Kathleen Jones arrived at the Savings Bank Association in October 1966 as a fresh-faced college graduate ready to start a secretarial gig. More than 40 years later, Savings Banks Association is now part of the Mass. Bankers Association and Jones has risen to become senior vice president of education and management development.

This year, she’ll be retiring after having experienced 40 years of seismic shifts in the banking industry. Through the decades, she got to know a good chunk of the state’s community banking executives, as well as hobnobbed with a few national players in the industry.

A lot has happened since 1966 – I understand the Mass. Bankers wasn’t the only game in town at the time?

There were four associations: The Savings Banks Association, the Cooperative Bank League, the Mass. Bankers Association and the Savings and Loan Association.

It must have been bewildering to jump into that environment.

No, there wasn’t a lot to adapt to. It was challenging, and I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed working through the different phases of my life at the association, and the things that I’ve accomplished.

[Laughs] I think a lot of people have said I’m an industry icon.

So when was it that you reached icon status?

One of the things that I’ve been noted for was taking on a general banking school – it was called the School for Supervisory Personnel and then it became the School for Banking, and then it became the Mass. School for Financial Studies. [Today, the school is an intensive series of courses and assignments open to financial services personnel such as branch managers]. I was made vice president; I think it was like in 1981, when I took over the school.

This school is phenomenal. We are getting applications even in a down market. Like last year – we have 69 students returning; we have 66 starting this year. The school has been – I’m going to say it’s been my baby.

I’d assume it’s changed a lot since you took it over.

I think the industry had changed such that we needed to. The banking industry, back when I took the school over, was predominantly lending. And now we teach economics, finance, marketing, operations, strategic planning, so the school has evolved to keep up with today’s banking industry.

What I say is when [students] come to us they’re bank employees, and when they leave, they’re bankers.

How did you come to lead the school? Did you have this idea that you’d start out as a secretary and eventually just climb the ladder?

I really have to give a lot of credit to Elliott Carr … Elliott was president of Cape Cod Five [Cents Savings Bank], but Elliott was president of the Savings Bank Association, and he had a tremendous amount of confidence in me. And he gave me opportunities like you wouldn’t believe, and I grabbed them.

With him, I went from assistant treasurer to treasurer, to vice president.

Did you have your eye on the school specifically?

I was always interested in it, and I went to one of the resident sessions and I came back and I said to Elliott, ‘I think this school has great potential, but I think it needs some changes.’ And the next thing I knew, I got the school.

Were any big changes tied to larger upheavals in the banking industry, like the S&L crisis?

No … the major change in the school came, I’m going to say, around 1985, when I saw a dramatic change in the industry, when we had to go to a more business-financial setting.

Is it going to be tough to walk away at the end of the year?

I’m actually semi-retired right now, but on Dec. 31, that’s it. And sure, I’m going to miss it. I’m really going to miss it here, it’s going to be tough, but I will still be in touch with a lot of them, because we’ve been friends.

When I made the announcement that I was leaving, I had more people come up to me and say, ‘You’ve been an asset to this industry.’ And I’ve never thought of it, I’ve just done my job.

Jones’s Top Five major banking Highlights:

1.) Oversaw the merger of Savings Bank Women and the Forum, a mostly male group, in the late 1970s.

2.) Snagged Sen. William Proxmire, head of the U.S. Committee on Banking, to speak at the group’s D.C. convention during his reign in the 1980s.

3.) Stepped up to attend a major meeting in New York during the formation of the federal banking charter legislation.

4.) Lived through the consolidation of the four different community banking associations in Massachusetts.

5.) Helped bankers adjust to an increasingly complicated industry. In the 1960s, the association had five to 10 educational seminars a year; now, it’s 130.