Over three decades in the financial sector, Gada Elkenani has viewed banking from every conceivable angle. From her early days as a teller to managing a speciality commercial lending portfolio exceeding $1billion, her career has been defined by a singular discipline: transforming complexity into opportunity.
Today, as the Founder of Building Better Banks (BBB) and Xeper Strategic Partners LLC, Elkenani is tackling one of the most pressing challenges in the US financial ecosystem—the existential crisis facing the sub-$5B community bank.
For Elkenani, the journey to launching an institutional-grade turnaround fund was not born in a boardroom, but on the ground. Through extensive management training programmes early in her career, she experienced the full anatomy of banking—from the back office and compliance to retail and wholesale lending.
“I found banking extremely interesting and was genuinely excited by it,” Elkenani notes. This granular understanding proved vital when she was tasked with rebuilding a highly distressed market in Trenton and Mercer County, ultimately generating nearly $1billion in commercial relationships.
The ‘Aha’ Moment & The Diagnostic Approach
To solve this, she designed the “Bridge. Build. Offload.” framework—not as a sweeping technology overhaul, but as a deeply diagnostic, two-pronged entry framework.
“At its core, our approach is disciplined and diagnostic,” Elkenani explains. “First, a comprehensive review of all filed regulatory matters. Second, a deep, forensic analysis of the bank’s financials. Only once that intelligence is fully developed do we establish a timeline and scope of work.”
Regulators as Stakeholders
Crucially, the BBB model treats regulators not as obstacles, but as critical stakeholders. The initial phase focuses heavily on resolving regulatory issues—such as AML, KYC, or consent orders—in conjunction with a major law firm, ensuring that both execution and returns remain consistent with a defined timeline.
Within the fund, each bank is treated individually, with all findings centralised into a data room and paired with a structured timeline of phased capital draws tied directly to specific remediation objectives.
“It is not just an idea; it is an operating discipline,” Elkenani highlights. “It builds the infrastructure needed to keep moving through political shifts, economic downturns, and market disruption.”
For Elkenani, recently honoured as Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women, Building Better Banks is the culmination of a 30-year journey—restoring confidence in credit by proving that true turnaround success relies on human discipline first, and technology second.
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