Ben Van Vlerah

With over 25 years of banking experience, Ben has built multiple teams and client portfolios working with a variety of privately owned companies, non-profits, family offices and private equity firms. His teams take a unique approach to deeply understand the 5-year strategy of a management team while identifying key challenges, mitigation of risks, and key connectivity opportunities. This allows him to drive value to executives by enhancing business strategies, identifying and advising strategic acquisitions, constructing complex capital solutions, providing new client introductions and guiding succession planning.

Ben is the Illinois Market President and Commercial Regional Leader supporting Illinois and Northern Indiana at KeyBank. Previously, he served as Commercial Regional Manager of Commercial Banking in Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa at Huntington Bank/FirstMerit Bank for 14 years. Prior to this experience, Ben was the Illinois Commercial Banking Group Manager at Banco Popular North America. Prior to joining BPNA, Ben began his career at American National Bank.

Ben is active in the local community where he is a board member of Facing Forward to End Homelessness and member of the Finance Committee for 5 years. He is the current Chapter Chair of the YPO Chicagoland Chapter with over 8 years of board roles, and he is a member of the Veteran’s Committee at Rosecrance Behavioral Health.