After 10 years of working at Greenfield Savings Bank, CEO and President Thomas J. Meshako will step down on March 31, and a familiar face around the bank, Chief Financial Officer Peter Albero, will take the wheel.
“It’s an honor and a privilege to leave this position to Peter,” Meshako said. “I could not be happier and the bank could not be in better hands.”
Meshako said the decision for his replacement came after a nationwide search involving more than 100 candidates.
“He was by far and away the best candidate, which I knew all along,” Meshako said as he and Albero chuckled in a conference room at the bank.
Before joining Greenfield Savings Bank in 2023, Albero spent most of his career in New York City, working in senior roles at Morgan Stanley for 27 years. His 35 years in banking also brought him to PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he worked as a risk advisory consultant and later a CFO at Salisbury bank & Trust in Lakeville, Connecticut.
When a larger bank acquired his bank in Lakeville, “I was searching for a new opportunity, and Greenfield Savings Bank came up,” Albero recalled.
For the CFO, the bank represented a career move in a new direction.
“Instead of paying dividends to shareholders, you could reinvest in the community, and that resonated with me and it still does to this day,” he said.
When Albero interviewed for the CFO position in 2023, Meshako noticed a common thread connecting his and Albero’s vision for the bank: a commitment to supporting the community it serves.
“We spoke the same language,” Albero said.
Meshako said this commitment has helped guide his 10 years at Greenfield Savings Bank. According to the CEO, the bank donates more than $1 million each year to 300-plus organizations throughout the Valley, including the Greenfield YMCA, United Way of Franklin County, Community Action Pioneer Valley, Franklin County Community Development Corporation, Tapestry in Northampton, Big Brothers Big Sisters of Western Massachusetts and the Children’s Advocacy Center of Franklin County and North Quabbin.
“We look for organizations that help people’s needs,” Meshako said, noting a focus on causes that support individuals’ wellbeing and children.
When Meshako started as treasurer and CFO at Greenfield Savings Bank 10 years ago, the bank’s assets rounded to $700 million, he said. Now, that number has more than doubled to $1.5 billion. He and Albero stressed that this growth ripples out to the community outside their office windows.
“We’re a true community bank, we’re not transactional in nature, we’re about the relationship, and we want to be a good corporate citizen,” Albero said. “We think if the bank does well, the community does well, then everybody benefits, and you can lift up an entire community.”
Beyond numbers and donations, the men said the bank shows up, sponsoring events like the Hot Chocolate Run in Northampton, where 20 bank employees volunteered and about 10 ran, according to Meshako. The bank also reserves a booth at the Asparagus Festival for two local businesses and a nonprofit and buses nonprofit employees to the State House to talk to state legislators. Meshako remembered visiting the Habitat for Humanity homes bank employees helped build after residents moved in.
“It’s electric, people moving into these homes,” Meshako described. “It’s not just giving them money, but also, as Peter said, being involved in the organization.”
In March, the bank purchased the Leavitt-Hovey House, a move Meshako said will benefit both the bank and its customer reach. Besides boosting the city’s payroll with the building’s tax revenue, the property will diversify the bank’s income streams by housing the bank’s Residential Lending and Wealth Management & Trust departments.
Meshako and Albero hope the project will inspire other businesses to follow suit and invest in improving downtown Greenfield.
“It’s the philosophy of one building at a time,” Albero explained.
With renovations underway for the $5.5 million project and the opening of the Easthampton branch set for April, Meshako described the present moment as “one of the most transformative periods in the bank’s history.”
Albero plans to continue building the momentum of these projects Meshako launched, propelling them to the finish line.
“Initially, it’s a continuation of all the work that Tom started,” Albero said. “First things first, we have to make sure that these two investments pay off for us, and then we’ll look at other opportunities.”
The CFO hopes to further integrate Artificial Intelligence technology into the bank’s operations not to eliminate jobs, but to streamline them, allowing employees to focus on key tasks instead of mundane chores AI can take off their to-do lists.
He envisions expanding the bank south, with the new Easthampton location serving as a “jumping off point.”
“There are so many factors that influence profitability, some things that you can control, and there are lots of things unfortunately that you cannot control, and so we are going to focus on what we can control … That should help our bottom line, and in turn, that helps us give back to the community,” Albero said.
While Albero moves up and makes his mark as president and CEO, Meshako expects to land in a new area with calmer winters for golfing and an airport nearby to visit his daughters in Portugal, California and New York.
“My wife has been a supporter all along and we’ve moved everywhere that I had to for work, and now that I’m retiring, I’m letting her make the decision of the next move,” Meshako said with a smile.
Although Meshako said he is “tentatively excited,” he added that retirement will be “a big change.”
“You feel like you have purpose with your job sometimes, and you have to find that elsewhere,” he said.