Exeter Chief Information Officer named Dallas CIO of Year

Exeter Finance LLC, a non-prime auto finance company, has announced that Chief Information Officer Michele Rodgers has been named the Enterprise winner of the 2021 Dallas CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards. The award was presented by DallasCIO, a chapter of the InspireCIO Leadership Network, which each year recognizes chief information officers in seven key categories.

Rodgers has served as Exeter’s CIO since 2018. She has a diversified professional background that spans technology, finance, enterprise risk, and operations. Exeter Chief Executive Officer Jason Grubb said that Rodgers’ broad experience provides her with a solid base for making critical decisions and makes her one of Exeter’s greatest assets no matter what challenge or opportunity the company is facing.

“We are so proud of Michele being named CIO of the Year and aren’t the least bit surprised that she received this recognition from her peers. She and her team consistently produce the technology we need at Exeter to scale the business, drive revenue and create an optimal user experience,” Grubb said. “As a result of her commitment to excellence, our secure, powerful infrastructure rivals that of lenders that are much larger than we are and gives us a tremendous competitive advantage among financial services institutions anywhere.”

Before joining Exeter, Rodgers held executive leadership positions with Santander Consumer USA and Drive Financial. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Alabama, and was named one of Auto Fin Journal’s Top Women in Auto Finance in 2019 and a Dallas CIO of the Year finalist in 2020.

DallasCIO is the preeminent peer leadership network of North Texas chief information officers. It is one of 21 chapters of the InspireCIO Leadership Network, a national membership organization comprised exclusively of CIOs from public and private businesses, government, education, healthcare, and nonprofit institutions.

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