Patrick Nygren feels blessed to have to have gone to work for Wells Fargo Bank, a move he compared to winning the lottery. “I feel fortunate to be in my position today and be a part of helping to lead change and lead the company forward,” Nygren said. The Thousand Oaks resident started at the bank after graduating from college. He moved up the ranks from personal banker to branch manager to district manager. In 2010, Nygren relocated to the Philadelphia area to assist in the integration of the Wells Fargo acquisition of Wachovia, a move that Nygren said was a turning point in his career. Later, he returned to the Los Angeles market and was named bank president for the San Fernando Valley region last year. Nygren replaced Marla Clemow as the head of the bank in the San Fernando Valley. Clemow was fired from Wells Fargo last year as the bank purged its ranks of executives with connections to a scandal involving bank employees opening checking, savings and other accounts that customers did not want or authorize. The scandal led to the resignation of Chief Executive John Stumpf, the firing of more than 5,000 employees associated with opening the phony accounts, and the bank paying $185 million in fines. Nygren met with the Business Journal at his office in Encino to discuss his career in banking, rebuilding trust with customers in the Valley following the fake account scandal, and why retired quarterback John Elway is the person he most admires. Title: Region Bank President for the San Fernando Valley Company: Wells Fargo Bank Born: Denver, 1977 Education: University of California – San Diego, bachelor’s in business administration and economics; Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington Most Admired Person: Retired Denver Broncos quarterback and businessman John Elway Career Turning Point: Relocating from California to Philadelphia for the merger of Wells Fargo and Wachovia Personal: Married with two children: Isabella and Joseph Hobbies: My greatest interest is spending time with my children Question: How familiar were you with the San Fernando Valley when you became the region’s president? Answer: I was fairly familiar with the Valley. Growing up in Thousand Oaks, it was just on the other side of the Valley. Since I’ve been back almost four years now, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time in the Valley. Not only the strengths of its small business community, I love the influence it has on the Los Angeles market itself and the environment it brings, the energy it brings. It has a tremendous amount of impact and influence on L.A. County itself. The community commitment is significant in the Valley and I really appreciate that. How did you start with Wells Fargo Bank? After I graduated from the University of California – San Diego with a degree in economics like a lot of college students graduating I needed a job to start paying for my student loans. I was blessed at the opportunity to join the Wells Fargo family. This was back in 2003. I started out as a personal banker up in our Ventura County office in Newbury Park. How did you come to the position you have now? I had the opportunity to become a branch manager. Worked my way through as branch manager several different locations across Ventura, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles counties. I then became a district manager also working in the three different counties. In 2010, with the merger between Wells Fargo and Wachovia I was asked to relocate to the Philadelphia market. I supported in the integration between Wells Fargo and Wachovia for the state of Delaware and the greater Philadelphia market. I took on an area president position and helped in integrating the two (bank) communities. In 2014, I had the opportunity to move back to Los Angeles as one of the area presidents. Why was relocating to Philadelphia a turning point for you? It was a significant step in my career. Not only for me personally but professionally. Most of my life, I had only lived on the West Coast. I had never even visited the East Coast prior to accepting a position to relocate my wife and I there. It was an opportunity for me to take on a significant responsibility on behalf of the bank, but it was a significant personal change. Both my wife’s and my family are here locally. It was an opportunity to move away and to build our relationship. At the same time, it allowed me to focus on a lot of the changes the bank was going through at the time with the merger. What does a banker need in terms of personality for their job? You have to have a passion for serving your customers. Any time you are in a position that has the impact we can have on customers, they have to be your priority. Our ability to serve and do right by our customers is our number one priority. I do feel it starts with our commitment to doing things right, having strong ethics and a core belief on how you take care of customers and do things the right way. I also feel you have to have a real passion for the community (you are working in). To be successful in a position like mine, we are only as successful as our communities are successful. I believe in participating. I serve on boards in the San Fernando Valley. My team actively sits on boards here. We do a lot of volunteerism. We spend a lot of time in the market not only telling our story but helping to strengthen the needs of the community. What about your personality makes you a good fit for banking? I love customers. I had the fortunate benefit of building my career starting in the branches and meeting the needs of those customers. I have customers today that I helped set up accounts for and provide financial guidance back 15 years ago that still seek my guidance and advice on decisions they make today. It is important for me to be as committed to the community as ever. I like to be involved. I like to know what the needs of the community are and find ways to not to just put myself in that position but how I engage the 1,200-plus team members that work here in the Valley. What was the reaction of the business community toward Wells Fargo because of the scandal? We had a lot of support. I think a lot of the support came from the visibility and commitments we had in the community. We did have to go out and have a lot of conversations and be in a position to provide confidence and support around questions that they had or had read. We didn’t want to hide behind anything. We truly made an effort to go out and be visible in front of our stakeholders, in front of our community leaders, in front of our customers, in front of our business owners. Now it is our opportunity to continue to do that. We can now share that story more broadly and around the changes we have made. Where do you go from there? We are in a position of rebuilding trust. We know that focusing on those activities such as being at community events, having quality conversations with our stakeholders, participating on boards is as important today as it’s ever been. That’s not going to change. How many events do you attend during the week? I am at an event anywhere between two to three times a week, depending on the time of the year. There are times when it gets a little busier and there are times when it backs off a little bit. But it is something we do a lot. There is a perception that Wells Fargo retreated from its public profile. Is the bank now in a position to reassert itself and become more engaged with the community? We may have an opportunity to be more vocal and take the mic, as they say, and talk about all the great things we are doing. We launched a lot of big focuses with L.A. Family Housing, VEDC (Valley Economic Development Center), a partnership with CSUN (California State University – Northridge) and income tax assistance. We are still doing a lot with our communities. We are doing as much today as we ever have. We have an opportunity to go out and tell our story. What’s the plan to regain that trust with consumers? Rebuilding trust starts with our ability to do right by our customers. There is no more important single activity that we can do than ensuring we are doing right by our customers, we are being transparent and focused on what their particular needs are and how we can add value. We are going to continue to do outreach to our business owners and community leaders in ways they feel that they are being supported. We are focusing on our change for the better. Is it more difficult post-recession for businesses to get loans? Business optimism is as high as it’s ever been. We’ve launched new products and services to help the needs of our small business community. We have a great website in Wells Fargo Works, which focuses on how they can establish business plans and how they can better prepare themselves for business. We know it’s a huge opportunity. We are in the midst of celebrating all of our small businesses through the national small business campaign. More than ever, it is a tremendous opportunity for us to get out and educate our business owners in how we can add value. How does Wells Fargo reinvest in the community? In many ways. Our corporate philanthropy is important. Equally as important is the team-member giving. We have been recognized by United Way as one of the largest givers from our team members, as well as volunteer hours, the board volunteerism. We also focus on the key priority needs of our communities. Today we talk about getting people back to work, we talk about affordable housing. These are all areas that Wells Fargo is very invested and committed to. Recent grants we gave to the VEDC ($125,000 in October) are focused on how we can better support those particular needs, especially here in the San Fernando Valley. Are there any projects in the area for which Wells Fargo has provided loans? I cannot get into specific customer loans, but I can say we did a large grant with the VEDC that focuses on business owners that are trying to get in market today that are maybe not yet qualified or bankable for a bank. But they (the VEDC) can provide loans and then hopefully transition to us in a position to help them in the future. Where do you see opportunities for the bank to grow? Our biggest opportunity to grow and expand is through our ability to provide exceptional customer service. We then get the opportunity to learn more about our customers and they start to see us as a trusted advisor. Through that we continue the opportunities to strengthen our relationships with our customer base today, our community today, our small business owners today. I believe it starts there. You listed retired quarterback John Elway as a person you admire. Why did you pick him? Being born in Denver, Colorado, he was an icon and he succeeded beyond just the city of Denver. He is someone that I have always admired. Not only for his professional career but how has translated that into great business career and as general manager for the (Denver Broncos) organization itself. I just respect his dedication, commitment and hard work. Not only creating a great brand for himself but really building the brand of an organization he has been a part of for so long. What kinds of activities do you do with your children? I have two small children. This year they started softball and tee-ball. I love to participate as a coach. I went and bought myself a new bike. So as I taught them how to ride bikes, we can ride along with them. We love to go to the beach. I was a swimmer most of my life. I love to play in the pool and be involved in their swim lessons. I spend as much quality time as I can with them. Our careers can be demanding but there is nothing more important to me than time with my family. What is a typical day like for you? It starts early in the morning, connecting with different team members. I have seven district managers. I like to check in to see how their day is going, what they have on their schedules. I then typically have one or two conference calls with different parts of our business lines. I then like to spend most of my time out in the branches in support of my team and how I can be a better coach and how I can support them, what they are hearing, what they are seeing and what the customers are telling us so that I can provide the right direction, support and coaching to help us to continue to move forward. What is the last book you read? The one I read again most recently is “Love ’Em or Lose ’Em” (by Beverly Kaye and Sharon Jordan-Evans, about employee engagement and retention). I love to look at ways to continue to re-engage and support our team. I really think about the questions it raises like what makes you get out of bed in the morning and what makes you hit the snooze button. Things like that, I believe, reflect upon how my team is feeling and how I can be stronger leader and support them every day.