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Carol Yochem has gone home to Tennessee, and to the bank where she got her start nearly 33 years ago.
Most recently an SVP at TD Bank stationed in Greenville, S.C., Yochem has been hired back by First Tennessee as president of the Middle Tennessee (i.e. Nashville) market.
First Tennessee already has relationships with one in four households in the state, but it wants to get bigger in Nashville. Yochem has eight years of experience in the market, and a total of 26 years spent working in Tennessee, and has held executive posts in commercial banking, middle-market banking and private-client services.
"[M]uch of my network is still in Tennessee. My two children were born here. The opportunity to return, particularly to Middle Tennessee, is very exciting," she says.
There From the Start
As the new head of business development at the $925 million-asset Bank of Georgetown, Jonathan Higgins will be plotting the Washington-based bank's future growth in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. But it's his ties to the company's past that prepared him to take on the post.
Higgins, who joined Bank of Georgetown at its founding in 2005, was the first manager of the bank's first branch. (He had moved up the totem pole since, serving as VP of commercial banking before his recent promotion.) "Jon has contributed greatly to the success of Bank of Georgetown and countless local businesses, thanks to his ability to understand our clients' needs and deliver what is most important to them," says Mike Fitzgerald, the bank's chairman, president and CEO.
Board Bound
LeeAnne Linderman, an EVP at Zions Bank and No. 19 on last year's list of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Banking, has been accepted into On the Board, an intensive training program at the George Washington University School of Business aimed at putting more women on corporate boards.
Linderman was one of 15 fellows accepted into this year's class, joining an array of executives from other corporate sectors, along with a university president, a retired Air Force brigadier general and the current U.S. ambassador to Lithuania. The group will make three visits to the GW campus this year for weekends of intensive workshops on board-level leadership, with an emphasis on crisis management, corporate finance, ethics, risk assessment and strategy.
This is the second year of On the Board, a joint initiative of the GW business school and the International Women's Forum. The program got rave reviews last year from Wells Fargo's Caryl Athanasiu, No. 25 on our Most Powerful list and a member of On the Board's inaugural class.
Their Aim Is True
With apologies to Elvis Costello, who sang about an Alison with only one "l," there's some news to report about a couple of bank industry Allisons.
John Allison, a fixture at BB&T for more than three decades, is officially leaving the company after its April 29 annual meeting. Having retired as CEO in 2008, the 65-year-old banker-turned-free-markets-crusader says he's ready to give up his board seat and will devote more time to the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank where he's been CEO since 2012. "[T]he time has come for me to focus all of my energy to promoting free-market capitalism," he says. "For me, this is a cause that is critical to the future success of our country."
Another Allison in the banking sector, Jack Allison, formerly of Customers Bank and TD, has joined Sun Bancorp's Sun National Bank in Mount Laurel, N.J., as chief operating officer. He most recently led IT at Customers.
Doing Good for DNB
Vince Liuzzi took home the Salvation Army's "Doing the Most Good" community leadership award in 2012, when he was a region president overseeing 165 Wells Fargo branches in greater Philadelphia and Delaware. Now he's hoping to do good for DNB First, which recently hired him as EVP and chief banking officer. Reporting to chairman and CEO William Latoff, Liuzzi will be overseeing retail banking, consumer and mortgage lending, operations and marketing at the 13-branch DNB, based in Downington, Pa.
Liuzzi is a director of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, Ronald McDonald House, Catholic Social Services and the Greater Philadelphia Salvation Army, and has chaired two local United Way campaigns.
'Happy' to Have Them
S&T Bank of Indiana, Pa., has expanded into Penn State territory with two local hires in the State College market: David Z. Richards, the former CEO of Nittany Bank, and Steven Grim, a 25-year veteran of the Happy Valley banking scene. S&T has $4.5 billion in assets and branches in 11 Pennsylvania counties. And here's some trivia about Richards: now 53, he was the youngest ever graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking when he went through the program at age 26.
Seeking Signatures
A former HSBC employee who last summer called for fresh investigations into the company's money-laundering controls has launched a bid for Congress. Everett Stern's Republican primary campaign in Pennsylvania's 13th District, spanning the northern suburbs of Philadelphia, was motivated by a meeting the candidate had this past fall with Rep. Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, to discuss his complaints about HSBC. When the California congresswoman later introduced a bill to make bank executives personally liable for AML violations, Stern was disappointed, feeling that the legislation had little chance of passing and that Waters should have pushed for congressional hearings about his claims. Pundits call the district a safe one for Democrats but Stern has been working long hours - without a campaign staff - to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot for the GOP primary in May. "These banks are going to have a real problem when I get into office," he says.
