Cathleen A. Schmidt

Cathleen A. Schmidt (1977) is the President and CEO of Citizens Bank of New Hampshire. She assumed her current role in January 2006 bringing more than 25 years of banking experience to New Hampshire’s largest bank. Her personal motto is “Success is a journey…not a destination.”

As a student at East High School, Cathleen was on the track and tennis teams and was a member of the National Honor Society. She went on to Boston College, graduating cum laude in 1981. She began her career in banking at Old Stone Bank in Rhode Island, where she worked for 14 years, rising through the ranks to Senior Vice President for Retail Banking. She joined M&T Bank in 1995 and worked in Rochester, Ithaca, and back in Buffalo for a short while. In 2002, Cathleen joined Citizens Bank of Massachusetts and in four short years, was promoted to her current position, heading Citizens’ New Hampshire operations with assets of $10 billion and over 1,300 employees.

Modeling her belief that, “to whom much is given, much is expected”, Cathleen has been an active community volunteer, serving as a loaned executive to the United Way in many of the cities across the Northeast, wherever she has worked. Currently, she is on the board of directors of the Heritage United Way in Manchester, New Hampshire. She is also a board member of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, the Manchester Development Corporation, the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association, and the New Hampshire Business Committee for the Arts.