See those Green's green fields of home.

• Position: People - Isaac Green of NCNB - Brief Article

Isaac Green isn't bashful about being bullish on North Carolina. In fact, he jumps at the chance to boast about the state's virtues. "Like the old saying goes, I like calling North Carolina home," he says, laughing at his own corniness. "That's really who I am."

But Green, 40, who grew up in Henderson, wasn't always sure it would work out that way. In 1983, after graduating from Duke with a double major in economics and history, he packed himself off to New York to get an MBA from Columbia.

A year later, with an Ivy League pedigree in his pocket, he figured it was only natural to pursue his financial-management career in the Big Apple. "In the old days, before the economy down here got diversified, if you went into a field like mine, you were pretty much punching a ticket to leave the state. When I went off to Columbia, I thought I was gone."

But executives at Charlottebased NCNB, the homegrown forerunner of NationsBank and then Bank of America, convinced Green that he could do just as well by coming back to North Carolina. So he did, in 1984. By 26, he was director of research at NCNB and eager to move on. After a five-year stint as an investment broker with NCM Capital in Durham, he was lured to Detroit in 1993 by Loomis, Sayles & Co. He worked his way up to executive vice president and was helping manage mutual funds with nearly $10 billion in assets. In August 2000, he and a few colleagues left Loomis to launch their...