Scaling The Summit
Forward, Onward, Upward

Founder, Chairman, And CEO

Summit Bank

As a six-year-old, Shirley Nelson was fascinated by the one bank in Celina, Tennessee, a tiny town of 700.

She recalls, “It was a community bank – all male and the only business in town bigger than a mom and pop operation. The bankers fascinated me with their three-piece suits, dangling watch fobs and assured air. I had a hazy idea that the bank was actually full of money and that in some sense it was theirs.

"I never conceived the possibility of working in a bank, much less founding one,” Nelson tells us.

Never say never.

Today, Shirley Nelson is the founder, Chairman, and CEO of Summit Bank, one of America’s most successful small banks.

Certainly the early years were not auspicious. Nelson’s parents, with only grade-school educations, struggled to care for their four small children on a laborer’s income. “We were very poor,” Nelson says matter-of-factly. “Our clothes came mostly from second-hand stores – known in Tennessee as rag stores – and I was painfully embarrassed by that because I thought everyone knew. I understood my father was doing his best, but second-hand clothes made me feel like a second-class citizen. Kids aren’t much on philosophy.”

While in high school, Nelson worked 40 hours a week as a waitress, still managing somehow to pull in top grades. She graduated at 16 and moved to her grandmother’s home in Nashville. “My parents couldn’t afford college, and I simply didn’t know student loans or scholarships existed. So I studied a correspondence course for stewardesses. Unfortunately, I then developed a fear of flying,” she confesses with a wry grin. “Today, it doesn’t bother me. I probably fly 100,000 miles a year. But then –well, for a couple of years I worked as a cashier for a grocery chain. I loved working with people, working with money.”

During this time she married a Navy man on scholarship at Vanderbilt. When the Navy soon transferred them to Kodiak, Alaska, the only jobs were at the cannery. “I heard about an opening for a teller in town and thought, ‘No chance’. But they were desperate for people because they could not compete with cannery wages. They hired me. In four hours I had become a teller and had made my start in banking.”

“A few years later my son and I moved to Alameda, California. I had no luck finding a job until I happened on Central Bank. They hired me, but back at the very bottom. I worked my way up the ranks until I got the idea to start Summit Bank. By then I’d done every other banking job. I suppose I thought running a bank was just making sure all those jobs got done.”

In reality, Nelson started Summit Bank for two reasons that give considerable insight into her character and her strong sense of justice. First, a well-deserved raise she was seeking for a woman working for her was denied. Then the bank hired a man for a position she had declined, paying him a salary of 50% more than she had been offered.

“When I raised some fairly vocal objections,” she says, grinning, “they told me it was very simple. They’d hired a banker with a following who would bring in a lot of business -- he had greater value. I said, ‘So you are saying to me that if there were a bank across the street, I could go there and command a lot more money?’ They said, ‘Absolutely. If there were a bank across the street’,” Nelson recalls vividly.

“I was really angry. When I got back to my office, I called a friend who had helped start the Doctor’s Insurance Company. I said, ‘Guess what we’re going to do?’ He asked what, I said, ‘Start a bank’. After a stunned pause, he said, ‘You’re crazy! You don’t just go out there and start a bank. How do you do that?’” Nelson chuckles as she recalls, “I said, ‘I have no idea, but we are going to do it.’”

That was on December 15, 1979. The rest is history.

Nelson promptly went out and selected her initial board from a group of people who wielded some influence in the community – and who could afford to lose their organizational money. “We had an attorney, a CPA, a real estate developer, a black businesswoman, two doctors, a car dealer, and two bankers. I attribute our success to a great board of directors.”

It was not smooth sailing at first. Eight months into her new venture, nearly all her key officers left in disagreement over the bank’s direction. Nelson became the president, the senior loan officer, and nearly everything else. “I had one person left, a 19- year-old. He is still with me, running the computer. For about three months the two of us were there until three or four in the morning. It was hard.”

Even so, Nelson can say, “We lost $1,217 the first month, but the second month we were in the black -- and have been ever since. The bank has grown with 15 consecutive years of record profitability.

Nelson is passionate about helping others and giving back, especially with women’s organizations. She is active in numerous fundraisers. And she has a well-deserved reputation for speaking forthrightly on the political and social issues that concern her.

Except for her unassuming manner and a lingering hint of the South in her speech, there is little of the awestruck Tennessee child in Shirley Nelson now. She is known as a highly talented business woman with a strong compassionate bent. When asked, she says that the best part of the American Dream is getting to choose the one toward which you want to work. “Mine is very basic, I think. Living every day of your life fully, including the hard ones. Being the best you have it in you to be. And someday, being able to give something back.”

For Nelson, her formation of The Women’s Leadership Foundation is part of that giving back. “Reaching out is probably the most important thing we can do. I want this Foundation to reach young women early, in high school and college, and help them become involved with other women role-models.”

Shirley Nelson could serve as such a model. She has marked for others who demonstrate the same determination, imagination, and dedication. “It’s easier if you have a college education, if you’re born rich. But success really depends on how hard you’re willing to pedal to get that bike up the hill. I pedaled hard,” Nelson says with a twinkle. “I made it all the way to the summit.”

Resource Information:
Summit Bank