JESSICA GRIFFIN / Philadelphia Daily News
Bill Brown: Internal coordination gives customers a polished view.
Big ideas and the people behind them
Bill Brown
The big idea: Goes by the name "One Citi." It's a year-old initiative to coordinate Citibank, Citi Cards, Smith Barney, and other affiliated business units in three targeted metro areas: Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago.
But don't look for a One Citi logo on storefronts and ATMs. "One Citi isn't a brand," Brown said. "It's sort of an internal moniker for how we deliver the company to our clients."
The goal is to leverage regional strengths - in Philadelphia, the venerable Smith Barney franchise, which was founded here, is one - and make certain that every customer who has a Citi Card (more than one million regionally) or a Citi mortgage, college loan or car loan (more than 100,000) is afforded ample opportunity to cross-patronize the other operating groups.
About that odd title: Each of the three target cities has its own market leader, essentially a regional president charged with helping the operating groups cooperate.
How it resembles his first job out of college (as a Navy flight officer): Brown went to Boston University on a Navy scholarship, studying international relations and geography. He graduated in 1988, completed his military training and served in the Navy for six years: three on an antisubmarine-warfare squadron stationed in Maine, three at the Pentagon.
His Maine squadron flew a plane that tracked submarines, handling missions from the Azores to Iceland. "I sat in the back seat of a patrol plane, sort of coordinating our mission," he said. He had a crew of 12, "some officers, some enlisted, all with different gear and different specialties, collaborating and sort of integrating into one mission."
Integrating into Philadelphia: After the Navy, Brown signed on with Citi, where he has been for 12 years - mostly in New York. Before coming here last summer, he spent a couple of years in Dallas, merging branches of the acquired First American Bank into the corporate fold.
"When we got here, my wife and I decided we would jump in with both feet," he said. He is on the board of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the Kimmel Center, the Committee of Seventy (he and his wife, Lorena, were among the 800 poll monitors dispatched during the April primaries) and Big Brothers Big Sisters Southeastern PA.
"I will tell you - Philadelphia's a tough banking town": To give one humbling example, his office is in a Smith Barney suite - inside the rival PNC Bank Building.
"We don't talk in the elevators," he said.
He has no illusions about the size of his fish in this pond: "Here in Philadelphia, for as big as our company is, this is a start-up," he said. "We are hungry locally." Since late 2006, Citi has opened 22 retail bank branches here.
A geographer hits William Penn's grid: Brown has been a cartography fanatic since childhood. "I love studying maps, and my wife will vouch for this, at any tourist stop, any rest area," he said.
Not surprising, he has taken to the Philadelphia street grid like an amphibious duck boat to the Delaware. "Without revealing too much personal detail, I live on 17th Street, right off Rittenhouse Square. Between Locust and Spruce."
A tourist spot he knows and you don't: FDR Skatepark, under I-95 in South Philadelphia.
In skateboarding circles ("sk8ter," if you're texting), it is nationally revered as a "renegade" park and was the only attraction Brown's 23-year-old brother-in-law from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., asked to see when he visited.
"We went to the skate park," Brown said. "Then I took him to Chickie's & Pete's."
Big idea he wishes he'd had: Social networking. "I was in on it early enough," he admitted, but he let it slide, thinking, "This isn't going to fly. Why would people talk online when they could go to a bar, a restaurant, a café?
"Boy, was I wrong about that."
