Steve Williams
Principal
Steve Williams heads up Cornerstone's industry-leading Strategic Planning, Best Practices and Efficiency Improvement advisory services. Over more than two decades in the financial services and consulting industries, Steve has focused primarily on strategic and technology planning and performance improvement projects and he has assisted hundreds of banks and credit unions in their efforts to become highly efficient, top performing financial institutions.
Before founding Cornerstone, Steve held a similar position with M ONE, Inc. He was an Assistant Managing Director with Arthur Andersen & Co. and a commercial lender and operations officer with Chase Bank of Arizona. He served on the board of directors and chaired the compensation committee for a $300 million community bank in Southern California. His financial career began as a Marketing Analyst at Chase Bank.
Steve is among the authors of The Mid-Sized Bank Study, The Cornerstone Report: Benchmarks and Best Practices for Mid-Size Banks and The Cornerstone Report: Benchmarks and Best Practices for Credit Unions. He leads the Mortgage Lending and Commercial Lending communities that developed as a result of these publications. Steve is a regular contributing author for GonzoBanker, Cornerstone’s well regarded industry blog. He has been published in numerous industry periodicals, including American Banker, Bank Director, BAI Banking Strategies, Journal of Commercial Lending, RMA Journal, and Credit Union Management magazine, a publication of the Credit Union Executives Society. Steve is in great demand as a speaker at industry conferences and seminars, as well as an experienced facilitator for management retreats and board planning sessions.
Steve has served as a faculty member at the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking and has taught at the National School of Banking in Fairfield, Conn., and the Management Institute of the Credit Union Executives Society. He holds a Master of Business Administration Degree in Finance summa cum laude from Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz., and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Journalism from Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.