Finale Norton

Board Member

Finale Norton was born in Exmore, a small rural town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. As a child, the summers were spent running barefoot and playing outside all day. It was a small community and black and white kids all played together. Though Finale’s family was poor, she did not give it much thought until entering middle school. Neither her mother nor father finished high school. Her father shucked oysters and laid ground cable and was hit by a truck and sadly died when she was in 8th grade. Her mother was a housekeeper until she obtained her license in cosmetology at the same time Finale headed to college. In 1985, Finale earned her Bachelor’s degree in Human Ecology with a concentration in marketing, the first in her family to do so. Her goal was to get a job after college so she could put cleaning clam buckets at 4 a.m., picking tomatoes and being a waitress behind her.

After college, Finale went to work in a retail store entering their management associate’s program until marrying her college sweetheart in 1986. Finale went on to work for Bank of America in 1988 and that’s when life changed. She was selected for the management associate program; her mom still has the newspaper article showing her promotion to an officer of the bank. It was a big deal for all. 

Finale spent the next 10 years managing bank branches. With the support of a mentor and sponsor, she would go on to manage at the regional level and in 2003 became an executive in the company, managing the market in South Carolina and then Hampton Roads. Finale discovered that her greatest strengths were leading and inspiring teams. During her tenure in those markets, her team achieved goals that no one thought were possible. 

In 2008 it all began to come crashing down with the recession and in 2009, Finale was not given a regional role in the reorganization and was asked to go to Atlanta, Georgia to run the largest market in the Southeast as a “consolation prize.” Although she did not know it then, it was a firsthand opportunity to see racial disparities in pay and promotions and do something about it.  She went about making sure women of color were paid what they were worth. It was exhilarating! That is why today she believes that it isn’t just incumbent on white managers to do the right thing when they are in positions of influence, but it is up to Black leaders to go above and beyond to make sure diversity and inclusion efforts show up in the paycheck too!

In 2010, Finale’s reputation for leading large teams brought her back from Atlanta to Hampton Roads to run consumer contact centers across the country with more than 2,000 contact center associates. Customer Service, Associate Experience, and Diversity and Inclusion were the most important factors in building successful teams. Finale’s results always spoke for themselves, but it became quite clear that success in corporate American required far more than that to keep moving up the ever-tightening ladder.

In 2015, Finale retired from Bank of America and spent a year at Accenture, a consulting company. She retired permanently from corporate America in 2018. She then set up two Sole Props: “Common Sense Consulting” and “Rich Girl Poor Girl.”  She spends most of her time on “RGPG,” an interior decorating home business focused on sharing interior decorating with those less likely to have an experience with a design firm. Her future goal is to set up a nonprofit focused on sharing interior beauty with those who cannot do it for themselves focused on seniors and single moms. Though poor growing up, her mom made a clean and lovely home for her and her siblings never knowing that what they had was not the best, but she made it so - thus Finale’s desire to be able to do it for others today.

Finale attributes her success to her mom who never quits, turning her GED and Cosmetology license into a 35-year career that is still strong, and happily working at 77! Though Finale did ok (by her standards) in corporate America, she says she found incredible courage after the death of George Floyd to re-access her 26-year career. She says she has found the courage to speak out honestly on LinkedIn, to say what others will not and give voice to those who may not yet have the courage to speak their truth.

“I am just getting wound up,” she says. “I have a lot lived and packed in those 26 years!”