Cash Flow Coordinator Barb Thompson retires next Thursday.

Barb Thompson fell in love with numbers in high school, and she has held accounting positions ever since. She’ll bring that chapter of her life to a close when she retires on Oct. 31.

Before joining Badger Bank in 1984, she worked for a men’s retail store, for a company that processed barley and hops for beer, and for other businesses with sizable office operations. Much of that accounting work was manual, but she even loved working with old-time adding machines.

At Badger, she handled accounting and payables, continuing in payables 11 years later when Badger merged with North Shore Bank. That’s when she relocated from Shorewood, Badger’s corporate office, to our Brookfield headquarters.

Her focus for many of her North Shore years has been wire transfers, both domestic and international. When a customer goes to a branch wanting to wire money to a relative or to pay a bill, the funds first move between internal accounts. As cash flow coordinator, Barb keeps an eye on balances to be sure wire transfers are covered and that funds move back to replenish accounts from which they have been drawn.

Although we live in a world where scams related to wire transfers are not unusual, Barb says, “Branch staff know their customers well, so it’s rare for us to have to worry about scams.”

“Wire transfers still can be preferable to checks, because of the guarantee that the money is there,” she adds.

Compliment for mentor is returned
Barb has worked with Senior Vice President/CFO Drew Wallach for years, and she considers him to be an understanding, supportive, appreciative mentor.

He returns the compliment: “It has been my great pleasure to work closely with Barb over the years,” Drew says. “She is meticulous in assembling information I use to understand and manage the bank’s cash. She executes my transactions with the Fed and books my general ledger entries. I’ve always been able to rely on her conscientious double-checking and correction of my work.”

Rules, regulations and compliance matters related to wire transfers are constantly changing, just as they are in almost every area of banking. “We have to stay on our toes to be sure things are done a certain way,” she says.

Memories of CB radios and a fire alarm
Talking about change, Barb smiles as she remembers how many people used to belong to CB clubs — citizen band radios, that is. “We’d have them in our cars, and it was how we communicated before cell phones.”

And she recalls a time when the fire alarm sounded and everyone at Corporate had to evacuate. “There wasn’t a fire, but we got a chance to practice. We were lucky the weather was nice that day.” She thinks someone burning microwave popcorn triggered the alarm. “It never happened again,” she says.

Although Barb has been content to stick with what she loves, she doesn’t hesitate to recommend banking to anyone seeking a satisfying, rewarding career. “There are so many opportunities to learn new things, so many opportunities for growth. Banking is made up of many functions. If you want to advance, banking is a good place to do it.”

Reflecting on the last 29 years, Barb jokes, “I’ve outlasted many controllers and supervisors.”

But she’s not outlasting Controller Nancy Lepic, who says, “Barb has been a thoughtful and considerate team member. We could count on her to be at work even during the worst snowstorms; she never wanted to create extra work for her colleagues, so she has rarely been absent. While the Accounting Department wants to congratulate Barb as she prepares for retirement, we also want her to know that we’ll miss her.”

Family and home become new priorities
Job satisfaction, pleasant surroundings and “nice people” — and her fondness for the blue in North Shore’s logo, she quips — have kept Barb in banking for almost three decades. Now she’s ready to return to being a homemaker, wife and mom. Her husband, Bruce, retired 10 years ago, and Barb looks forward to having time to try new recipes they can share.

She’ll see her adult children, Bill and Kim, and she confesses, “I still have a lot of accumulation to go through from when we moved a couple of years ago.”