The Huntington National Bank (“Huntington”) announced the appointment of Ameesh Vakharia as executive vice president and chief marketing and digital products officer.

In this newly created role, Vakharia will lead Huntington’s integrated marketing and digital products organization, bringing together brand, marketing, and digital product management to strengthen the Huntington brand, drive customer growth, and create more connected sales and service experiences across digital and physical channels. He will report to Brant Standridge, president of consumer and regional banking.

For more than 160 years, Huntington has evolved with its customers by investing in products, services, and experiences that help people and businesses manage their financial lives. As expectations continue to change, the bank is bringing marketing and digital product teams closer together to support more connected customer experiences.

“Bringing marketing and digital products together creates an opportunity to move faster, simplify how we work and create more seamless experiences for customers,” said Standridge. “Ameesh has a strong track record of connecting strategy, brand, product and digital teams around the common goal of delivering differentiated value for customers. His experience will help us turn ideas into customer-focused solutions and accelerate innovation across the business.”

Vakharia joins Huntington with more than two decades of leadership experience across strategy, digital, product and channel management, customer growth, and brand leadership. Most recently, he served as executive vice president and chief strategy and brand officer at USAA, where he led enterprise strategy, innovation, digital, marketing, communications, corporate responsibility, and membership growth efforts as a member of the company’s Executive Council.

Prior to USAA, Vakharia served on the Operating Council at Truist, where he led retail deposits, small business banking, contact centers, strategy, analytics, and omnichannel client experience. He also held several senior leadership positions at SunTrust spanning deposits, digital channels, customer experience, and enterprise strategy.

“What attracted me to Huntington was its strong culture, commitment to customers and long history of innovating on their behalf,” said Vakharia. “Customers don’t distinguish between a brand promise and a product experience, and the strongest organizations shouldn’t either. Bringing these capabilities together creates an opportunity to move faster, deliver more connected experiences, and make banking simpler and more personal for customers.”

Vakharia’s appointment follows the transition of Vijay Konduru and Mark Sheehan into newly expanded enterprise leadership roles. Konduru now serves as head of Huntington’s business innovation and AI products organization, and Sheehan serves as head of the bank’s digital assets organization.

“These strategic changes will help us move ideas from concept to customer impact more quickly, and build the products, capabilities and experiences that will define the future of banking at Huntington,” Standridge said.