2008: Chris Hensley

Chris Hensley decided in 1998 that her two main pursuits were incompatible. She was the executive director of the YWCA of Greater Des Moines at the time, but she was also on the Des Moines city council. In her role at the YWCA, she spent a lot of time raising money. "That just didn't go together with being in an elected position," she said..After resigning from the YWCA Hensley spent time thinking about jobs in which she "could wear a couple of hats, working within the community and also being an elected official." Earlier in her career, before she started with the YWCA, Hensley had worked for Deloitte & Touche, which served many bank clients. Soon, she narrowed her job search to community affairs roles within Iowa banks. In October 1998 she took one with Commercial Federal, which was acquired by San Francisco-based Bank of the West in 2005. Hensley is currently a vice president and CRA regional manager of community affairs for the bank, and she still serves as the ward III representative on the Des Moines city council..Hensley said the two roles harmonize nicely. "If you look at community affairs, community involvement within the bank, it's all about making sure that you're contributing in the community where it has the most impact," Hensley said..Her community expertise in Des Moines specifically, and Iowa more generally, are obviously useful. But Hensley's responsibilities extend beyond Iowa. She co-manages (with Rebeca Rangel) community affairs in all of Bank of the West's 19 states. In addition to Iowa and the rest of the bank's Great Plains division (Nebraska, Missouri and Kansas), Hensley oversees the Midwest division, which is comprised of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin, and the Southwest division, which is comprised of Arizona, Oklahoma and New Mexico..Each of the bank's eight divisions is given a community affairs allocation based on market share, Hensley said. "We work very hard to match our level of giving to our market share within the respective communities," she said..The divisions have a lot of autonomy in deciding how to use their budgets, but Bank of the West is fairly structured in its giving priorities. "We want 75 percent of our contributions to be CRA qualified," Hensley said. "We're focused on affordable housing and community related services that really provide supportive services to low- or moderate-income individuals," she said. Arts and culture and economic development, particularly with small or "Main Street" businesses, are focus areas as well..The bank is also directing more of its community affairs efforts toward nonprofits that promote eligibility for, and participation in, the Earned Income Tax Credit. "That's an area the bank has been very involved in, in Des Moines," as well as in Iowa City and Council Bluffs. The bank supports organizations such as United Way and AARP, which set up and staff tax return preparation sites. Bank employees from local branches volunteer at the sites to answer questions about banking and other financial services. "We've [also] had a pilot down in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, N.M., that has gone very well and may be expanded," Hensley said.."When you look at wanting to make an impact and wanting to ensure that you're using your dollars for CRA types of activities, you have to have more structure to your program," Hensley said. But that structure required a bit of adjustment, particularly for banks in the Midwest division, she said.."In a smaller community, a bank is requested to give to everything. They are the go-to entity, which you would expect. It probably made it a little more difficult for us in the Midwest division to make that transition over to the guidelines," Hensley said. "Many of those programs that had been supported previously…were not CRA qualified, so we had to make that transition.".But Hensley and the bank try hard to preserve the local touch. She mentioned a recent 10-school, multi-state tour with the Minneapolis-based National Theatre for Children. The improvisational troupe developed a fun, fast-paced financial literacy show called Mad About Money, and Hensley traveled with the players to schools in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The pilot program used census tracts to "identify little schools that had a higher percentage of free and reduced lunches," Hensley said. Two actors then visited the school and did a 45-minute program of four skits on how to prioritize needs and wants, the differences between saving and investing, and the properties of cash and credit.."All the schools really appreciated it, but for the smaller schools, which typically don't get these types of programs, this was a 'wow' day," Hensley said.