Being settled in her role at The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod, Lisa Oliver can use her position to support her true passion: giving back to her community.
Oliver left KeyBank, the 25th-largest bank in the United States, in 2017 to be president and chief executive officer at the regional Cape Cod bank, known as "The Coop."
Growing up in New York's Hudson Valley, Oliver's family frequently vacationed on Cape Cod and neighboring Nantucket. Now that she lives on Cape Cod, however, she's learned that areas like these are more than vacation spots.
"When you work here you really get involved with the community and you realize it's a real place and has the same issues and the same challenges as anywhere else," Oliver said.
In the last year, while upgrading the digital offerings for customers of The Coop, Oliver also joined the effort to end Cape Cod's affordable housing crisis. Like other second-home communities, Cape Cod's rental stock was bought up during COVID, leaving middle- and low-income workers with long commutes to off-island housing.
"The biggest thing to keep a strong, thriving community is to have different people, different jobs and diversity," Oliver said. "That creates a really strong fabric."
Oliver's civic involvement includes chairing the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and serving on the 50th Anniversary Committee for the Cape Cod Housing Assistance Corporation. She's also on the newly formed Canal Bridges Task Force, which advocates for federal funds to replace the aging bridges connecting Cape Cod to the mainland.
At The Coop, she spearheaded the bank's Accessory Dwelling Unit program, which provides low-interest construction loans for homeowners to build year-round rental units on their properties. The bank is also involved with other groups, including Cape Cod's Housing Assistance Corp. and Housing to Protect Cape Cod, formed in 2022.
Oliver said opportunities like these make her appreciate being at a smaller institution.
"When you're CEO at a community bank, you run the whole darn bank," she said. "You're the one where the buck stops. You're the one that the regulators meet with. You're doing it all."
To encourage civic involvement among her 175 employees, Oliver implemented a curriculum to teach them how to participate in town hall meetings.
Being the first female CEO in The Coop's 103-year history, Oliver also makes time to support women. She's a founding member of the Fund for Women and Girls of the Cape Cod Foundation, which has distributed nearly $20 million in grants to girls and women in underserved communities on the island. Oliver is also on the executive committee of the Massachusetts Bankers Association and is a member of the American Bankers Association's women CEO peer group.
Though she started her career at bigger banks, Oliver said smaller institutions like The Coop can offer better opportunities for women getting started in banking. She recently spent some time chatting with summer interns whom she sees in the hallway of her office building.
"At a community bank, the benefit is the access junior people have to the executive team," Oliver said.
