Stephanie Maiona
Title: Senior Vice President, Senior Commercial Lender, Needham Bank
Age: 47
Experience: 24 years
The first time Stephanie Maiona interviewed for a job at Needham Bank, she didn’t get it. A few years later, another position opened up and she gave it a second try. At the time, Maiona was working for a big bank, and while she’s always loved commercial real estate, she was ready to get back into community banking. Besides overseeing double-digit commercial loan growth at Needham Bank, Maiona also recently completed a banking degree from the American Bankers Association.
Q: You started your career as a bank regulator – why did you end up making the jump into banking?
A: When I graduated from college, I really wanted to work in a training program, so I looked at a couple of banks and I looked at the FDIC’s program, and I thought, “Wow, this is great. It’s three years, you get commission, you get all this stuff …” But you spend all this time looking at other people’s work, and you can’t help but think, “Wow, they did this deal. How exciting is that.” You see what those lenders did in their job day to day, that they were out at sites, looking at projects, talking about deals, looking at all the financial aspects of it, and it just seemed like it would be really fun to do it rather than just review it all the time.
And then when I started doing it, I just fell in love with it. I never said, “I don’t want to be a client person,” or “I don’t want to be a project person.” I just kept doing it and I kept getting these really nice opportunities to work in different banks and different areas, and 20 years later, boom.
Q: Where have you focused most of your efforts at Needham Bank?
A: I would say for our commercial construction, single-family speculative development projects, really the core of it is Needham, Dedham, Weston and Wellesley. We also do Dover and Sherborn, which is a little bit different type of market, but it’s still a pretty good market right now.
We’ve always been pretty active in the Ashland market and we’ve branched out more in that area to Natick. We’ve been active in those markets, but we’re seeing a lot more single-family spec development in those areas. As we work more in those areas, we get more comfortable that we can add value in those markets. What we don’t want to do is be a lender talking to a borrower on the phone saying, “We just can’t do that; we’re not comfortable with your end price.” They don’t need to be wasting their time on us, but when we learn more about a market, we work more in it, we can add value.
And some of our builders will choose to go to a different market. They might be very active in the single-family Needham market, but have suddenly seen some nice development opportunities in Milton or Weston and we will follow them. We will look at those and do those markets, too.
We also do several areas of the city where a lot of condo development and residential rental properties:
Somerville, Cambridge, Brookline, South Boston and certain sections that we’re just starting to see it, in Brighton, Allston, Dorchester. We have a level of comfort there, too, because we understand the rental scenarios there and the for-sale scenarios.
Q: What’s driving that development in the city?
A: I personally believe, and this is just me, but a lot of it is we just have a really nice work-base city, and an education base, medical base, and of course, there are a lot of really good financial companies. Because Boston has all that to offer, the rental market has been very, very good. The for-sale market has been good, too, because it’s a very attractive place for people to live.
I feel like the Allston-Brighton market is a good market, and as the universities expand, we’re seeing a lot more opportunities there for development.
Other areas of the city have always been strong. People love to live in Boston, they love public transportation and they love to live there in school and get their first job there. And it has some beautiful areas for people to live in, really unique kind of village-y neighborhoods. I lived in the city for a long time, so I love everything that goes up in there.
And people really fall in love with their neighborhoods in Boston. Then they up and move to a new neighborhood and they fall in love with that, too. It’s just really exciting.
It’s very cool, too, to see Boston putting up some big new buildings. That’s fun for cities, that there’s actually space where you can do that.
Top Five Reasons Maiona Loves Working For Needham Bank:
- It’s a strong community bank.
- The builders we bank bring some of the most beautiful products to market.
- Needham Bank lends money and supports the community in which the employees live.
- My eight-year-old daughter thinks it’s a great place.
- I have an easy commute!
