Regions’ Mehlman joins Bank of the West

Hope Mehlman has started work as general counsel and corporate secretary at Bank of the West.

San Francisco-based Bank of the West is a subsidiary of French bank BNP Paribas. Mehlman is now also corporate secretary at BNP Paribas USA.

Mehlman succeeds Vanessa Washington, who will retire from the bank at the end of the month after 14 years with the company.

Mehlman was previously executive vice president, corporate secretary, chief governance officer and deputy general counsel at Regions Financial Corporation, based in Birmingham, Alabama. In that role she won Corporate Secretary’s 2019 Corporate Governance Award for governance professional of the year (large cap).

Like many in the governance field, Mehlman in recent months had been helping her former company adapt to the pandemic, including holding Regions’ first virtual AGM and revamping its ESG report to talk about Covid-19 and Regions’ response in terms of its human-capital management perspective.

‘Hope will take on the critical role of designing and executing the Bank’s legal and regulatory strategy in line with our business goals, while fostering a culture of risk awareness and accountability,’ Bank of the West president and CEO Nandita Bakhshi says in a statement. ‘I am thrilled to welcome her to Bank of the West.’