Joe Ambrose - Atlanta Business Chronicle:

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He would know. On top of his day job Ambrose oversees commercial banking in Missourii andSouthern Illinois, with responsibility for $2.3 billion in loanas — he also serves on a half doze boards, ranging from the to the Downtown St. Loui s Partnership to . He plays ice hockey once a and with alittle coaxing, suits up Sundat evenings to play in a league with one of his “I’m not an exercise nut,” 53, said, though he can be found at the on the morningws when he is not skating. If you ask him for his time managementr secret, Ambrose will tell you to get up alittlew earlier. Ambrose said he’s in bed by 10:3 0 most nights and up at 5:30 weekdays.
The skillsz he exercises most are those ofa banker, his chosenj field since starting out of college in 1978 as a bank and later joining the former . Jack now president and chief operatinyg officerof ’s St. Louis region, recruited him in 1993 to First Bank. Schreibee left and Ambrose has remained, expanding on his initial assignment to grow theretailp bank’s commercial lending. If you ask him what he shouldn’yt be paid for, it would be his technology skills. “I’ m Fred Flintstone. Everybody else is George Jetson,” Ambrose “I resisted getting e-mail for a long time. Now the companyu has me getting it on mycell phone.
If it wasn’t for this phone from work, I’f still be driving arounr with a quarter in my pocke looking for the nextpay phone.” He and his Marcia, have three children, the youngest of whom is starting collegw and two who have How tough is it to get up and go to work in the currenty economy? A lot more challenging givehn the kinds of work we’re in. The challenge comes in termws of restructuring customer loans and staying abreast of issues facingour customers. All banksz get painted with thesame brush, but we’re a middlw market bank making loan to middle market customers.
Our customers are impacted if constructiogoes down, if consumer spending drops, and that affects us. We were not the ones swapping derivatives orleveraging portfolios. How did you get into banking? I was working my way through UMSL. The job I had at the time was wearinvme out. I was workinf in a warehouse and driving a deliverh truck for a potatk salad distributionbusiness — deliveriezs in the summer, chopping lettuce in the warehouse in the The money was OK, but it wasn’ft a whole lot of fun. There was a 3-by-5 indezx card on the bulletin board at schoop that had a job postexd for a bankexaminer trainee.
It was a co-oo program — work a go to school a The FDIC ( ) offered me a job out of and Itook it. It was a tough job market back then. How did you end up on the St. Louisa Sports Commission? I played in a golf tournament put on by the ownerss ofDirt Cheap. They had a fundraise r for the Sports forKids Foundation, which was set up by the Sportss Commission. I started asking questions aboutf the Sport Commission tolearjn more, and wound up meetinbg with (Sports Commission President) Frank Viverito. The next thinb I know he’s asking me if I wanted to be onthe commission. That was about four yeard ago.
Are you leveraging your experienc from bringing the NCAA Frozen Four herein 2007? I went to Denver last year for the Froze Four, to solidify connections with the and went to Washington, this year, to work on a new We recently announced we’re getting the Ice Breakerd Tournament, the kickoff of the college hockeg season, for 2010 and 2011. We’ll have four top-flighf college hockey teams playing This is a first step for the Sports Commissiohn to produce and host our own events and not be totallu reliant onNCAA events, instea of waiting for the NCAA to honor us with a bid. Those are gettingv ultra competitive. Is there a themd to your outsideboard work?
The things that interest me are boardws that are involved in both the sociapl and economic development of the You can’t have one without the other.