John Eggemeyer is the chair of the board at Pacific Western Bank. 

Mr. Eggemeyer is the founder of Castle Creek Capital LLC which has been an investor in the banking industry since 1990.  Mr. Eggemeyer has over 40 years of experience in banking and has been involved in more than 75 bank acquisitions.

Mr. Eggemeyer is currently a director and chairman of The Banc of California, Inc., a board member of The Bancorp Inc., Northpointe Bancshares, Inc., Primis Financial Corporation and was a founder and chairman of Guaranty Bancorp.  Previously, he was chairman and CEO of White River Capital and a board member of TCF Financial Corporation, Western Bancorp and American Financial Realty.

Mr. Eggemeyer is a life trustee of Northwestern University where he serves on the investment committee and is a past trustee of the Bishop’s School of La Jolla, California and the parent advisory board at Stanford University.  

Collyn Gilbert is executive vice president, chief strategy and marketing officer at Valley National Bank.  She brings nearly 30 years of banking experience, primarily in the equity markets.  Ms. Gilbert joined Valley in 2020 as director of strategy and was named to her current role in 2022.  She leads the efforts in building corporate strategies and ensuring alignment with the marketing initiatives to strengthen the brand, enhance the franchise value and support the client-centric approach to banking.

Prior to joining Valley, Ms. Gilbert was with KBW where she served as a managing director in equity research since 2013, through the acquisition by Stifel Nicolaus, where she had served in a similar capacity via Stifel’s acquisition of Ryan Beck & Co in 2002. 

Ms. Gilbert has served on various boards including Stifel’s WIN (Women’s Initiative Network) advisory board, Bucknell’s Alumni Relations board and Summit High School Boosters committee chair. 

Quintin Sykes is a partner at Cornerstone Advisors.  He leads Cornerstone’s merger and acquisition and enterprise program delivery efforts and has over 35 years of technology and operations experience in financial services.  Mr. Sykes provides financial institutions with advisory services including M&A integration, target operating model development and $10 billion readiness roadmaps/execution as well as core, digital, payments and lending transformation.

Mr. Sykes’ prior consulting practice leadership roles include president of Crescent Consulting Group, LLC and vice president of community of practice leader for Hitachi Consulting’s U.S. Financial Services Practice.

Mr. Sykes is a writer, speaker and instructor and has been published in Bank Director as well as GonzoBanker.