FinOps in Action6 Nov 2025

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

🎧 Subscribe for more FinOps leadership conversations → https://www.finopsinaction.com/

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:

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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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