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[Music] well good afternoon everybody welcome to thursday you've made it through the entire week thus far and we look forward to the graduation tomorrow for the class of 2020 in the maryland banking school we are in for a real treat this afternoon all three classes have come together and we're going to be featuring two amazing leaders within our banking industry and this is a great opportunity to hear what their backgrounds are what their views are of the challenges and the opportunities for the banking industry and so we're going to start with some some comments about them and and their careers and and you know basically how they've come to be who they are today within our industry and then we will move through this segment and actually throughout this segment there's still an opportunity to chat and pose questions to our panelists but then they will be coming to us live as we continue in this two-hour session of the banking leadership panel so i'm really thrilled to introduce these two individuals to you bj getz is the chairman of the maryland bankers association the association is 125 years old this year and bj is going to be presiding or is presiding over the association for this remarkable milestone a bj is president and ceo of a bank out in western maryland i'll let him talk a little bit more about that west of annapolis uh bj i think maybe about uh 70 minutes or so 80 minutes or so middletown valley bank and community bank and an individual who actually graduated from the maryland banking school in 2004 so uh bj is going to have a great perspective for us today and then joining bj is ramon luby and ramon is a senior vice president and the public policy lead for bank of america and bj and ramon and i have worked together over several years now and his title sort of masks what his full impact and role is in the industry because it's not only within his bank but he's doing some amazing things within his community at the national level at the congressional level so i'm really really thrilled to introduce our other panelist and ramon lubia senior vice president and public policy lead for bank of america i've worked with ramon for several years and have come to appreciate the fact that his what he does and the impact he makes is much broader than perhaps what his title provides and because of the incredible things that he has done ramon was elected by the by the members of the maryland bankers association as vice chairman of the association so ramon will become chairman of the association in three years and this year he chairs our government relations council a really important body a volunteer body of the association that ramona's been a part of ever since his involvement with the bank so again we're we're absolutely thrilled to have the two of them with us i do encourage you as we are going through this presentation this part of the presentation to to chime in on the chat um as as you've done all week pose your questions or even comments and uh and then both bj and ramon will be with us live after we conclude this pre-recorded session so with that i'm going to start by asking both uh bj and ramon to share why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are where'd you how did you grow up did you go up in maryland um if not how did you end up coming to maryland and then we'll after we get off that we'll ask a little bit more about how did you become a banker so maybe first bj we'll start with you yeah sure so um i'm a lifelong marylander actually a a western marylander um kathleen as you mentioned we said about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes west of the baltimore and the dc market it takes us about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes to get to both but um grew up in western maryland um graduated from frostburg state university so i kind of um stayed in the western maryland track i was a finance and an economics major it kind of worked out really well in being in banking because you take all of those pieces and you work them together um a little tidbit about me i have four daughters um my oldest is 20 years old and a finance major at salisbury university my next daughter 18 years old will be attending frostburg she wants to go on to be a teacher and then i have a ninth grade daughter and a fourth grade daughter so exciting times in my house one last little tidbit which i like to tell people that um you find in a rarity today i married my high school sweetheart and we're approaching 21 years coming up here in a short amount of time and um you know i live within a quarter mile of the house that i grew up in um great place to raise a family great place to work um close enough to this to the city atmosphere in the metropolitan areas but still plenty of natural beauty and nature out here in western maryland that would love to share with all of the students when you get time to come our way please look me up and give me a call bj that's fantastic and i'm sure ramon can he's trying to fast forward his mind where his two young children will be when they're talking about going off to college so so ramon tell us a little bit about how you came to maryland or grew up in maryland a little bit about your background absolutely and uh thank you so much uh for having me and you know i i knew i had a lot to learn from bj but i mean just listening to his intro i realized i got more to learn as well so um but i i tell you that um i moved to dc i moved to the maryland area greenville to be exact um in the the waning days of 2011 uh and subsequently uh you know i found a place to uh set up um set up my uh my my spokes here if you will um i'm an originally lifelong floridian i moved here to maryland in 2011 at the end of 2011 have lived in several parts of uh of the state and uh currently um you know have office that you know bank of america our offices are primarily in prince george's county in baltimore county so i work between those those offices um primarily and when i'm not in annapolis again having a chance to see members of the association and leadership and staff i find myself in washington dc but um you know i i absolutely love maryland and you know i can't wait until uh the the students of the school get a chance to come on down uh i think for government affairs day um love to uh spend some time and introduce you to uh you know what what what it is here uh what we do here in dc uh around banking uh but i i i tell you i'm i'm absolutely thrilled uh to be here and look forward to sharing some time with you all great thank you and ramon you have a son and a daughter i do um funny enough i have coaxed my oldest who's about to turn four uh into giving daddy some quiet time i i am going to sell a book on how to do that um that's kind of that's going to you know fund the retirement here so but but uh luckily our uh our youngest year and a half he is taking a bit of a nap so great so get some perfect diamonds okay excellent you love those times when it's nap time it's that's a time to relax well well ramen why don't we stay with you so um tell us i mean you've got such an amazing trajectory of your career and i know uh for for me as a trade association leader having somebody like ramon who's actually worked in a trade association in addition to being a banker is such a great perspective to have when you're struggling with issues and trying to reconcile different points of view perhaps of your of your industry when it comes to an issue that doesn't happen very often but it surely is helpful to have those discussions in that dynamic that that ramon has that many bankers don't have so we're going to talk a little bit about how you became a banker was it a dream you had or just sort of happened i tell you i'm going to tell you this and you're going to laugh at me okay so don't laugh too hard um i thought the industry fought becoming um what i was destined to be and what do i mean by that uh in the fifth grade i remember this like it was yesterday but in the fifth grade i went you know belonged to this program and i would go to a different school every few days and um i remember us uh getting involved in what's called the florida stock market game which was um uh sponsored by finra and i ended up becoming the secretary and lo and behold because of of an era our team won uh we beat college classes we beat basically you know all these folks as elementary kids students because i bubbled in you know we had the scantrons i bubbled in the wrong uh stock symbol and that stock symbol took went off on a tear and lo and behold where the 1994 florida stock market game winners um wow you mean for the whole state ramone are you saying for the whole state the entire state i mean it was i i i briefly remember what it was it was either a um a nursing home company or someone that supplied nursing homes uh and basically they just went on a tear for six weeks and happened to bubble in the wrong thing and there it is but you would think after having that happen oh bank you know i i gotta look more into this banking thing i tried everything i i was in the fire service i was a senior member of the fire service i i worked for an auto part leader um and same you know same role government affairs uh external affairs industry affairs i even worked in trade at the u.s chamber in the middle of the arab spring thinking about how multinational companies who really have roots in this area that was going through this uncertain change and you know we've seen how that played out uh but in the time of uncertainty um and so i've had all these um different pathways and uh you know uh stopping points where i picked up uh tools that really have have just um galvanized uh me to to go further into you know the the industry of banking and you know before coming over to bank of america i worked uh and led a public policy for the consumer data industry association so this was my way back into financial services if you think about consumer data think about credit reports think about risk management think about the tools that we use as bankers to ensure that we're giving folks um you know what they need and ensuring that we're we're staying true to our potential regulators um and and examining well this is good for the client this is what our clients need and here's here's why right we're doing the empirical testing uh to ensure that uh that you know things things are are right for them so you know fair housing tele udap all these are basically acronyms of of laws and important laws that have been passed or updated in the last 10 years last decade have a real impact on what we do uh and what what my colleagues do on the front lines helping clients every day and so um with that um about four years ago came over to bank of america uh and been here ever since um you know kathleen uh is is really too kind uh the the the amount of uh time that we spend together i would imagine that she would want to break but then she comes back and she invites me to talk to her some more um but but honestly the the the depth of the work that we have done over the past several years um dealing with the legislature dealing with uh really peculiar issues that on the surface you know most folks will say well this one impact the bank but when you dig into it it really does have um some some interesting uh consequences of left unchecked so i i tell i tell our team all the time i'm so proud of um having the opportunity to work with the maryland bankers association in this in this role um as well as working with kathleen and mindy and cindy and the entire team and and now i get a chance to continue to learn from bj and our executive leadership team and all and all of our bankers who are on our board of directors so it it is an absolute uh great uh opportunity for me and um you know again i'm just happy to be here with you and i'm looking forward to your questions later so remember before we go to bj with that uh same question so when you talked about those that progression and you were in florida and then you came up to the chamber and cdia and then the bank were were you recruited or were these jobs you heard about and you went for them well i i almost think of it um a lot of people don't know this i am i'm a washed up basketball player here uh played i played very competitive basketball and uh in high school and i told myself i said listen we're going to the university of florida we're going to walk on you know the year before they had made it to the uh to the last game of the tournament and uh just barely you know couldn't get past and if you know if you follow sports you know that uf went on to have a tremendous run uh in uh in basketball winning back to back in 06.07 and i told myself as a freshman hey hey i'm going to play there i'm going to walk on i know enough people i'm good enough and lo and behold i got hurt and right before uh the time where everyone goes on to to try out you know it was clear that i wasn't going you want to have that opportunity um and so it rather than just sort of sulking and and you know uh moving on i i actually took a bit of what i learned about being a good basketball player and and what that is is adding tools to your game adding skills that make you better across and not just you but make your teammates better and so i took that approach and so if you think about you know the things that i have done to get to this place when i was 25 year old i was a chief officer in the fire service i was a public information education emergency management officer there are things that you learn um from folks who pull people out of burning buildings or or um you know go swimming into the gulf of mexico um to to save people that you can't really learn uh from this in the same ways that you'll uh as you as you learn you know in in this industry um same as with with trade and doing work internationally and so i bring you know i bring all of that to bear here and and if you tell me that this is sure happenstance i'll tell you that it can't be because the things that i have learned in that progression uh really do pull out you know i'm able to now pull out those tools and use them um very comfortably here in banking and so i i i really encourage folks to think about those those odd if you will odd jobs odd um industries you may have worked in before coming to banking and think about what you can take away from them and how and how they how they help now that's fantastic remote thank you gosh i could talk to you for a long time about fire service so we'll have to come back to that offline i'm excited fascinating and basketball too so bj uh did you wake up one day and say i want to be a banker yeah no um not at all so um my story dates back to um when i was a 10 year old kid my dad started a business he started a small maintenance and janitorial service and came from very blue collar means very hard hard-working people that quite frankly my sisters were all grown and moved away and they couldn't afford a babysitter and i wasn't allowed to stay home at my by myself so i went to work with them pretty much every evening of the week from 10 years old on and um it was um you mentioned dates it was um may of 1995 i was 18 years old and we received the contract for the cleaning services for a bank located here in western maryland it was about 14 branches and the company at that point was fairly large and i took responsibility within my dad's company for basically hagerstown west all the way to oakland maryland so every evening of the week i was responsible for about 27 people and keeping things flowing across the western side of the state um and it was really my first introduction to um people in suits right i wear a suit every day um i do that out of respect for my audience i do that out of um respect for my peers and respect for my team but um it was my first real exposure to the world and the industry within the business environment from a very professional setting so every evening i would come in and i would get started in into work and there would be several bankers there mostly from the commercial banking department or from the executive side and basically i interacted with them quite a bit and um after about um i don't know about eight nine months i got a phone call one day um from who was then the chief operating officer of the ank and he called me up and he asked me to go to lunch and i went to lunch with him um it was probably i don't know february time frame he asked what my plans were i told him you know i was attending frostburg state university it was kind of centrally located for where i had to be every night and he asked me to be a summer teller so um i went on to be a summer teller worked at just about every branch that the bank had covering vacations and um summer's wrapping down i'm getting ready to go back to school and he comes to me and he says hey we have a branch in frostburg why don't you just work saturdays for me um and you know i i enjoyed the interaction with the people um the customers coming in and out the door i enjoyed the confidence and trust that people started to bestow and you know if you're if you're a young person a new teller walking in you have those customers that just won't come to you no matter what you do they will wait and go to the um customer associate beside of you and i took it as a challenge to win them over to make them come deal with me so i really um just enjoyed the process so i stayed on for saturdays as i was approaching graduation i got that phone call again to go to lunch um and the gentleman at that point was the president and ceo of the bank um and he tells me um it was about uh i don't know about a 400 million dollar bank at the time um he tells me that he wants to start a manager trainee program for uh for the branch network to start to move people through and if you know anything about your history of banking in the state of maryland first national bank of maryland maryland national bank all these banks equitable they had these great management training programs that a lot of my peers today and many of your ceos and executives at your banks would have come through those training programs so it's like okay well that'll be pretty cool i think i was the first only and last person to go through this program um it really never kind of got off the ground but found it to be very successful for me i worked in the branch environment for about a year and a half and knew with my um i developed really a good interaction with commercial based customers on the deposit side and on treasury management services and cash management and those types of things and i found that my small business experience um really was a benefit so um made the move over to the commercial banking department um i stayed there for quite a long time until 2012 when i came here to middletown valley bank was offered the job out we'll never forget going through the interview process and really i was what i consider to be very young at the time from an experience level standpoint but threw my hat in the game really to gain the learning experience of what it would be like to interview for an executive job and i guess either they believed everything i was telling them um or the snow job was that perfect that they offered me the position um and then i kind of put my hand on my head and said what do i do now and bj just when when you mentioned that the bank you went to um as ceo how long had the prior ceo been there my predecessor was in place for um 30 years as the bank ceo he worked at the bank for 50 years prior to his retirement when i came here the bank was about 145 million dollars in assets we now were sitting somewhere around 630 million in assets all done organically on the bank asset side you know the communities the customers the um team that we have built i was employee number 35 at the time and you know we're pushing around 150 employees today um and you know leadership is an interesting thing um i will uh i will kind of end this kathleen with two comments for you uh the first is you never know who you come across to ramone's point that you can learn from ramon flatters me unnecessarily i'm so excited to have him come on to our executive team at the nba he's just an amazing addition and never believe i was nowhere close to winning a a stock program in the state of maryland and florida's a heck of a lot bigger so you can tell where the intelligence lies in this conversation but that gentleman that recruited me into banking um who became the president and ceo of what was then farmers and merchants um the consolidation down to susquehanna he was president and ceo of susquehanna um a gentleman by the name of jim pearney is the chairman of middletown valley bank today a former chairman of the mba um so you never know who you're going to come across throughout your life career or otherwise that is going to leave significant impact on what you do and every interaction that you have you walk away learning something and you never forget who taught it to you because there are many smart people that came before me um there are definitely smarter people in two and a half years that will come after me ramon and but we continue to plow and move forward in exciting times the last thing that i will leave you with is support the customer and the customer is defined as any interaction that you have whether it be over the phone with a co-worker or a peer the true customer that walks through the door or the people dumping the trash at the branch at night um those people bring all walks of education to life and they should all be handled and treated as a customer that's the motto of what we do to ramone's point the staff at the nba going back to when i graduated in 2004 in my three years in your shoes i could tell you all kinds of stories of tom laughlin and phil mantua and all those guys and kathleen and cindy and others it's the greatest experience that you'll go through in banking um and you take away and you cherish everything that you learn and the relationships that you make that's fantastic bj um thank you for sharing that story and i know i think we're going to move quickly to the live session but i wanted to close with a one final question and then once we get into the livestream i'm sure there'll be a lot of questions from the students um you know around the ppp program and some of the other things we've been dealing with here and now but continuing to reinforce those leadership principles that have helped you all succeed in your careers i think the final one for the final question for this pre-recorded session why don't we talk about what surprised you about the industry is there anything that surprised you um as you came into this industry that um you know perhaps it's been one of those learning experiences remember why don't we go to you for this one sure and listen uh you know uh bj i can see exactly why you are the ceo um there isn't there was no accident there and i think the students are listening uh we'll we'll pick up on that uh as well and so again it just highlights um just just the incredible network that you get here in the banking industry um then you hear a story like bj's and just makes you just understand that here's where you're supposed to be um i would tell you from my uh my uh my point of view coming up uh set very similar to um uh to bj my mom was nurse i grew up in a very blue collar if you will neighborhood um i grew up in the shadow of dauphin stadium uh you know where you had many super bowls and all these really cool events uh but just just a little bit away there's the reality of you know that community is not really enjoying um the benefits of all of that so i i would tell you the thing that really surprised me right you you understand that uh financial services is a place where folks can have long uh sustained careers and can do very well for themselves i'll tell you the thing that really just knocked me off my feet was the want and desire to help people from my frontline units to my um relationship managers to folks in the private bank to folks um who are doing things in the security the the desire to help their client and to to bj's point if we talk a bit about clients it's not necessarily just the one-to-one oh you know you you work for me or or i'm i'm doing a thing for you it's now i i would tell you it's expanded to thinking about how we treat our communities and ones that we serve and and and having that takeaway is something that just really has um it's been a pleasant surprise it's not i will tell you it's cultural and it's not um one bank or two banks own it i think if you have a chance to talk just talk amongst yourselves after this and think about what your desire is yeah you want to do well but you also want to help the client you also want to help the communities that we serve and that's one of the things that you're doing by being a part of this so kathleen to your question i think that's that's my biggest surprising takeaway no that's really really significant what you just shared there ramon that is so true and that's what i have seen about the industry as well so bj um tell us what surprised you about the industry yeah along those lines i think that um every bank no ma'am no matter the size no matter where they serve no matter the geography um no matter what's happening in the world there's really one goal and i learned this very on that banks are there to support the financial vibrance of the communities that they serve and it doesn't matter what bank it is it doesn't matter what size it doesn't matter what community it can be a rural small town in the midwest it could be in a major metropolitan area such as washington dc um and the goal is the same and the way we go about it is oftentimes together um and you know the surprising thing about um what i've learned and what i've learned starting with my first exposure to the maryland bankers association at maryland banking school is the camaraderie of the banking community and how we all work together to accomplish that goal which is to improve the financial stability and the economic conditions of all of our communities so you know in a very competitive landscape even back in the day when i was at maryland banking school and after i could pick up the phone and call a counterpart at bank of america or wells fargo or queenstown bank or fulton bank and discuss the challenges that we're facing and know that we're in it together so um that you know when you get into i grew up playing sports as well and you know you had your rivalries and you had your competitions and you know there was a lot of blood that was spilled on athletic fields in this industry the camaraderie um especially in times like we're facing right now is absolutely amazing and just um you know my exposure um first of all kathleen and cindy and the nba are amazing at what they pull together and do and you know those times are seen today as much as ever but for all of us to come together and share our thoughts share our ideas um and be consistent it's just um that's probably the biggest thing kathleen the camaraderie no matter where you are and and where you work yeah that's that absolutely since everyone shares that common goal and that common vision that's what brings us together even though you're you're all competitors so and we've seen that firsthand so i tell you this has been such a great i'm going to call it a teaser because we are going to now go off the pre-recorded session which i know that we've had students who've been participating in the chat throughout your presentation but now we're going to go live and i have other questions this is to the students i have other questions i'm prepared to ask bj and ramon and they're prepared to address but ideally we'd like to hear what's on your mind so we look forward to connecting with you shortly in the uh the live setting and thank you so much bj and this has been absolutely fantastic and i hope the students see that this is why i do what i do is the opportunity to work for these and with these amazing leaders within our industry it's just it makes it just an unbelievably fantastic experience and we look forward to sharing that with the other students who are in the banking school so again bj and ramon thank you hey kathleen just just very quickly um students um completely encourage your questions to come to both ramon and i my request is i get the softballs he gets the hard ones and we'll just go from there but looking forward to hearing from you guys is that just hazing is that just anything that's okay i'm all for it you