Edison National Bank is firmly planted in the community

Edison National Bank President Robbie Roepstorff, left, and above with some of her staff at the bank's Cleveland Avenue office. All of the bank's employees participate in community programs of one kind or another. With professionalism polished to a shine as glowing as the brass at Edison National Bank, that company's president sits in an office, with an advantageous view of the lobby. An exceedingly polite secretary, at her own desk, guards the entrance to the president's office.

"(Robbie Roepstorff) will be with you in a minute," she said.

Roepstorff's husband Goeff is the CEO. Together the couple opened the bank on Cleveland Avenue in South Fort Myers in 1997. Now there's one in downtown Fort Myers and one on Sanibel Island called Bank of the Islands. All the locations they've moved into were previously vacant buildings, Roepstorff noted.

"We like to take buildings that are vacant and turn the lights back on," she said, her face lighting up, as if to provide a visual representation of the point she'd just made.

Florida Weekly Photos by Evan Williams  The point was it's just one of the many ways Roepstorff and her staff are involved in the community, something she has preached from the beginning. "We've made a commitment to be a community bank," she said. "If you're going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk."

Edison National provides financial support to over 42 organizations in Fort Myers, as wide ranging as the American Heart Association, Arts for ACT, the Bailey-Matthews Shell Museum, FISH - Friends in Service Here, Saint Michael's Lutheran School, South Fort Myers High School, and Southwest Florida Addiction Services.

The American Heart Association is particularly close to Roepstorff's own heart, she said, because of heart problems in her family.

"I attended the Executive Breakfast to kick off the American Heart Association of Lee county's Heart Walk," she wrote in a company memo. "Testimonials on wellness programs were shared from large organizations...Although Edison National Bank is a smaller organization, my immediate thought was, we should be doing this, too."

So on Aug. 1, she began promoting a wellness program for her employees called START!, with three ways to participate - stop smoking, take walks, and lose weight. Cash prizes are awarded to winners in each category. This month, a fitness coordinator from Lee memorial Wellness Center visited each bank office and recorded a confidential weigh in/out and a blood pressure check. Out of 45 employees, 30 participated in the walking program, four smoking employees are now completely smoke free, and a total of 125 pounds was lost. Overall, the staff's blood pressure dropped by 82 percent.

All of the bank's employees participated in community programs of one kind or another this year, which means Edison National only hires philanthropists ("We're always looking for good quality, 'people like us' bankers, Roepstorff said); or, Roepstorff's fervent, politically ambitious non-profit agenda is rubbing off. That impression might have merit; Roepstorff was a political science and sociology major at the University of North Alabama. In college, she'd loved politics, and said she always has. She also managed a dress shop then, and as manager, took deposits to First National Bank of Florence, Ala.

"There's absolutely politics in everything you do," she said. "You've gotta know how to strategize."

First National Bank hired Roepstorff as a teller. Twenty-five years later she owned her own bank, with her husband. The strategy was always to keep things simple, she said - stay local, build close relationships with clients, be involved with the community, have a small board (only five members, including Roepstorff and her husband), and a staff small enough to be very manageable. But especially three inseparable "values", which are, she said, God, family and business.

"We attribute our success to keeping our mindset in those values, in that order," she said.

The God part is easy; just have faith. As for family - that has to be kept separate from work; Roepstorff seemed almost apologetic that her husband and her are inextricably linked in marriage and business.

"People would never know they were married by looking," an Edison National Bank escort, who sat in during the interview, added by way of explanation, almost a point of pride.

"We truly try and leave it at home," Roepstorff said. "Because we tell the staff, 'Your mind needs to be where the body is. If you're at work, then the body is at work. If you're home with your family, you're mind needs to be with your body there.'"

Roepstorff's third value, business, flows from the other two, she said. And Edison National Bank is the direct result.