Home Industries Business Services IGT’s Stanko aspires for greatness

IGT’s Stanko aspires for greatness

By

Sarah Francis

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05/23/2025

GAME ON: In 2019, Alissa Stanko was named director of finance for International Game Technology PLC, where she oversees annual budgets and multiyear strategic plans for the worldwide gaming operator.  PBN PHOTO/RUPERT WHITELEY

Business Women Awards 2025 WOMAN TO WATCH FINANCIAL SERVICES: Alissa Stanko, International Game Technology PLC director of finance AS A WOMAN in business, Alissa Stanko feels the most valuable lesson she’s learned in her 20-year career is empathy. “I continually try to practice that,” she said. “We all have lives outside of our jobs and

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Business Women Awards 2025 WOMAN TO WATCH FINANCIAL SERVICES: Alissa Stanko, International Game Technology PLC director of finance

AS A WOMAN in business, Alissa Stanko feels the most valuable lesson she’s learned in her 20-year career is empathy. “I continually try to practice that,” she said. “We all have lives outside of our jobs and when you make those connections with the people you work with, you remind them we’re all human. It allows you to grow and lean on each other’s networks.” While growing up in Connecticut, Stanko’s role models were her entrepreneurial parents who owned their own business, something she aspired to. Her favorite subject in school was math and she also liked accounting. “It was interesting, like balancing a checkbook,” Stanko said. After high school, Stanko was on to the University of Connecticut, earning first a bachelor’s degree, then a master’s, both in accounting, and then eventually she became a certified public accountant. Her first job was in public accounting at PricewaterhouseCoopers as an auditor, focusing on private-equity and nonprofit clients. Stanko’s career shifted to International Game Technology PLC in Providence seven years later, and in 2019 she was named the company’s director of finance. Her responsibilities include building annual budgets and multiyear strategic plans. “My accounting background took me on a path from private to public experience,” she said. “I was still involved in internal controls and audits, as well as growth initiatives and contract analysis. I was bridging all those things and that accounting foundation made sense.” Stanko has mentored IGT employees, including women on her team, and others working in finance. She nods to members of her staff who have received promotions, taken on bigger roles and been promoted as a result. Stanko is currently mentoring a new financial analyst who’s beginning her career and is helping to grow her network and complete her CPA. Stanko also has two young daughters and she works with them on their first and third grade math skills. “People need inspiration. It starts at a young age,” she said. “I’m showing them math can be fun. My role is very male-dominated. I’ve had to learn to advocate for and have confidence in myself.”