Colleagues celebrated Cheri’s 20th anniversary with the bank earlier this month. “The front of the cake is a superhero symbol because we all know that Cheri has super powers,” her boss, Margaret Capper, said.

Before joining North Shore Bank in 1999, Cheri Cicona-Trudell was vice president of lending at MCU Credit Union in Racine, where she’d worked for 14 years. “But I lived in Burlington and needed to work closer to my two sons, who were starting school,” she says.

She started as branch manager in Burlington and then managed the Southwest branch. Then she worked as a market manager at the West Allis and Sussex offices, until joining Commercial Banking in 2013, where she now holds the title small business relationship manager.

“I remember growing up going to North Shore Bank functions and going into the Burlington branch to visit my mom at work,” says her son Calvin Cicona, now a universal banker at our National Avenue branch. “My friends and people at school never knew my mother as ‘Cheri the banker’ — they knew her as ‘Cheri with North Shore Bank.’ It was always a part of who she was. North Shore has been so good to my family that when I had an opportunity to make a career change here, I jumped on it.”

Life has thrown some big challenges at Cheri while she’s been here. In 2001, her first husband died in a car accident. (She and second husband Jay now have three granddaughters they adore.) And from 2014 to 2018, Cheri battled breast cancer. Fortunately, she says, her “work family” has been steadfast in supporting her throughout everything. “That’s what keeps me at the bank,” she says. “People ask me if I ever think about going somewhere else. But where am I going to go and find people like this who genuinely care about me?”

Cheri spoke with Shorelines about her 20 years at North Shore Bank.

Cheri with Jay, cheering on the Brewers.

Was it very different to move from a credit union to a traditional bank?
Well, the credit union was very small — I worked for 14 years there with the same six people. And it was a closed charter credit union for a few select manufacturing companies in the area, so we had customers automatically sent to us. At North Shore Bank, we build relationships with people and help them expand their financial opportunities. So it was the same products and same services, but a different philosophy. Something I liked about North Shore was that even though it was much bigger than the credit union, people here were focused on knowing their customers and taking care of them.

What else has contributed to your staying here for 20 years?
My work family has always stood by my side. Early in my career here, of course, my husband passed away. When it happened, Mr. McKenna called me several times to make sure I was doing OK and that my sons were doing OK. And to this day, he still asks every time he sees me, “How are the boys?”

That meant a lot to me. He knew what had happened, and he was concerned, and so were so many other people here. And it wasn’t so much that they were concerned about whether I could perform my job — they were concerned about me as a person, making sure I was getting enough rest, asking if I wanted to go home if they noticed I was having a bad day. That meant a lot, that someone was watching out for me. I wasn’t just a number.

How did your experience with breast cancer affect you?
My whole life took a 180 at that point. I realized all the little things you worry about just don’t matter, and my perspective now is very different. I’m more focused on my family and enjoy my time with them. My career is important, but I’m happy where I’m at, and I realized it’s OK to just be where I am and say, “Let’s enjoy life!”

What led you to hold so many different positions here?
Having managers who recognized skills and who said, “I want you to go over here and try this. I think you’d be good at it.” That’s one more thing I like about North Shore Bank — they’re always looking for ways to give opportunities to the people who want them.

What do you like about your role now?
I like the freedom to help my customers. I have the flexibility to make decisions and do what’s right for them, and I have a great boss who backs me up. Some jobs have a lot of black-and-white rules, but Margaret allows us to think outside the box and say, “That isn’t right for this customer. I think this would work better for them.” I can’t say enough how much I appreciate North Shore Bank and what they’ve allowed me to do.