Giving back to her community and beyond

Paloma Sarkar, India

First vice president, enterprise risk manager at Pathfinder Bank

By Mary Beth Roach

Indian-born Paloma Sarkar has found such support among her co-workers at Pathfinder Bank in Oswego; she has been in the Port City for 14 years.

While she said she never intended to stay in Oswego for as long as she has, she said she has received tremendous support.

“I consider many people here at the bank as my family,” she said. “It’s just been an amazing journey for me.”

That journey began several years after she received her bachelor’s degree in technology and computer engineering in India in 2007.

She had been a technical associate at a firm in India from 2007 to 2010 and her work developing coding and reports for the financial side of the company sparked her interest in the field of finance.

She decided to continue her education in the United States, since while growing up, her grandfather had instilled in her that an American education was “prestigious,” she said. Although she hadn’t applied to SUNY Oswego originally, she learned that the school had the program she was interested in and that it was being offered during the timeframe she was hoping.

She would go on to earn a master’s degree in business administration with a concentration in finance from SUNY Oswego and while there, one of her professors was Tom Schneider, who at the time was also president of Pathfinder Bank. She inquired about internships with the bank and was brought in in 2010. Since then, she has served as a loan operations analyst and then worked in the credit and risk divisions of the bank. In 2020, she became first vice president, enterprise risk manager.

She said that she could see the impact her work was having on the community and she wanted to do something on a personal level for “everything the community has given me,” she said.

Currently, she is on the Oswego Health board of directors; the SUNY Oswego School of Business advisory board and the board of You Can’t Fail, Inc. She has also been a member of the Risk Management Association, an alumni adviser for the Financial Management Association at SUNY Oswego and treasurer of the Oswego Habitat for Humanity.

But there are several other organizations that she’s involved with that truly resonate with her on a deep level. She is treasurer of both Friends of Fort Ontario and the Safe Haven Museum and Education Center and she serves on the board of Girls Scout of New York Penn Pathways in Syracuse.

The Safe Haven Museum tells the story of the (mostly) Jewish refugees who were brought to and housed at Fort Ontario during World War II and while Sarkar sees the experiences of these refugees as different than hers, she feels a bond.

“I can understand that and connect deeply with it,” Sarkar said.

As for her involvement with the Girl Scouts, she appreciates how the young girls have more opportunities than she saw in India as she was growing up, she said.

“I see the confidence that these young girls have and it’s just amazing to see,” she said.

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