D'Alessandro's 15-minute conference with Schneider Tuesday showed the veteran banking executive working to instill a stronger sales culture at Firstrust, which was started in 1934 and is still owned by the founding Green family.
"If you look at checking accounts per salesperson or loan applications per salesperson, there's a lot of room there to do more," said D'Alessandro, 59, who started her career as a teller at the Ardmore branch of Main Line Federal Savings in 1970.
After Main Line Federal was bought by Sovereign Bancorp in 1998, she stayed, serving for a time as chief executive for the region.
D'Alessandro, who prefers bright colors over somber banker gray, left Sovereign in September 2009 and intended to explore new fields - until a chance meeting with Firstrust president Tim Abell led to her new job as executive vice president and director of community banking.
Like all banks, Firstrust, with 24 local offices, took its lumps during the economic downturn. But it got through without posting a money-losing year, and without taking a government bailout or other outside investment.
Today, Firstrust has more capital than it had five years ago, helped by the Green family's decision to forgo dividends in all but two quarters from the summer of 2007 through this year's first quarter, according to the Conshohocken-based bank's quarterly reports to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
"The Greens are not going to take any distributions if they feel we need to increase our capital," Abell said.
