In hindsight, Penny Simon’s path to her present position as a senior vice president with the third largest bank in the world looks almost like a grand design, but in the beginning she was searching. With her degree in elementary education, Penny taught for a year right after college, then decided to spread her wings. She worked in hotel sales, meeting planning, retail clothing, and even managed a restaurant. After discovering she liked sales and interacting with people, she answered an ad for a sales person at a small, one-office bank outside Washington, DC. A sales person, that is, who would focus on the small business community.

            “You have to realize, this was 1976, and this little bank was truly thinking outside the box,” Penny says. “At that time, you went to the bank—the bank did not come to you.” Penny was hired and found she loved the job, especially the unique view a one-office business offered: “I could see how everything was done, end to end.”

            From there Penny went to a larger bank in Washington, National Savings & Trust, which, she notes, had been one of the first banks to lend money to emancipated slaves. As assistant branch manager, she established a good partnership with the manager who had excellent technical skills but didn’t like sales. Many law firms were based nearby and Penny built solid business relationships with the attorneys.

            At Wells Fargo Credit Corporation, her sales experience was deepened when she learned more about consumer mortgage lending, and a stint with a small mortgage broker expanded her knowledge base around traditional mortgage lending.

            Then Chase came to town. Penny started out for what used to be known as Chase Personal Financial Services 20 years ago as a “relationship manager,” where the former attorneys she had built relationships with when she was with National became her new base of business. She grew—and moved—with Chase and changes in the marketplace and learned even more about the first mortgage, second mortgage and home equity lines of business. Penny presently serves as the home equity business executive at JPMorgan Chase’s large operation in Tampa.

            Penny says her career with Chase satisfied an early desire to have a long-term commitment and also to make her mark in a big company. Many “firsts” came under her watch: being the first office at Chase Personal Financial Services to originate a billion dollars in loans for the Chase subsidiary, heading up the development of the first automated underwriting system in Chase’s mortgage company, and developing the “Easy Close” product, which combines the first and second mortgage processes, resulting in one set of paperwork and eliminating dual fees.

            Giving back to the community is a given and Penny has supported Dress for Success extensively. “I’ve been given many opportunities in my life, and I know that to take advantage of opportunities, you have to feel good about yourself and that can be influenced by how you look.”

            Penny and her husband are happy parents of a 20-year-old son and a daughter, almost 13. Penny and her family are committed to efforts to increase awareness about adoption.