Meet & Greet

Moving on

As head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, David H. Stevens spent the last year warning that excessive and ill-considered regulation could drag down the mortgage market

As the new head of SunTrust Mortgage, he'll have to face that regulation head on.

Stevens, previously a commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, left the MBA after little more than a year there. He takes over SunTrust's mortgage operations this month, moving to a business that is still struggling with credit quality and repurchase requests-and trying to comply with new government requirements. But Stevens says that regional banks like Atlanta's SunTrust have suffered much less reputational damage than the biggest banks.

He says he's leaving the MBA sooner than planned, but "this unique opportunity to return to the private sector would not wait."

Getting Credit for Giving It

She faced down barriers years ago as a woman on a trading floor and has long served as a mentor to other women. But Barbara Morrison suspects she was named the Financial Women's Association of San Francisco's Woman of the Year for reasons that reflect broader, and perhaps timelier, concerns. "I believe the FWA is recognizing a body of work that is particularly important today: providing access to capital for growing small businesses, and promoting job creation and economic recovery," she says. TMC Financing, the SBA-certified development company Montgomery founded and runs in San Francisco, has extended $6.4 billion of credit, primarily commercial real estate financing, to thousands of small businesses. She also has a nonprofit providing microloans and coaching to entrepreneurs, and she sits on the California Small Business Task Force of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Big Show of Support

The Center for Discovery, an upstate New York residential facility for people with disabilities, packed 1,000 people into a Manhattan ballroom for its annual fundraising dinner this year. The guest list was more than double the usual size, and the reason was Ellen Alemany. The CEO of Citizens Financial Group and RBS Americas was honored for her contributions to the center, where she is on the board and where her eldest daughter, who was born with cerebral palsy, has been a resident for years.

The sponsorship list for the May event was packed with financial services firms. Industry colleagues including Eugene Ludwig and Ajay Banga were among the people whom Alemany thanked by name in her speech. She also expressed gratitude to Shelly Lazarus, the chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, which works with Citizens and donated its services to produce a powerful video about the center and its mission. But Alemany saved her biggest thank you for her husband and two younger children, and moved many in the hall to tears when she described raising a child with special needs as "one of the greatest joys and the single most defining experience of my life."

Citigold Rush

Citigroup is going on a wealth management hiring spree, with plans to add 300 personal bankers and brokers within two years.

The binge kicked off just recently with two new top execs: John Cummings joins Citigold Wealth Management as chief operating officer and Frank Consalo oversees investment sales for Citi's Personal Wealth Management team.

Both report to Citigold President Venu Krishnamurthy.

Cummings is a Merrill Lynch veteran who most recently was COO of Merrill's Global Wealth Management Group.