Steve Britton was surprised and pleased when he found out he was named a Community Bank Hero, but he says he’s still trying to figure out just what he did to deserve the honor.
That’s just like Steve, said Jackie Giordano, the director of external affairs at the North Shore Community Development Coalition (CDC). Giordano, who has known Britton since he joined the organization’s board of directors in 2012, nominated him for the distinction.
“Steve Britton is such a humble, hard-working individual,” she said. “Not only does he show up to every community event, but he’s engaged with the communities we work with and he works really hard to align his role at the board of directors with his work at Beverly Bank.”
For instance, when the North Shore CDC was awarded Community Investment Tax Credits (CITC) last year, Giordano said it was Britton who did most of the legwork to make those credits count, leveraging his experience and connections to pull in donations from area banks.
“He pulled together a list of every bank on the North Shore and he wrote them a letter and followed up with phone calls,” she said. “Because of that, almost every bank on the North Shore was able to give to the CDC through the CITC program. We would not have been able to do without Steve Britton.”
But the father of three simply gets satisfaction out of helping others.
“I have been pretty blessed in my life,” he said. “I’ve always had a roof over my family’s head, I’ve always had my family together as a unit. Sometimes you lose focus that that is not always the norm. There are a lot of people out there who are in difficult straits, in some instances through no fault of their own.”
Britton, who has worked his entire career in consumer and mortgage lending, finds a similar kind of satisfaction in his day job, too. Though he spent some time working for bigger banks, Britton said that at a community bank, every day is different. And, he added, you get a little bit more flexibility at a community bank, particularly with respect to consumer lending. When he can put a first-time homebuyer into their new home or help out a customer who needs to restructure their debt, he knows that’s a job well done.
Britton said, “I can’t say that I do great things, but I do enjoy my work on the board and I do enjoy seeing the things they do and the help they give to people who are really in need.”
