FinOps Made Fun: Leaderboards, Badges, & Cloud Savings ft. Amy Race, Citizens Bank | Ep 42
Can enforcing a simple tagging strategy transform your entire FinOps program?
In this episode of FinOps in Action, I sit down with Amy Race, Head of Infrastructure, Cost Management, and Cloud FinOps at Citizens Bank, to dive into how her company moved 99% to the cloud.
Amy shared how her team went from inconsistent tagging and cloud chaos to a structured, scalable FinOps practice. She explains how clear ownership, executive buy-in, and automation helped enforce a 100% tagging policy.
We also covered how making FinOps fun by introducing leaderboards, badges, and recognition turns FinOps into a company-wide movement.
Here’s what we talked about:
- The one mistake most FinOps teams make when launching a tagging strategy
- How Citizens Bank went from “advisory” tagging to 100% enforcement
- Why executive buy-in is the make-or-break factor in FinOps success
- The creative ways Amy’s team made FinOps fun, with leaderboards, badges, and friendly competition
- How top-down accountability turned optimization into a company-wide habit
Quote of the Show:
- “Going back and doing something is much harder than doing it right from the beginning.” - Amy Race
Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-jacobs-race-1882054/
- Website: https://www.citizensbank.com/homepage.aspx
Ways to Tune In:
- Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f25a9d18-c12f-4ee4-93f5-2aa96e509b55
- Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/finops-in-action/id1790497808
- iHeart Radio: https://iheart.com/podcast/268443483/
- Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/finops-in-action-5958339
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3IpjMc3qxDXZAjic5Zq21t
- Substack: https://finopsinaction.substack.com/
- Transistor: finopsinaction.com
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PointFiveCloudCostEfficiency
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