Career moves

Penn Community Bank didn’t have a CFO until it hired Stephanie Austin, who won praise for building a solid finance department at her previous job.

Umpqua Holdings in Oregon has promoted a business-banking executive to president of its bank unit.

Citizens National Bancshares of Bossier in Bossier City, La., has named Jason Smith, an executive vice president at subsidiary Citizens National Bank since 2008, as its president and chief executive.

Vantiv named Stephanie Ferris chief financial officer, promoting her from deputy chief financial officer, a post she has held since September 2015.

Sanford Weill, the retired chairman and chief executive of Citigroup, and his wife, Joan, have pledged $185 million to the University of California at San Francisco to create a new research center.

Orion FCU and Greylock FCU announce appointments and promotions while CU League of Connecticut honors three.

Cutting-edge jobs — think chief innovation, strategy and data officers — are on the rise at banks and other lenders, and they are drawing free-thinking, tech-savvy candidates from inside and outside of financial services. American Banker asked several of them to recommend a book or other piece of writing that helped them tackle jobs that often were created from scratch.

CIT Group named John C. Erickson president of its consumer bank and head of operations in California. Erickson, 54, will be based in Pasadena, California, and report to Chief Executive Officer Ellen Alemany.

Members of State Employees' CU, Raleigh, N.C., renewed the SECU Foundation's "People Helping People" high school and community college scholarship programs. Both programs represent the allocation of over $4 million in scholarships annually.

Lending Club said Thursday that it has hired Sameer Gulati, formerly of McKinsey & Co., to be its chief operations officer and promoted another executive, Scott Sanborn, to president. Both are newly created positions at the nonbank lender.