Blog

Before I go on, let me say I am excited to have a chance to be one of the first to be a Citizens Bank & Trust bloggers … a first for me! I am feeling younger by the minute.

I’d like to tell you a bit about our Citizens Business Summit.

About five years ago, an idea surfaced from one of our employees (the place from which most good ideas come), that we needed to think about an event that would occur in the fall, aimed at educating, and at informing those in the communities we serve about topics that were important to their business, but that might not be at their fingertips.

We have many customers, and many we see every day that are very successful, and they have become successful by working hard and wearing about every hat in their business, every day.

The idea was to create a “mini-conference”, where we could bring in speakers and subject matter experts on topics that were relevant to business owners and others with leadership roles in our communities. Many simply don’t have time or the inclination to either fund or attend something of this nature, but after some discussion within the Bank, the Citizens Business Summit was born, and the 2019 Summit will be (was) our fourth of hopefully many more.

As our ideas were forming, we asked ourselves, “What is it that our audience might desire to hear or know better?” 

Sometimes – because we are a Bank – we tend to think like Bankers, so we took some time to step back and think like our customers, our business owners, and our community leaders.

As we continued down this path we thought about things like the economic outlook, the interest rate environment, business risks (such as cyber security), and then moved onto topics such as leadership, managing change in organizations, and thoughts around effective team building.

Built on these general topics and themes, the Citizens Business Summit has been very well-accepted, continues to grow, and generates great interest within our communities.

But it only works because we beyond fortunate to have a Bank that operates in vibrant communities comprised of passionate people with a desire to learn and grow.

Let’s just say we are proud to host the event each year, and being sure the content, the speakers, and the messages fit our audience at the right time is a challenge we now look forward to facing. I hope one day you might consider joining us!

Charlie Williams
President/CEO
Citizens Bank & Trust