New Life for WashingtonFIRST
We have asked two former chairs of the coalition to return for a six to twelve month engagement while we grow new leaders for WashingtonFIRST. Annie Searle founded the coalition at the request of the U.S. Department of Treasury and the FDIC in 2006, and Washington Mutual hosted many of the coalition meetings in the first several years. Shelby Edwards of PEMCO was the first co-chair of the coalition, and has remained active in the organization since that time.
“We feel that the coalition is too important to just fade away, and that there is a great deal of work that financial institutions can accomplish. We’ve identified both many opportunities for collaboration and the need to address a critical sector wide resiliency questions. We welcome suggestions to make this a stronger website where federal and state links can be aggregated along with content we ourselves create.
"We also propose to create other new coalition membership benefits:
- Quarterly meetings, most of which would be early morning breakfasts with a featured speaker;
- Potential Twitter and Facebook coalition tools;
- Concerted drive to attract larger financial institutions to the coalition;
- Development of an executive committee of 4-6 members, with a goal of mentoring next generation of leadership for this coalition."