The SI member is a key player in helping move the city forward. When that happens, everyone benefits.
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“Part of our agenda is to advance the social and economic success of the city,” says Mark Rendulic. “If we do that, that becomes a good thing for our business.”
Rendulic (pictured) serves as market president for Citizens Bank in Western Pennsylvania, and his comment neatly sums up the mission of the Satell Institute and the promise of Corporate Social Responsibility. When businesses give back, they help the community and themselves.
Citizens Bank is a prime example of CSR’s power. In Pittsburgh, the bank supports an array of community initiatives, including workforce development and financial empowerment. These help individuals lead better lives and companies operate more successfully. All of that is good for banking.
In this new conversation, Rendulic talks about his deep love for the Steel City; how Citizens’ CSR efforts are helping with employee retention; and his single favorite thing about the Satell Institute.
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I was born and raised…
….in the greater Pittsburgh area. I started in banking in 1986. I find it somewhat amazing that I’m hitting 40 years, almost all of that operating in the Western Pennsylvania market. I joined Citizens in 2019 after 32 years with my predecessor.
One thing that attracted me to Citizens…
…was the culture of the organization. I left the industry on a two-year sabbatical, and when I decided to come back, I was very selective. One of the things that was important to me was the culture of an organization. I don’t just mean the soft side of culture, but also the business side.
I’m Pittsburgh-born-and-bred. I love this city, and I wanted a platform where I felt like I could do some good in the city. What I found when I started talking to Citizens was exactly that.
Citizens has chosen very specifically…
…where we’re going to play when it comes to giving back. One area is workforce development, which I’m quite passionate about. Another is financial empowerment, which is not only basic financial literacy, but also access to capital. A third is empowering communities. Often that’s through small business, which is the lifeblood of any economy, but also things like homeownership.
I say that we’re specific about it because…
…we measure it. One of the things we measure is volunteerism. Across our whole organization we have 10,000 colleagues who contributed 250,000 hours volunteering last year, about 24,000 of those right here in Pittsburgh. And there are other things we do, too. We have a program where you can take a short sabbatical from your job and apply for the opportunity to go and serve a nonprofit. There’s a lot of really tangible stuff. It’s not just lip service.
When it comes to workforce development…
… I’m a deep believer that too often society is pushing kids to college. The reality — what our commercial customers are telling us — is they can’t get enough folks who are talented in the trades. It’s become a real issue that’s affecting the ability of these companies to function and grow and expand. We’ve jumped into that with both feet.
We’ve also helped develop a program specifically for workforce development for banking, which is a little self-serving, but definitely aligned to the community. And we do a lot in the arts. Since 2022, we’ve supported the Andy Warhol Museum’s Warhol Academy, a workforce development program which gives talented creative professionals opportunities to enhance their skills in real-world situations, including digital content creation, filmmaking and postproduction. Over the past three years, the program has supported over 80 fellows who have then gone on to have productive careers within Pittsburgh’s creative industries.
There’s a very direct link…
…between what’s good for the community and what’s good for our business. If you think about the investment of time and energy in something like workforce development, not only is it helping the individuals in the community build skills in order to be successful, it’s strengthening the companies they work for.
Part of our agenda is to advance the social and economic success of the city. If we do that, that becomes a good thing for our business.
There’s now an expectation from our colleagues at Citizens…
… that we do this kind of work. I’m quite proud to tell you we do an organizational health survey every year, and over the last several years we’ve dramatically driven our numbers up. There’s a natural connection between that and better retention.
We’re also able to secure talent because of our brand. People are more interested in talking to us as a result of what they see us do in the community.
Citizens has been involved with the Satell Institute…
…for several years. Victor Notaro, who is our Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania Commercial Banking Market Executive, is on the board of the Pittsburgh chapter of Satell. Dan Fitzpatrick, who’s our Mid-Atlantic Regional President, is on the board of the Philadelphia chapter. And our CEO, Bruce Van Saun, gave the keynote at the 2020 Satell Institute CEO Conference.
I love that the Satell Institute…
…is a Think and Do Tank. That’s very much how we think about the world. It’s one thing to have esoteric words saying what you do, but do you actually go out and do it?
It’s in our DNA, I think, to be connected and collaborating. In Pittsburgh, there’s the Allegheny Conference, which was born out of private industry connecting to the government sector and the foundation sector. And I would argue the renaissance of Pittsburgh was entirely driven by the vision of the Allegheny Conference.
So it’s similar to that. In the Satell Institute, you’ve got a lot of like-minded leadership now working together on something that’s important to each of them. We’re happy to be part of it.