Tennessee’s financial services sector spans community banking, regional institutions, and global asset management, and the cybersecurity leaders protecting those organisations reflect that range. The people in this feature bring backgrounds in risk governance, regulatory compliance, infrastructure, and enterprise security programme development across environments where protecting client trust and satisfying complex regulatory requirements are non-negotiable.
Elliott Franklin — Senior Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer, Fortitude Re
Elliott Franklin brings more than twenty years of experience in information security and IT leadership, with a track record spanning risk identification, control design, security programme development, infrastructure delivery, and regulatory compliance. His expertise includes building and managing security and risk management awareness programmes, developing and maintaining security policies and standards, and working across business stakeholders to define and prioritise security requirements. His background also extends into project and programme management, service delivery operations, and technology implementation, giving him a profile that connects security governance with broader enterprise operations in a reinsurance environment.
Andreas Sobotta — Senior Vice President and Global Chief Information Security Officer, AllianceBernstein
Andreas Sobotta has served as global CISO at AllianceBernstein since 2022, leading information security strategy across a major global asset management firm headquartered in Nashville. His areas of expertise include cloud security, red teaming, data loss prevention, insider risk, threat intelligence, incident response, forensics, and M&A integration, and he holds CISSP, CISM, CCSP, and CRISC certifications. He also serves as a director on the board of the Cloud Security Alliance Nashville Chapter and as an advisory council member of the CISO Executive Network, reflecting sustained engagement with the broader security leadership community alongside his enterprise responsibilities.
Keith Thomas — Chief Information Security Officer, Pinnacle Financial Partners
Keith Thomas brings more than twenty-eight years of technology and cybersecurity experience to his role as CISO at Pinnacle Financial Partners, where he has served since early 2024. His background includes more than fifteen years in security leadership, with programme delivery experience spanning healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and technology environments. He is known for building collaborative, consensus-driven security cultures that give teams ownership and autonomy, and for developing partnerships with business stakeholders that position security as an operational enabler rather than a control function.
David Baker — Chief Information Security Officer, Volunteer Bank / Lawrence Bank
David Baker has spent nearly three decades in financial-sector cybersecurity and currently serves as CISO across the Lawrence Bank family of brands, which includes the Volunteer and F&M institutions. His programme is anchored in GLBA and FFIEC frameworks, with direct accountability for security governance, risk management, compliance, incident response, business continuity, and third-party risk management, all reported to executive leadership and the board. His approach centres on disciplined execution of security fundamentals across every control domain, a philosophy shaped by long experience in community banking environments where regulatory rigour and operational practicality have to coexist.
Where Tennessee’s financial security leadership stands
Across community banks, regional financial institutions, and global investment firms, the common thread in this group is a grounded, business-aligned approach to security leadership. These are leaders who have built programmes rather than inherited them, worked across regulatory frameworks rather than around them, and developed the stakeholder credibility to position cybersecurity as a core component of how their organisations operate. In financial services, where trust is the product, that kind of leadership matters considerably.
Explore more profiles of the leaders shaping cybersecurity across numerous industries in our CISOs to Watch collection.