Adriana Kong Romero

President

Bank of America Tucson

By Tara Kirkpatrick

As a child of educators, Adriana Kong Romero first saw the potential to change lives through a banking internship while she was a Douglas High School student.

Now, as both the president of Bank of America Tucson and the Global Banking and Markets West region market executive, that experience and drive to help others remains her inspiration.

“To play a role in helping a client realize and plan their financial goals – buying their first home, saving for their children’s college or assisting a small business – is what inspired me back then,” said Kong Romero. “It still inspires me today as I continue connecting our clients to the wide range of Bank of America’s capabilities to help them achieve their goals and economic opportunity.”

After high school, Kong Romero worked as a bank teller while studying finance at the University of Arizona. When she was named market president of Bank of America at age 35, she was one of the youngest to achieve that position at the multinational bank.

“I love working for a company that invests in diversity and women,” said Kong Romero, noting that half of the bank’s workforce is female. “The bank invests in women within our company and in our communities by focusing on being a great place to work for our female employees, making the financial lives of our female clients better, and advancing the economic empowerment of women around the world.”

Kong Romero is the region’s enterprise leader, helping local companies achieve their goals and promoting economic mobility in the community – missions that became supremely tested this past year by the pandemic, protests over racial justice, and civil unrest.

“We navigated through this by helping our teammates, communities and clients manage through uncertainty by accelerating our efforts to support racial equality and economic opportunity,” she said. “Across Arizona, we donated nearly 100,000 articles of PPE (personal protection equipment) and hand sanitizer to local nonprofits and agencies, and directed $5.5 million in philanthropic support with a focus on reaching our hardest hit communities of color.”

That support included a $1 million award to Pima Community College to help students of color complete the education and training needed to enter the local workforce, addressing skills gaps and underlying issues that have caused barriers to success.

“Adriana’s expertise and enthusiasm have been instrumental in the success of our collaboration with Bank of America to close critical skills gaps, and move the bar on graduation and workforce success for our learners of color,” said PCC Chancellor Lee Lambert.