Greg Winegardner: taking Wells Fargo's Regional reins.

• Author: Kinder, Peri
• Position: Spotlight

As a boy growing up on a farm in Waynesfield, Ohio (population 803), Greg Winegardner dreamed of being a cowboy, and moving out West to ride the range. Little did he know that instead of taming the wilderness, he'd be taking the reins of Wells Fargo Bank during a time of national economic upheaval.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

On Sept. 1, Winegardner was named Wells Fargo Regional president for Utah, replacing Robert Hatch who served the bank for 40 years. "I'm coming in behind someone great," Winegardner says. "But it's going to take time for the employees, team members, as well as customers and other folks to get to know me. My goal is to continue to grow the business and take care of customers."

Winegardner spent his first 90 days on the job traveling the state to visit each of the 140 Wells Fargo branches in Utah. He met with almost 200 managers in the first three weeks of September and although he realizes he won't remember everyone, he hopes his visits relieved some of the anxiety that comes with any change in leadership.

But Winegardner is not new to the Wells Fargo family; he served as the bank's regional president for New Mexico for five years, and before that as the regional president for Wells Fargo in western Colorado, serving communities like Grand Junction, Aspen and Vail. He says, like New Mexico, Utah hasn't been hit as hard economically as other parts of the country. Real estate speculation, done in surrounding states like Nevada and Arizona, never really took off in Utah, keeping the economy a little more stable.

"We never really saw the big boom, so we never really had the big bust," Winegardner says. "But we're not immune here by any means."

Even though the country has been through some financial...