Executive leadership · Bend
Rosa Delgado
Head of Retail Banking
“People remember whether you were kind to them long after they forget the interest rate.”
Runs all three branches and knows most of the regulars by name. Opened the Bend branch in 2009 with four employees and a folding table.
- [email protected]
- Phone
- +1 (541) 555-0144
- Office
- Bend branch
- With Meridian since
- 2002
The story
Rosa was born in Hood River to a family of orchard workers who became orchard owners. She spent every August of her childhood selling pears at the family's roadside stand, and credits that stand with everything she knows about customers: they remember whether you were kind far longer than they remember the price.
She started at Meridian Trust in 2002 as a customer-service representative in Salem, became a branch manager at twenty-nine, and in 2009 was asked to open the bank's first branch in Bend. She arrived to a leased storefront with no furniture and four new hires. They opened on schedule, with a folding table as the first teller station. The table is now in the Bend branch's break room with a small brass plaque.
Rosa's proudest work is the 'Second Chance Checking' program she designed in 2018 for customers who had been turned away by other banks because of past overdrafts. More than 900 people have opened accounts through it, and the default rate has been lower than the bank's standard product. She presented the results to the Oregon Bankers Association and three other banks have since copied it.
She lives in Bend with her husband Miguel, who runs a bike shop, and their teenage son Mateo. Her parents' orchard is now run by her brother; she still drives up for the harvest.
Off duty
When not at the bank
Mountain biking
She rides the Phil's Trail network west of Bend three mornings a week and has completed the Oregon Trail Gravel Grinder twice. Her husband's shop sponsors her, which she notes is 'a conflict of interest I have declared to Helen.'
Pear preserves
Every September she puts up about sixty jars from the family orchard's Comice pears. Branch staff receive one each at the holidays; the recipe has not changed since her grandmother wrote it down in 1961.
Salsa dancing
Thursday nights at a studio in downtown Bend, for eleven years. She and Miguel placed third in a regional amateur competition in 2019 and have a very small trophy to prove it.
Ask me about
Education
- B.A. Communications, University of Oregon, 2001
- Northwest Banking School, 2011
