Fifth Third Bank is a diversified financial services institution headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, serving retail, commercial, corporate, and institutional clients across the United States. The bank offers a full range of solutions including personal and business banking, lending, treasury management, wealth management, and capital markets services. With a history dating back to 1858, Fifth Third combines regional expertise with the resources of a top-tier U.S. bank to deliver innovative financial solutions and long-term client relationships.

Suneel Gill, Managing Director, Fifth Third Bank

Aleks Granchalek, Managing Director, Fifth Third Securities

This project originated from a warm referral by my former manager, Leila Heckman. What began as a straightforward design engagement quickly evolved into a broader strategic contribution to a private credit firm raising institutional capital.

The clients — a duo of private debt investors — were preparing to raise and deploy capital into industrial-scale waste management and recycling projects. Their goal was to originate and structure loans tied to landfill site development, green trucking fleets, recycling technologies, and site selection infrastructure, with the intent to later securitize or sell these loans to institutional trading desks.

My role spanned two core areas: high-end investor communications and strategic sourcing of potential co-investors and limited partners (LPs).

I designed a series of investment pitch books and accompanying fact sheets tailored for sophisticated investors, using Figma for visual execution and real-time client iteration. These decks had to balance technical rigor with narrative clarity, including:

Investment thesis & vehicle structure

Risk-reward positioning

ESG impact metrics

Downstream loan trading potential

Recognizing that the client’s network was still forming, I offered to build an institutional-quality pipeline of potential capital partners. Using clay.com, custom Google scraping, and first-principles research, I sourced:

25 high-fit LPs, family offices, and co-investors

Full contact details: name, title, email, phone, AUM where available

Strict filters: no pension funds (per client request), only actively deploying private credit allocators

Despite its small size, this list represented access to tens of billions of dollars in deployable capital. Each contact was tailored to the client’s thematic focus and fund structure — a level of specificity not available via generic CRM databases.

I managed the entire client engagement independently — from onboarding and scoping to billing via Stripe and phased delivery over multiple weeks. What began as a $200 exploratory project scaled into a multi-deliverable collaboration, with repeat engagements over time.

Investor decks and fact sheets that communicated a nuanced, under-the-radar investment strategy with clarity and institutional polish.

A targeted LP/co-investor list that extended the client’s access to capital markets — sourced and delivered entirely by me.

Accelerated the client’s fundraising efforts and introduced a replicable process for future capital sourcing rounds.

This project gave me a front-row seat into how private credit firms structure new investment vehicles, tell their story to institutional capital, and build deal flow — not just in assets, but in relationships. More importantly, it showed how design and research can combine to unlock funding pathways in opaque and emerging sectors.