A 35-year-old alumnus of Eastern Mennonite University started 2015 as a new bank president. Brian Plum became president and chief executive officer of Blue Ridge Bank of Luray, Va., on Dec. 17. Blue Ridge, founded in 1893, is a locally owned and community-based bank with 46 employees and branches in Charlottesville, Harrisonburg, Luray, McGaheysville and Shenandoah.
Plum, a native of Shenandoah near Luray, joined the bank in 2006 and assumed the position of chief financial officer in 2007. In February 2014 he was named chief administrative officer. When he was asked to head the bank, he became only the 11th president in the 122-year history of the institution.
A 2001 graduate of EMU, Plum majored in accounting and economics. He minored in political science. “I had a great experience at EMU,” says Plum. “The professors were wonderful, offering both a personable and challenging educational environment.” He tells people, “I would put my EMU undergraduate experience up against any other institution.”
Plum chose EMU partly because his mother, Wanda Wood, is an alumna. (She attended one year in the 1970s and finished in 2007.) What sealed the deal for Plum at EMU was a conversation with business professor Rick Yoder during a campus visit.
He did not have to wait to apply his learning to a post-college job. During his senior year Plum took a job that used his accounting knowledge to help improve some of the processes in a local government office. He earned a master’s degree in accounting at James Madison University in 2003. Seven years later, while working at Blue Ridge Bank, he earned an MBA from the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia.
Plum, a certified public accountant (CPA), has been named a “super CPA” three times by Virginia Business magazine and the Virginia Society of CPAs.
Plum entered the banking business just prior to the recession of 2008-09, when many banks failed and some were bailed out by the federal government. In general, though, the smaller locally owned banks fared better than the larger national institutions, he says.
“There were a lot of small bank failures,” he says, “but the major macroeconomic problems created by the credit crisis had their seeds sewn and incubated within larger institutions.” At Blue Ridge Bank, says Plum, “we have always maintained a conservative lending culture, so we avoided the significant loan problems that many others experienced in the wake of the last recession.”
The beauty of the locally owned and community-based bank is that it understands local businesses and individuals, says Plum. “There is much less rigidity in a community banking process than when dealing with large national or regional banks,” he says. “We often have the background knowledge already in place to be thinking about how to address local problems.”
The growth of the local economy and the success of a local bank go hand in hand. “We only do well when our communities are doing well,” says Plum. “For those who want to see growth in the local economy, there is nothing better to do than depositing your money with and getting your loans from your local community bank.”
Plum is married to Jennifer Ryder Plum, who is a kindergarten teacher at Luray Elementary School. They have two children – Briana (6) and William (4).