Meet & Greet

Big Man on Campus

John Rasmussen has been named head of Wells Fargo's education financial services business, the country's second-largest provider of private student loans. He previously led the company's centralized retail business for home lending, which handles Wells mortgage customers who do business with the bank by phone rather than at a branch. Rasmussen has been in the banking industry for 20 years, the past eight with Wells Fargo.

 

Good Sport

At home, Valley National Bank's Christopher Coiley may be a local Little League VP and the recreation commissioner in his town of Ringwood, N.J., but at work he knows it's only fun and games until someone loses a real estate deal.

Coiley, who has been with the $15.8 billion-asset Valley since 1990, was recently named first SVP and division head of New York commercial real estate lending. He is based in Manhattan, overseeing loan relationships east of the Hudson River.

Several Valley veterans on the other side of the river also have new titles, including Dorothy Kahlau, now first SVP overseeing commercial and industrial lending in New Jersey, and Alfred Sorrentino Jr., first SVP for CRE lending in the state. Valley is based in Wayne, N.J.

 

Telling Her Story

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, and it almost claimed Amy Heinl three years ago. The 43-year-old deputy chief risk officer for S&T Bank in Indiana, Pa., had no reason to suspect anything was wrong beforehand. But during her regular workout one morning, she suddenly felt searing chest pain and collapsed.

Heinl was diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection, a rare condition that strikes younger women and can result in sudden death.

Now she is working to raise awareness, in part by serving as a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association's "Go Red for Women" campaign.

A proud S&T threw its support behind the campaign, and its deputy CRO, with a series of initiatives in February, including the placement of decorative red lighting outside the company's headquarters. It also helped sponsor the "Go Red for Women" luncheon in Pittsburgh.

The story of Heinl's disease and her recovery appeared in the February issue of Women's Day magazine to coincide with the national campaign.

"I tell my story because I am actually alive to tell it," says the mother of three boys, ages 17, 15 and 12. "I want to show other women that heart disease can happen to anyone, but you can survive it."

 

Accion's 2020 Vision

More than 2 billion people world-wide lack access to the type of financial services that most of us would consider crucial, like credit, payments services, savings and insurance.

For two years, the Center for Financial Inclusion at the global nonprofit Accion has worked with industry experts to see if more could be done to break down the barriers.

"If we can get a broader group of stakeholders to see them-selves as part of the movement to build economic opportunity for all, this will be the moment when financial inclusion begins to be a reality," says Accion President and CEO Michael Schlein, who now has at least two major corporations to add to his list of involved stakeholders. Visa and Citi are working with the center on a new campaign called Financial Inclusion 2020, which is using the year 2020 as a focal point to galvanize efforts by the private sector, governments and advocacy groups to create improved-and affordable-access to financial products and services.

 

Pacific Pick-Up

UnionBanCal's recent acquisition of Pacific Capital Bancorp turned out rather happily for another California bank, the $1.1 billion-asset Heritage Oaks Bancorp, which scooped up Pacific Capital's chief financial officer to fill a post that had been vacant since November.

Mark K. Olson joined Paso Robles, Calif.-based Heritage Oaks in January. (President and CEO Simone Lagomarsino had been handling CFO duties in the interim.)

Olson, a 23-year veteran of the industry, also has worked at Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Westcorp and WFS Financial.

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