Dorothy Savarese
President and CEO, The Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank
Next to industry giants like JPMorgan Chase, the Cape Cod Five Cents Savings Bank is about as tiny as it sounds, with $2.3 billion in assets, 400 employees and 22 locations. Dorothy Savarese, its president and CEO, is likewise petite. But such surface details belie the influence she is bringing to bear not only in her community, but across her home state of Massachusetts and in the nation's capital.
Savarese serves on the FDIC's Community Bank Advisory Committee, and this year winds up a term as chairman of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, which expanded its financial literacy campaign and worked with state legislators on bank modernization issues during her term. Significant changes involving the regulation of state-charted banks are being considered, evolving from a special task force, which Savarese was on, to study reform options.
Savarese also serves on the American Bankers Association's Community Banks Council and hosted its 2012 Women's Leadership Forum, where she moderated a program on-what else?-leadership. It was the ABA's best attended forum in four years.
Cape Cod Five Cents engages in its share of extracurricular activities too. As a mutually owned thrift, one of its key tenets is giving back to the community, and Savarese chairs the charitable foundation it operates. In 2012, the foundation provided $575,000 in grants to 122 local organizations.
