Berkshire Bank

Last Thursday, I attended Innovation Night – Featuring GENIUS NY Pitch Finals with coworkers from Community Bank, N.A. and OneGroup Retirement Advisors —what an incredible event. The room was full of community members and innovators, and every finalist brought impressive, forward‑thinking ideas. As someone in banking, it’s exciting to see the kind of innovation that continues to drive our local economy. Congratulations to Flox Intelligence on winning first place, and to all the finalists for their inspiring pitches! #Innovation #GeniusNY #SyracuseNY #Entrepreneurship #EconomicDevelopment #StartupCommunity #UpstateNY #CommunitySupport #BusinessGrowth #Finance #CenterstateCEO

It was such a great experience attending the CenterState CEO Annual Meeting today—always inspiring to be surrounded by so many leaders shaping the future of our region. I’m especially proud to celebrate Community Financial System, Inc. receiving the 2026 Business of the Year Award for organizations with over 50 employees. What an incredible achievement and meaningful recognition of the work our team does every day. So thankful and happy to be part of this organization. Congratulations to all of the finalists and the winner—well deserved and inspiring!

The Stanford Enterprise AI Playbook studied 51 successful AI deployments across 9 industries. The findings challenge assumptions most banks are still operating on. The organizational barriers Ownership determines outcome: Legal, Risk, and Compliance were the most frequent source of resistance at 35% - ahead of frontline employees. They block AI when given an approval role rather than a governance role. Give them a seat in the design and they become enablers. AI amplifies the process it lands on: 77% of the hardest challenges had nothing to do with technology. Process documentation, data quality, and change management were the real work. A broken workflow with AI is just a faster broken workflow. Oversight design matters more than oversight level: Escalation models - AI handles 80%+ autonomously, humans review exceptions - delivered 71% productivity gains versus 30% for approval-based models. Banks have strong human-in-the-loop instincts. The opportunity is in where that oversight sits, not whether it exists. The operational barriers Bad data is not a reason to wait: Only 6% of implementations had clean data. In 88% of cases, LLMs processed the messy data they were expected to struggle with - voice transcripts, scattered documents, legacy systems. Banks have more to work with than they think. Security investment pays forward: In every case, the same security requirements that slowed the project down later made it possible to handle sensitive data competitors could not touch. Banks with strong compliance infrastructure are better positioned than they realize. 61% of successful projects followed a failed one: The model was never the problem. The same executive stayed and led the next attempt. The process was fixed before AI was applied. And teams were allowed to fail without career risk. The technology works. The question is whether the organization can keep up. https://lnkd.in/e6kz4T6E #Banking #GenerativeAI #AgenticAI #ResponsibleAI #DataStrategy

Over the last few months, we have been quietly working on creating a refreshed website design for The Worcester Guardian and we are thrilled to share! This is an awesome step towards expanding trusted, community-centered journalism in Worcester. Huge shout-out to my fellow Board Members Luke M. Vaillancourt and Tim Loew for their vision, talent, doggedness, and execution. Thanks to our supporters, including Fletcher Foundation and CSX, for helping to grow a media outlet that elevates voices, tells stories that matter to our community, and informs the citizenry about important local issues. Check it out. Join our mailing list. Send us story ideas. Support local journalism. Tim Loew Abigail Salois Caitlin Lubelczyk Timothy Murray Don Doyle Dave Nordman Emily Perry Trevallion Carl Herrin Charlene Arsenault John Rodriguez Giovanni Blue Luke M. Vaillancourt https://lnkd.in/eBJ9C4E3

I’m happy to share that I’m starting a new position as FVP, Regional Administration Officer at Beacon Bank!