Davis College hosts Alice Frazier ’87 for Executive in Residence event

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Alice Frazier '87 (BCT - Bank of Charles Town)

A celebrated Radford alumna with nearly a quarter century of experience in banking, accounting and finance recently spent a day talking to students in the Davis College of Business and Economics.

On Feb. 22, Alice Frazier ’87 was this year’s guest for the Davis College’s Executive in Residence program. That’s an initiative which, since 2014, has brought business graduates back to campus for lectures and group discussions.

Frazier is the president and CEO of Potomac Bancshares, Inc., and the head of the Bank of Charles Town (West Virginia). She was recently appointed to the board of directors for the Federal Reserve of Richmond. She was also named Davis School Alumni of the Year for 2020.

One key motivation for accepting the invitation, she said, was to talk to students about community banking, a field she now works in, but which she acknowledged had not seemed an obvious direction back in her days as an accounting major.

“It just felt like a great opportunity to introduce that concept to the students,” Frazier said, adding that community banks are more regionalized and offer future graduates expanded career options and greater varieties of involvement.

“Your ability to do different things within community banking is just broader,” she explained. “And I’ve worked in both; I worked for BB&T for a couple of years – it’s a fantastic organization, and I learned a lot – but I have a strong affinity for community banking.”

During her visit, Frazier met with an intermediate finance class and led an exercise in which students evaluated a company’s year-end financial results, using that data to make decisions about how to proceed into the upcoming year, just as a professional executive team would.

“I talked to them about how, in banking, changes in the yield curve affect how a bank manages its balance sheet,” she said. “We did a small case study, which was an actual instance within a bank right at year-end, and we looked at whether, as a result, they should sell securities, some bonds out of the investment portfolio, or take a loss or not.”

Frazier also sat down with the Davis Women’s Network, a student group that focuses on – but is not exclusively restricted to – female business majors. That group’s chair, Jordan King ’22, attended and said several of the questions posed to Frazier explored her career path and the challenges she faced as a female in a field that often skews male.

“She said that you have to learn to be persistent, and sometimes you have to outwork others,” King recalled. “But she also said that culture is a very big thing for her, and if the people you're working for are unwilling to treat you the way you should be treated, it's probably not the right culture to be in.

“She told us you have to be bold in your decisions; you have to be confident.”

Frazier said several aspects of her visit continue to resonate with her.

“The amount of information students have available to them now is very different than when I went to college in the mid-’80s. Back then, it was newspapers and television news,” she said.

Now, obviously, current technology and the internet allow for moment-by-moment updates and expansive data resources.

“The level of information about what’s going on internationally and with the economy is at their fingertips. And they’re using it, they’re reading it, and they’re really in there trying to relate it,” Frazier said.

“I left, and I was completely inspired. I said to my husband on the way home, I don’t think that, as a student, I could have asked the same level of questions, in depth, that they did, with the knowledge they had and the understanding of the market. I was really impressed.”

It was an experience Frazier hopes will be taken on by other Highlanders who have insight, experiences and opportunities to share.

“I would just encourage Radford alumni to give back in the same way. It was clear to me the students were thirsty for learning more about what it’s going to be like in the future, and I just think it's just a wonderful opportunity to just give back.”

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Alice Frazier '87 (second from left), president and CEO of Potomac Bancshares, Inc., and the head of the Bank of Charles Town (West Virginia), visited campus Feb. 22 as part of the Davis College of Business and Economics' Executive in Residence program. During her stay, Frazier met for more than an hour with members of the Davis Women's Network, a student group that focuses on female business majors. Jordan King (second from right) is that group's chair, and Assistant Professor of Accounting Kathryn Simms, Ph.D. (back row, left) is its faculty advisor.

Mar 22, 2023
Neil Harvey
540-831-5150
nmharvey@radford.edu