PORTSMOUTH – After 39 years at Piscataqua Savings Bank, President and CEO Rick Wallis will retire on Sept. 30.
Wallis, who has served as president and CEO since 2012, will be succeeded in the bank’s top leadership position by Joan Gile, who has been with the mutual savings bank 34 years.
Gile will be the 13th president and CEO of the local bank, founded in 1877. All 12 of her predecessors were men.
“I’m honored to be the first female president of the bank,” Gile, 61, said in an interview Thursday.
Wallis, 62, joined Pisacataqua Savings Bank upon graduation from University of New Hampshire’s Whittemore School of Business in 1981. He was recruited into a newly created officer training program and steadily rose through the ranks, spending the bulk of his career as a mortgage loan officer.
Cross Roads did not specify in its release a timetable for finding a replacement.
Stone came to Cross Roads in 2004, tasked with serving as the organization s first development director. At that time, Cross Roads was putting together a major capital campaign to raise funds for a new shelter facility. The campaign hit its $5 million goal and the new shelter opened in 2009.
Stone was promoted to executive director in 2013, a role she’s served in ever since.
“Cross Roads House is in an excellent position right now. The organization’s finances are healthy, and our facilities are in great condition. We have a talented and dedicated management team, case management, and direct care staff, along with an extraordinary board of directors,” Stone said in the release.
GREENLAND – Pati Frew-Waters, executive director of Seacoast Family Promise, looked around the transitional housing organization for homeless families’ latest housing acquisition and said, it was “just perfect.”
Seacoast Family Promise held a ribbon-cutting for its newest housing unit at 480 Breakfast Hill Road in a former multi-family home previously owned by Bethany Church Friday afternoon. Frew Waters said the home is currently able to house five families who are taking part in Seacoast Family Promise’s programs.
Frew-Waters said the upstairs has an additional kitchen that can be put into use if a family requires isolation due to COVID-19 exposure or it can eventually be converted into additional living space for a sixth family. Currently, there are four families residing in the new facility, she said.