Finance | Insurance 2023: THOMAS RANSON

Growing up in Urbanna, Ransom worked with his hands, doing house-roofing jobs and prepping cars to be painted. He moved into the less physically taxing field of banking when BB&T recruited him out of Hampden-Sydney College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics.

He’s worked at the bank, which became Truist following its 2019 merger with SunTrust Banks, for 23 years. The Fortune 500 company is the sixth largest bank in the
U.S., with $574 billion in assets. Ransom has been president for the bank’s Virginia region since 2021, and he launched the Truist HBCU strategy to recruit and retain Black clients and employees.

Ransom received his MBA from the University of Baltimore and was a public policy fellow at Princeton University. He is active in community leadership, delivering Virginia State University’s fall 2022 commencement speech. Also last year, he was appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Revenue Estimates. He serves on the boards of RVA757 Connects, the Virginia Chamber of Commerce and the Virginia Bankers Association.

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