach to aligning marketing strategy with business goals to achieve tangible results and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Navigating Challenges & Avoiding Pitfalls
Daniel Darst
Deputy CMO
Flagstar Bank (Hicksville, NY)
$119 billion in assets
Daniel Darst’s career spans six different senior marketing roles for a diverse range of financial institutions, including People’s United, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Saxo Bank, and Neuberger Berman. Currently the deputy CMO at Flagstar, a subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp (NYCB), he’s learned what works and what doesn’t when tackling a new leadership role — something most CMOs do (on average) every four years.
In this session, Daniel will drill down on three critical areas where CMOs often make mistakes — including treacherous “brand refresh” projects, agency management, and the often fraught relationship marketing departments have with sales teams — while sharing his insights on how to navigate these challenges successfully.
The Digital Banking Challenger Mindset
Sumeet Grover
Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
Alliant Credit Union (Chicago, IL)
$19 billion in assets
After almost 20 years at Citibank, Sumeet joined Alliant in 2021, the largest digital-only credit union in the world, where he spearheads an integrated approach to digital marketing and product strategy (including deposits and lending), as well as analytics and CX. Alliant was founded nearly 90 years ago exclusively serving United Airlines employees, but has since expanded to serve over 800,000 members nationwide.
In this session. Sumeet will explain Alliant’s “challenger mindset,” embodied by the credit union’s pre-Covid pivot to a branchless, 100% all-digital model. He will share how he orchestrates Alliant’s digital marketing and CX strategies to achieve Alliant’s growth goals, and explore the operational and compliance issues related to their martech stack.
Forging Strategic Partnerships
Vickie Sherman
Chief Marketing Officer
Pacific Premier Bank (Irvine, CA)
$18 billion in assets
Vickie Sherman has more than 15 years of experience in financial services marketing. As CMO of Pacific Premier Bank and Pacific Premier Trust, she leads the marketing and communication strategies that drive business growth, client satisfaction, and brand loyalty. Her goal is both simple and audacious: to outperform Pacific Premier’s regional bank peers by competing directly with the biggest banks in the nation.
Vickie will detail the foundations to her competitive confidence — productive, collaborative relationships with the rest of the bank’s C-suite and her board, as well as close partnerships with leaders across all Pacific Premier’s lines of business — what she calls “the work around the work.”
The Power of Human Connections
Lili Tomovich
Chief Marketing & Experience Officer
Barclays US Consumer Bank
$196 billion in assets
Lili Tomovich brought a diverse consumer marketing background to Barclays when she joined the bank as Chief Marketing & Experience Officer in 2021. Previously, she was CMO at Grove Collaborative, an e-commerce platform for natural home and personal care products, as well as Chief Experience & Marketing Officer for MGM Resorts International.
Lili is animated by a relentless focus on CX, and how brands can forge genuine, meaningful connections with customers. In this session, she will describe how the push towards digital engagement over the last decade has resulted in the “loss of humanity” in marketing and banking, and what financial brands can do to reignite customer relationships through the power of both analog and digital interactions.
