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Private banking president greets customers by name: Janice Kassebaum Patterson became enamored with the bank industry as a teenager.

Article Excerpt
From baby sitter to bank president. What a ride.

Janice Kassebaum Patterson, who serves as president and chief marketing officer for San Diego Private Bank in La Jolla, started her career at the tender age of 16, when most other kids were flipping burgers or mowing lawns.

A Tustin teen, Patterson had been babysitting for her neighbor, Ben Crowell, who just happened to be launching a brand new enterprise--Eldorado Bank.

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"I was recruited as one of their first student employees in 1972," she recalled. "They were very accommodating to my school schedule, and were one of the first banks with extended hours--open until 7 every night and on Saturdays."

Crowell, whom she considers her earliest mentor, "wanted me to consider banking as a career," she said.

Patterson, now 52, did just that and has never looked back. During the succeeding decades, she has held executive positions at a number of San Diego banks, including a stint as chief executive officer at Sunrise Bank of San Diego. Patterson fondly recalled the wild and woolly days of the late '90s and early...

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