By Mary Beth Roach
Lindsay Weichert brings her long-time love of real estate as well as a new-found appreciation for middle market banking to her job as commercial banking group manager for Community Bank’s Syracuse region, which encompasses a nine-county region: Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison, Oneida, Herkimer, Oswego, Lewis, Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties and the North Country.
She is responsible for co-managing a team of commercial bankers that lend to businesses and commercial real estate developers.
She has long been interested in real estate.
“Even as a kid, I loved looking at buildings and architecture and I knew I wanted to do something with real estate,” she said.
She graduated from St. Lawrence University and was preparing to go into real estate law, but she learned of an opening in the analyst program in commercial mortgage-backed securities at Fitch Ratings, a credit rating agency in New York City. Within a week, she found herself in NYC and was working on credit research for institutional investors. From 2004 to 2011, she worked at Fitch, but the Syracuse native wished to return home and went to work at M&T Bank. She started with Community Bank in April of 2022.
She believes that being intentional about building out a diverse talent pipeline — for instance through mentorship or programs like Community Bank’s Emerging Leaders Program — can make a significant difference. Currently, Weichert is paired with a mentor, a regional president in Pennsylvania.
Having leaders, both men and women, who can pull people out of their shells and make sure their voices are heard is key, she said, adding that she is pleased that leadership development programs now focus on arming managers with this skill as well as broadly approaching talent from a lens of support and intentionality.
