Climate First Bank is adding capital and staff at a much faster rate than expected. These new additions have made it one of the fastest-growing startup banks in the nation and the world’s first community bank founded to fight the climate crisis.
“We are growing rapidly in St. Pete, Tampa and in Lake County. And we are in the middle of a big capital raise,” said Bank President Lex Ford. “It is way ahead of what we expected. We expected $8 million and will eclipse $20 million. We have another $88 million in capital that should come in the next nine months to catapult our growth.”
New faces at Climate First Bank
Meanwhile, the bank is about to hit the mark for 50 employees in its first year and a half. It recently welcomed 12 new employees to its growing Florida team. This brings its total count to 48, with several more hires expected soon.
Among the new hires are:
- Jim Hennessey, SVP, Residential Mortgage Manager–Hennessey will build out and grow Climate First bank’s residential mortgage division.
- Edina Remic, VP, Branch Manager–Seasoned bank branch manager Remic will manage the day-to-day operations of the St. Petersburg headquarters’.
- Kaina Norelia, VP, Branch Manager–In Central Florida, Norelia will manage the bank’s upcoming Mount Dora location.
- Michael Madison, VP, SBA Lender–Madison will support the growth of SBA 7a and 504 loans across the bank’s footprint.
- Jennifer Biegemeier, VP, Director of HR and Board Secretary–Biegemeier will recruit and talent, create onboarding processes, and manage employee relationships. For the Board, she will handle administrative duties like maintaining meeting minutes, scheduling meetings and more.
- Abraham Perez Serra, AVP, Network Engineer–In this role, Abraham supports installation, monitoring, and optimization of the bank’s network hardware, software, and communication links.
- Adam Webman, Project Manager–Webman will plan and oversee projects for the bank in areas including sales support, marketing, new product development, and community relations. He will work closely with Chief of Staff Chris Cucci on strategic growth initiatives for the bank.
- Orpha Kjolstad, Senior Commercial Lending Assistant–Kjolstad will support the commercial banking team in delivering exceptional service to customers and managing loans through the closing process. She previously worked with CEO Ken LaRoe at First GREEN Bank.
- Tyler Linn, VP, Commercial Lender–Linn will develop new commercial relationships for the bank in the St. Petersburg/Tampa market.
- Irma Walsh, Universal Banker III–Based in St. Petersburg, Walsh’s customer-facing banking role includes opening new accounts and other teller transactions.
- Heather Osborne, Digital Banker–Osborne brings nine years of local banking experience to her new role with the digital banking team. She will assist customers who use digital banking channels with needs related to solar lending, new accounts, and account servicing.
- Cameron Butcher, IT Support Administrator–Butcher’s role includes maintaining the bank’s computer networks. As part of this role, he manages network security as bank employees work remotely.
“This is an all-star team of people,” Climate First Bank Founder and CEO Ken LaRoe said. “Everyone is here because they truly believe in how we’re able to be a force for good through finance. As people and investors care more about the environment, our growth is a tangible example of how being mission-aligned improves talent acquisition.”
Working with the right people
While Climate First is not an investment bank, it is a finance bank. This means it has a lengthy exclusionary list that enables it to stay on task, making for a green operation, Ford said. “We have an exclusionary list of people with whom we don’t work. That includes water bottling companies, sod farms, fracking or oil pipelines, porn and strip clubs. The mission of the bank allows us to have a higher profile that has drawn investors and customers who simply read about Climate First and wanted to be part of it,” he said.
Related: Climate First Bank Launches Online Solar Lending Financing
“What we do is transition loans where we take buildings, companies, operations that are a necessary part of the economy today, but maybe not fully mission-aligned, like convenience stores, then incentivize them to become more renewable through energy retrofits, LED lighting packages and take them off the grid or build that path to EV conversion,” Ford said. “That has been a cool thing.”
Customers can join this green-leaning bank from anywhere. This is because of the bank’s digital branch with ATM agreements. This allows customers to easily have a relationship with the bank, Ford said.
This is LaRoe’s third bank and his reputation as a success continues to grow, Ford said. “People had heard of his success and wanted to go along for this ride. There were multiple times where a check would come in from somebody we had never talked to. They would say they read about the mission and wanted to be part of it.”
