Sankat Patel: Alumni Vice President

’00, Operations Management

Sankat Patel is senior vice president and national director of commercial treasury management at Fifth Third Bank, based in Chicago. He has more than 20 years of experience in treasury management, supporting a wide variety of industries, including commercial real estate, large corporations, middle-market, food distribution, public funds, surface transportation, franchises and construction/contractors.

Patel has worked in operations, project management, implementation, process improvement and treasury management sales at various financial institutions. Before this, he was an IT consultant for the financial services industry.

He has been invited to speak at numerous industry conferences, such as the national conference for the Association of Financial Professionals. He has presented on best practices in fraud prevention and has led various industry roundtable discussions with CFOs and treasurers.

He received his bachelor’s degree in operations management in 2000 at NIU and earned his executive M.B.A. in 2013 from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Sankat is also active in numerous organizations, including the board of directors at Christopher House, the NIU Alumni Association, the NIU Finance Association and the University of Chicago’s Entrepreneur Roundtable Association.