California’s banking, lending, and insurance sector depends on security leaders who can operate across compliance, resilience, customer trust, and business transformation at the same time. The CISOs in this feature come from institutions spanning mortgage finance, regional banking, insurance, and financial infrastructure, with backgrounds that cover enterprise risk, governance, incident response, identity, and large-scale security program development. Their experience reflects the range of challenges facing financial services organizations as they protect sensitive data, modernize technology environments, and respond to growing regulatory and operational demands.
Kwame Fields Sr. — Senior Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
Kwame Fields Sr. serves as senior vice president and chief information security officer at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, where he oversees cyber and information security controls, security operations management, incident response, and IT risk and compliance. In the role, he has led work to define and implement a comprehensive cyber and information security roadmap, streamline crisis management and incident response activities, deploy automation and orchestration to improve response and eradication times, and align policy, control standards, and configuration baselines to industry frameworks. His remit has also included business resiliency planning, security awareness, and regulator and auditor engagement.
Before taking on the CISO role, Fields held security and risk leadership positions at E*TRADE, JPMorgan Chase, Cardinal Health, and American Electric Power. Those roles spanned enterprise information security risk management, identity and access management oversight, application deployment and maintenance risk, SAP security and controls, disaster recovery, and enterprise security program management. His background combines financial services security governance with long-running leadership across large, regulated organizations.
Raghu Valipireddy — Senior Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, Axos Financial
Raghu Valipireddy is senior vice president and chief information security officer at Axos Financial, where he has served since 2018. His career in security and risk management spans banking, consulting, and enterprise technology, with experience that includes technology risk governance, cyber threat response, and security strategy development.
Before joining Axos Financial, Valipireddy held senior leadership roles at Ally, including senior director of technology risk and governance and director of cyber threat response. Earlier, he worked as a manager in PwC’s technology consulting practice with a focus on information security, and previously held security roles at Borders Group. That progression reflects a background built across risk, response, and consulting, with additional early experience in systems administration that rounds out his technical foundation.
Brandon Eberhard — Senior Vice President, Chief Information Security Officer, Sunwest Bank
Brandon Eberhard is senior vice president and chief information security officer at Sunwest Bank. He stepped into the CISO role after serving as vice president and information security officer at the bank, bringing forward a background centered on enterprise security management, risk assessment, and regulatory compliance. His profile emphasizes cross-functional leadership, program development, and alignment of security strategy with broader organizational priorities.
Earlier in his career, Eberhard worked as an enterprise security analyst at WECC, an advisory consultant in Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, and in security and SOX-related roles at Zions Bancorporation. That mix of banking, advisory, and enterprise security work gives him experience across operational security, risk analysis, compliance, and governance in regulated environments.
James OBrien — Chief Information Security Officer, Banc of California
James OBrien is chief information security officer at Banc of California, a role he took on after nearly 12 years as deputy chief information security officer at First Republic Bank. His experience centers on information security, business continuity, IT risk management, and third-party security oversight, all of which are core functions for financial institutions managing complex vendor and operational environments.
Before First Republic, OBrien served as chief information security officer at East West Bank. Earlier in his career, he held operations management and program management roles at the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco and worked as an application design consultant at Deloitte & Touche Tax Technologies. His background combines direct CISO experience with long exposure to banking operations and technology program work.
Jeff Farinich — Executive Vice President Technology and Chief Information Security Officer, New American Funding
Jeff Farinich is executive vice president of technology and chief information security officer at New American Funding. He previously served in the company’s senior vice president technology and CISO role, where he led security and technology strategy with an emphasis on governance, people, process, and enterprise capability building. His profile highlights board and C-level engagement, organizational change leadership, and a strong focus on customer service and team development.
Before joining New American Funding, Farinich managed infrastructure at SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, where his remit included operations across applications, data center, storage, network, contact center, and security. Earlier roles at Cisco, NDS, WGI Solutions, IDENTIX, and MDP Worldwide added broader experience across IT operations, global infrastructure, cloud, virtualization, and security-aligned technology leadership.
Ajay Wadhwa — Chief Information Security Officer, State Compensation Insurance Fund
Ajay Wadhwa is chief information security officer at State Compensation Insurance Fund, where he has led the company’s information security program since 2017. His role includes setting strategy, architecture, and roadmaps, aligning security efforts with business strategy, advising executive leadership, and reporting security updates and issues to the board of directors. His background spans IT, audit, compliance, privacy, and cybersecurity over more than three decades.
Before joining State Compensation Insurance Fund, Wadhwa worked as an executive security consultant and security portfolio manager supporting organizations including Bank of the West, TPMG, and UCSF. He also held security and compliance roles at Symantec, Cisco, Blue Shield of California, Esurance, Accretive Solutions, San Francisco State University, and Safeway. Across those posts, he worked on security strategy, cloud migration, PCI governance, risk assessment, secure SDLC, privacy and governance, business continuity, incident response, and audit management across a broad set of regulatory frameworks.
Security Leadership Across California’s Financial Core
The CISOs in California’s banking, lending, and insurance sector are working across institutions where trust, resilience, and regulatory discipline are inseparable from business performance. Their backgrounds show how financial services security leadership increasingly spans not just cyber defense, but governance, continuity, risk communication, and long-term organizational change. Together, they reflect the breadth of experience shaping security strategy across some of the state’s most important financial organizations.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.