Executive leadership · Portland
Daniel Reyes
President & Chief Executive Officer
“Every loan is a family at a kitchen table. I've been that family. We don't forget it here.”
Started as a part-time teller in 1991. Still opens the Portland branch himself on the first Monday of every month.
- [email protected]
- Phone
- +1 (503) 555-0110
- Office
- Portland branch
- With Meridian since
- 1991
The story
Daniel grew up above his parents' panadería on Hawthorne Boulevard in southeast Portland. His father kept the bakery's books in a green ledger at the kitchen table, and Daniel learned to reconcile a cash drawer before he learned to drive. When the bakery nearly lost its lease in 1988, a loan officer at a small local bank sat with the family for three evenings and found a way to make the numbers work. Daniel has said more than once that the bank he runs today is his attempt to be that loan officer for someone else.
He joined Meridian Trust as a part-time teller in 1991 while finishing his degree at Portland State, and spent the next two decades working through nearly every job in the building: branch manager in Salem, head of small-business lending, chief operating officer. He was named president in 2016 and chief executive in 2018. He still keeps his original teller's name plate in his desk drawer.
The moment he talks about most is the spring of 2020, when the bank processed 1,400 Paycheck Protection loans in eleven days. He moved a cot into his office and personally called every applicant whose paperwork was stuck. Several of those business owners still send him a Christmas card. He considers that fortnight the clearest statement of what a community bank is for.
Daniel and his wife Lucía, a public-school principal, live in the Sellwood neighborhood with a very old dog named Pan. Their two daughters are both in college, which he describes as 'the most expensive customer-research project I've ever funded.'
Off duty
When not at the bank
Baking sourdough
He keeps a starter that descends from his father's bakery, now thirty-seven years old, and bakes two loaves every Sunday. Branch staff know that a Monday-morning loaf on the counter means he visited over the weekend.
Fly-fishing the Deschutes
Every October he takes four days on the lower Deschutes near Maupin, mostly for steelhead, mostly without catching any. He says the river is the only place his phone genuinely has no signal, which is the point.
Timbers season tickets
Section 107 since Providence Park reopened in 2011. He will talk about the 2015 MLS Cup for as long as you let him.
Ask me about
Education
- B.S. Business Administration, Portland State University, 1993
- Pacific Coast Banking School, University of Washington, 2004
