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Editor's Note: CNY Executive Q&A is a feature appearing regularly in The Central New York Business Journal, authored by guest writer Jeff Knauss, who is co-founder of his own digitalmarketing firm. In each edition, Knauss chats with a different executive at a Central New York business or nonprofit, with the interview transcript appearing in a conversational Q&A format
In this issue, I speak with Stephen Gorczy?ski, who is the administrative vice president of commercial banking for the Central New York region at M&T Bank. He leads the bank's commercial middle-market team in this area and is based in M&Ts Syracuse office. Gorczy?ski lives in Manlius, with his wife and two children. M&T Bank ranks number one in deposit market share in the l&county Central New York area
JEFF: Tell us a hide bit about your background and how you got here.
STEVE: I was born and raised down the road in Utica in the Mohawk Valley region. I went to Catholic schools out there, and arrived in Syracuse via Le Moyne College. I'm an accountant, a CPA by trade. I went through the accounting program at Le Moyne. My first job was with KPMG, and at that time, the Syracuse office had a large contingent of banking clients. This was in the late 1980s and early 90s when there was a savings and loan crisis. A lot of banks in the country, including KPMG clients, had problems with their loan portfolio. A lot of savings banks tried to get into commercial lending and didn't do a very good job. As an auditor coming in at this time, your primary focus was the collectability of the loan portfolio. Along the way, I developed an expertise in credit underwriting and effectively learned how to lend by watching other people's mistakes, I had a unique perspective.
It was really interesting. I was a young guy - around 23 years old - and ?d be interviewing a veteran loan officer trying to subtly ask him/her, "What were you thinking when you made this loan?" ?m reading the file and ifs obviously a bad situation. Finally, one day a lender stopped me and said, "Listen, the numbers are what they are, but before you make a judgment on me and...