Huntington’s Samantha Costanzo is optimistic for future female muni leaders

When it comes to women’s advancement in public finance, Samantha Costanzo is clear-eyed yet optimistic.

The former Citi banker earlier this month was tapped by Huntington National Bank to become the firm’s head of public finance, the fourth woman to ascend to the role in the municipal industry.

She describes the question of equal representation in financial services as “a chicken and egg problem,” which she’s chaired countless initiatives over the years to try and address.  

“Listen, it’s the nature of Wall Street in a lot of ways — it’s a different career path and a different environment than going into finance at the issuer level … and it is largely dominated by men,” she told The Bond Buyer. “I mean, that’s just a matter of fact.”

But “we have an opportunity, as women in these roles, to reach out and help other women,” she added. “I think we all need to make sure that that’s top of mind. There were many women who helped me along the way — went out of their way, completely above and beyond what a friend or a client or anyone needed to do for me, but did it just because they wanted to give me a boost. And I haven’t forgotten that.”

Data on women in finance show the industry has some ground to make up. An October 2021 report from McKinsey & Company on gender and race gaps in U.S. financial services found “a leaky pipeline from which women are falling out in greater numbers as they progress up the career ladder.” Not only is there a “broken rung” between entry level and manager roles, the report found, but those women who do ascend, like Costanzo, often wind up doing extra, unrewarded work mentoring and building DEI programs.

And a June 2022 report from Deloitte on female leadership in financial services showed that by 2021, women in the U.S. held only 21.1% of C-suite roles and 21% of senior leadership positions. Still, there was one ray of light: a noticeable “multiplier effect,” or a 3x increase in the number of women hired to senior leadership roles for every woman who joined the C-suite in America.  

The report found that due to the multiplier effect, it matters not only how many women are entering the talent pipeline, but, as important, how many are ascending to the top levels. The report also warned of a “reverse multiplier” effect, in which each woman who leaves a senior leadership role triggers an exodus in the next generation cohort.

That’s a dynamic that Costanzo is trying to change. She’s involved in Women in Public Finance; she mentors; and in general, she tries “to grow these junior women into senior women” in municipal finance.

“It’s hard — and I experienced it myself — it’s hard as a young woman in your 20s, starting out in this business, to look up and find a good role model, someone you want to be like,” she said. “Because you’re usually looking for another woman to model your career and your path after. And if there aren’t any senior women, then it’s going to be hard to find a role model. And guess what? After a couple years, they probably drop out and go away. I think that’s more the issue than anything else.”

As a mentor, Costanzo draws on lessons she learned from her own mentors and sponsors — some of them direct managers, others people that she just met through the business. Perhaps the most important is to push oneself beyond one’s comfort zone.

“You have to be pushed outside of your comfort zone to really grow,” she observed. “And that’s frankly how you move up. That’s how you get the next role, the next promotion, the next opportunity. And even as you transition just through the career path of a typical investment banker, moving from more of a junior analytical support person to more of a new business person, you have to really push yourself to take that leap.”

Women have often turned to Costanzo as they’ve started families or returned from maternity leave, seeking guidance on how to strike the right balance between growing family and career. The answer is unique for every person, she said, but having struck that balance twice herself, she can speak to the importance of good family leave policies — for everyone.

“The trend has been — across the investment banking area, anyway — to provide parental leave for both men and women, and if anything, I think that timeframe has gotten longer in recent years,” she said. “It’s critically important for both parents to spend that time with their new baby, bonding. And by saying that it’s purely for women to have that time, it’s sort of going back to stereotyping that that’s a woman’s job… I think it’s critically important, and I’d love to see it more widely offered, by all kinds of employers across the Street.”

As the second quarter is about to start, Costanzo looks ahead and sees plenty of cash out in the market. She said “there’s still a fair amount of uncertainty out there,” but “luckily, munis have held in there.”

Over the past year, tax-exempt muni rates have held relatively stable, she added, even as taxable rates have been far more volatile. And at the end of the day, Costanzo is as optimistic about the remainder of this year as she is about women’s prospects in public finance.

“It feels to me like issuers will continue to get a good reception in the marketplace, and it feels as though there are quite a few deals building over the course of the next several months,” she said. “So I’m really looking forward to a good year this year; I think we’re going to see issuers who were out of the market or didn’t issue nearly as much as they typically did in prior years coming back into the market this year — needing to borrow for new money again. And I think we’re going to continue to see opportunities with current refundings and also with tenders this year.” 

Huntington ranked 33rd as lead underwriter in 2023, working on 71 deals totaling $1.103 billion. Through March 21, the firm has lead managed 19 deals totaling $203.6 million and sits in 33rd place.