Natalie Wech isn't the banker one would expect to meet when walking into a branch of M&T Bank in southern Pennsylvania. The Zimbabwean native, who grew up spending summers visiting family in Greece, speaks five languages and had a previous stint as a professional ballerina before coming to the U.S. for university "to experience a different continent," she said.
As a student at Penn State, where she earned undergraduate and MBA degrees, Wech met Michael Murchie, an M&T regional executive who has since retired, at a student event. He convinced her that rather than leaving the U.S. after graduation, she should join the bank's development program. In nine months of training, she earned insurance and investment licenses and came to understand how the bank made decisions. "The intricacy around the strategy was fascinating," she said.
Wech worked her way up over the past 16 years from a trainee through the retail division, becoming a branch manager, the manager of multiple locations, a team leader and now a regional head for business banking. Her current title is senior vice president and business banking regional manager for southern Pennsylvania, with a base in Harrisburg, the state capital.
"Our role is to make sure we're not just the big bank on the corner in the community," she said of her current job. "What we're focusing on in Harrisburg is not necessarily what our Boston market is focusing on."
Wech has made a point to support women within the bank as co-president of the national women's group for employees. She volunteered to sponsor a junior employee as part of the bank's Equity One program; the person has now been promoted three times. She also helped run a bank-funded small-business lab program for multicultural startups in Harrisburg. "An innate gift I have is the ability to see something in others before they see it in themselves," Wech said.
As a working mom to two school-aged children, Wech cites her husband's support in helping her prioritize work as well as philanthropy and community activities on behalf of the bank. Volunteering allows her to "teach my children that part of our role in the world is not just to take but also to give back," she said.
