by Blake Herzog, photos by Blushing Cactus Photography
Cheryl Rolland, 50, fulfills her passion for forging personal relationships and uplifting people in banking and finance, which may seem like an unlikely field. But by dealing with her clients’ money she is privy to the most intimate details of their lives and businesses and is in a unique position to make suggestions that could enrich their lives.
She grew up in the White Mountains until her family relocated to Prescott Valley while she was in high school. She eventually fell in love with the area, along with the banking industry, and raised her three children here while advancing through the ranks of management.
Today she’s spent almost 30 years in the industry and taken on a leadership role as Vice President, Regional Sales Manager and and Manager for one of Pinnacle Bank’s two Prescott branches. She also takes any opportunity she can to mentor women as they build their careers and donates her time to several nonprofits including the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Arizona.
Prescott LIVING: Our interview for this year’s Women in Business and Leadership issue is Cheryl Rolland, who is Vice President, Branch Manager and Business Development Officer for Pinnacle Bank in Prescott. Can you start out by telling us a little bit about where you grew up and went to school?
Cheryl Rolland: I grew up in St. Johns in the White Mountains, and we moved my senior year of high school to Prescott Valley, and I felt like it was the worst decision ever. But it actually helped me get out of my shell because I grew up in this little tiny town and really felt so safe and secure and there’s this big giant world out there. It helped me learn how to meet new people, make new friends, have conversations with people and really listen to people, where I don’t think I had that skill before. My parents moved for a job opportunity and in hindsight, I’m thankful they did.
I graduated from Bradshaw Mountain High School and went to Northern Arizona University, originally to become a physical therapist. In 1997 while I was in school, I got a job as a check filer. You may remember when people used to get the checks that they wrote back in the mail. I filed them in the statements, back in the day. I took that job just for income, but I decided to jump into banking full force.
Prescott LIVING: What drew you to banking over physical therapy?
Cheryl: I just fell in love with banking and the people. I think there’s so much vulnerability in banking and that there has to be a lot of trust for someone to share things about their finances. The part that I really loved was that trust and the relationships that were being built. And I thought, man, I will get this in physical therapy, but once they’re done, they’re going to be gone unless they get hurt again, which I don’t ever want for anybody.
I started at Country Bank who got bought by National Bank of AZ as a check filer, worked my way into teller, personal banker, operations manager, mortgage officer, branch manager, private banking, just working my way through the different areas that the bank offers and always learning. Even in a career that you’ve been in for 20 years, 30 years, there is always something new to learn.
I just kept learning and trying new things and was like, great, let’s do this. It was really nice to have people see the things that by nature I did well, and then support and nurture them. That’s my hope, to be able to find the things that people do well and to nurture them, and that way they can also have that same movement and progression through their career too.
Prescott LIVING: So do you consider yourself a numbers person?
Cheryl: 100%. I joke that I’m kind of like Rain Man because I remember numbers and codes and digits, and it’s crazy. I still remember some of my very first clients’ account numbers from 25-plus years ago. It’s kind of weird how my brain works, but it’s very numbers driven.
Prescott LIVING: We talked a little bit already about moving your way up at National Bank of Arizona over the course of almost 19 years. Where did you then go?
Cheryl: I went to another smaller institution right after National Bank of Arizona. That was a very short stint, and it just wasn’t a great fit for me. There was an opening for a regional manager at Country Bank, so I went over there and loved that institution, but they were bought by another institution, and I ended up coming here to Pinnacle. But there is always something to learn from every place we go, even if it’s a one- or two-year stint.
Prescott LIVING: And so what has really worked for you at Pinnacle Bank?
Cheryl: I think one of the things that I love the most is it’s family owned and operated, and the family that owns it is very community focused. They’re very much about allowing you to do what’s right for your community. They allow Scottsdale to operate how they see fit for a metro market and Prescott to operate how they see fit for a community market. I knew the people that I was going to be working with were great people. I had worked with Greg Behn, who’s our regional president, and Brad Wright, our market president, in the past, and knowing those two people were involved, I was like, yes, let’s do this thing.
We were the first branch in Arizona, and they said, we want you to run operations, go get it started and get people hired, and we’re going to start putting branches together. And from there, it just grew. It was Brad and I and a loan processor, Kendra Kirk. We had a building with four walls and no desks, where we put a fold-up table out with a computer on it. It was crazy to think how we started. And in six years we’re here already.
Prescott LIVING: How many branches are there now in Arizona?
Cheryl: There are five right now. We’ve got Prescott Downtown and Prescott Frontier, we have Sedona, Flagstaff and Scottsdale, and one opening soon in the West Valley. Pinnacle Bank was founded in Nebraska and has branches there and in Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Wyoming.
Prescott LIVING: Can you tell us a little bit about the three roles behind your job titles at Pinnacle — vice president, regional sales manager and business development officer?
Cheryl: The VP role is based on knowledge and years in the industry. The main role that I have currently, which is business development and regional sales manager kind of tied together, is going out and developing new relationships and pouring into existing relationships. This means having some of the hard discussions that have to happen like, ‘The numbers are looking tough this year. What’s the plan? Let’s come up with one and pull in partners that you may need.’
It’s also going out and talking about who we are as a bank. We really go back to the old way of banking. Instead of saying to a customer, here’s our three products, which one do you want? Well, sometimes they don’t know, right? And so I think being able to have a dialogue with our community and to figure out what best suits them is something we do really well. I get the opportunity to train other people who are coming up in their careers on how to ask the right questions, how to build trust, and how to follow through with what you say you’re going to do.
I also sell treasury management products, which help businesses manage their cash flow with our ACH origination, our online wires, our remote capture system and other services. I talk to businesses about how to set up their suite of products and what they need and don’t need. If you come in and give us your idea, we come back with a picture of what we think you might want.
That’s what I get to do on the banking side: I say, ‘Tell me all your dreams, your visions, your goals, what you love, what you hate, and then let me create something for you.’ And creating their financial portfolio to look exactly how they want it, is what I get to do every day. I also train people how to do that. Even when the hard things happen where somebody’s like, gosh, this didn’t go well, taking ownership for what maybe didn’t go well, and then fixing it, offers me such job satisfaction
I’m in charge of the deposit growth in our branches across the state, making sure each branch is hitting the numbers they need to hit. We are not a sales-driven culture, but I think we really focus on that specific job of sales by creating strong relationships.
We find out where each branch’s sweet spot is and focus on that to help each location succeed.
Prescott LIVING: This will be a difficult number to come up with, but how many clients, approximately, have you worked with over the years?
Cheryl: Oh, I would just say thousands and thousands of clients. So many. But there are those few who you work with that just feel like family. Maybe more than a few. They come to you for all the things that are and are not related to banking.
I think dropping off dinner at a customer’s door who just had hip surgery is something that you don’t see banks doing. We had a customer who just lost his sister, and we were able to support him during that tough time. People share things like this with us, and being able to send flowers and a card to clients to just say, hey, we’re thinking of you, brings so much joy. I love being able to just love on people.
Prescott LIVING: Do you like to mentor other women working to succeed and take on leadership roles in the business sector?
Cheryl: I love doing that, helping people understand what their skillset is and what they do well by nature, and be able to say ‘you do this really well, and let’s help steer you in this direction and coach and give you the tools for that.’ I think the struggle that we run into in day-to-day business is that we don’t get the time to sit with our own people as frequently as we would like. We get to pour into them in drips throughout the day, like, ‘Oh yeah, good thinking on that.’ ‘Here’s how that would look.’ Or, ‘That was really perfect. Don’t change anything.’
With our teams, it takes dedication because we have to set that time aside once a month at least, to sit with our team and say, OK, where are we at? How can we pour into you?
Early in my banking career, banking was very male-dominated in the higher positions. Women had positions like tellers and personal bankers, and they were the front line. So it was often me inside a room with a bunch of men and having to speak your thoughts in a professional, considerate, yet assertive, strong manner that is a skillset that’s really hard to learn on your own, and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed.
I would love for women, especially those in male-dominated industries, to be able to learn some of those skill sets. I go sit with women and just have coffee or wine or lunch, and we talk about business. What are you dealing with? What am I dealing with? How do we get through this? What are some strengths? There’s a community of people in our town that I just call and meet with just to help them have a space where they feel heard, I feel heard and we feel like we can move forward.
Prescott LIVING: I saw that you made a presentation in May for the Prescott Valley Chamber of Commerce, a Women in Business workshop.
Cheryl: I think women in business struggle with trying to balance everything; being the mom, being the wife, being the worker, being the boss. Women are usually the ones making the doctor appointments for the kids, planning the dinners for the families, doing the shopping, paying the bills. I think we need to remember that we’re under a lot of stress and need to manage that the best we can by having friends, partners and people we can talk to, share with, and go through battle with.
We need to be able to look back on what we’ve gone through and say, gosh, I made it through that. I can make it through this. Pick people who are safe that you can communicate with, that you can share things with.
Prescott LIVING: What’s your advice for women trying to learn how to project themselves more authoritatively at meetings and in discussions?
Cheryl: I think a lot of times we don’t speak up because we think they’re not going to like what we have to say, or it’s just me, it’s just my idea. We need to remember the value we bring to the table — we are smart, we do have good ideas, we have a lot of things that we can put out there that maybe someone else hasn’t thought of. But I think the biggest thing is understanding your why behind what you say.
So if you come up with an idea you better have a reason why, be able to stand behind why you think it’s a good plan and you better have a backup plan.
Prescott LIVING: Absolutely. And in addition to mentoring women in business, you’ve been very involved with the community over the years, especially with the Boys & Girls Club. Are you still the board chair?
Cheryl: I am the treasurer now. I do a lot for nonprofits. I work with Boys and Girls Club, Home for Good Foundation and the Prescott Police Foundation. I’m a committee member for Prescott Women Who Care. I’m on so many, I can’t even think of all of them right now. But I think, again, it speaks to my heart for people, just connecting with our community, connecting in any way that we can help.
But the Boys and Girls Club has been near and dear to my heart. I’ve volunteered there for the last 10 years, and it’s something we as the bank have supported for many years. It’s very tough to have some of these kids that need the clubs not able to afford to go. So being able to have a safe space for those kids to go to after school or during the summer is really important.
We’re creating a space for those kids to have a place to grow and to learn. They do archery, biking trips, field trips to different museums and different adventures outside, and they go to Goldwater Lake and fish, and there’s just so much they learned in that space. Creating those experiences for those kids is just amazing.
I think they’ve got a good group of people who are really helping create experiences for kids that are not only memories that they’re creating, but also they’re giving them life skills. Like, did you pack water for your hike? Things that they maybe wouldn’t know.
Prescott LIVING: You’ve already listed some of the other nonprofits that you’re involved with. Like you stated, it sounds like you stay busy.
Cheryl: I just love helping community and being there to support, love on our community. I think people really want to feel seen in their space. I think there’s a lot of pockets of our community that don’t feel seen. For example, if there’s a way for me to have our dispatch team who takes our 911 calls to feel seen, wow, that’s what I want to do. People don’t remember them all the time, and they pour their heart and soul and hours into their job every day.
Prescott LIVING: And so what else do you like to do in your spare time?
Cheryl: Family and travel. I have three kiddos, a girl, boy, and a girl. And my oldest and middle are both married and I have a grandbaby here in Prescott, and my youngest is going to Grand Canyon University for nursing.
I just love, love, love traveling, spending time with my kids and my grandbaby and family time. My brother, his family, me, all of my kids and their families, will have game nights and dinners and just hang out and laugh. Stories that get told for years to come. I love dancing. I used to be in a bowling league, so I still love bowling. I love exercising. Try to be intentionally active three to five times a week.
The other thing is I went through a cancer scare. I had a double mastectomy, hysterectomy. There were some issues that were going on. I think when that happened, I got to a space of just really saying, I want to do everything I can to: A. pour into other people, and B. stay as healthy as I can and take all the right steps I possibly can to maintain my own health and be here for as long as I can.
Now, even if I’m on a trip, we rent bikes or we go on a hike or there’s something that we’re doing that creates some sort of exercise or activity to stay in that routine.
I used to do plays, and I’m going to actually start doing plays again. I’ve done a few plays with the Prescott Center for the Arts, and I’m going to start doing those again now that all my kids are out of the house.
Prescott LIVING: And what are some of your plans for the future, professionally and personally?
Cheryl: Professionally, I think just to continue doing what I’m doing and continue pouring into people – whatever the job title is. It doesn’t really matter to me what title that is. Just knowing that I’m able to build relationships with the community, bring new business in and help my team, and help my branches grow, that’s my goal.
And personally, I want to be a support for women in our community who may feel like they forgot their value. Being there to support each other is key. I also want to stay more active — or really, more consistent on my health journey. I still have some tweaking to do; I’m working on cutting out things I shouldn’t be having, like too much sugar in my diet. So continuing on that path, being there for my kids, and taking care of myself so I can show up for my family.
