In 2010, banking didn’t seem like a viable career choice. The Great Recession decimated too-big-to-fail financial institutions. But that’s exactly when Jamie Bartholomew Aller decided to join the National Bank of Malvern, leaving a high-powered job at a Manhattan law firm to do so.
In many ways, going to the bank was like going home. Founded by Aller’s great-great-grandfather in 1884, then run by her grandmother and mother, the National Bank of Malvern is the only female-owned national bank in Pennsylvania. “In this age of megamergers, being a community bank is one of our competitive advantages,” Aller says. “We are able to make decisions that are right for us and our customers. And, thanks to technology, we don’t need to have a huge branch network to have an international reach.”
Aller is proud to follow in the high-heeled steps of her maternal relatives. Her great-grandmother was a suffragette, her grandmother worked for birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger, and her mother remains chairwoman of the board for the bank.