Kevin Rhein, President and Business Manager, Wells Fargo Card Services
6/1/2010 12:00 PM | | Kevin Rhein |
Kevin Rhein is division president and business manager of Wells Fargo Card Services in Minneapolis and Des Moines, IA. He was previously head of corporate trust, president for 35 Norwest (now Wells Fargo) banking stores and held executive retail banking positions with Citicorp/Citibank. He earned his master’s degree from the University of Chicago. Kevin serves on the Federal Reserve Bank’s Consumer Advisory Committee, is involved in industry activities promoting financial literacy and serves as an external board member of the Center for Financial Services Innovation.
How did you get involved with First Children’s Finance?
I met Jerry through a mutual friend four or five years ago. I started to meet with him on a periodic basis in an advisory role. We talked a lot about the expansion he was hoping to do. From my background with Wells Fargo, I know a fair amount about dealing with geography and a distributed business model. I helped him think through the difference of smaller to regional to national. After a year, he asked me to take a position on the board, and I said yes.
Why is First Children’s important? Why do you spend precious time working with First Children’s?
My sister has a home day care business in Gallup, NM. My daughter was a Teach for America volunteer, teaching kindergarten outside of Phoenix for primarily the children of migrant laborers. One of her observations after three years was that kindergarten was almost too late for these kids. That’s incredibly disheartening. She left teaching and is now a preschool director for the Phoenix Crisis Nursery Preschool. She wanted to move earlier in the development cycle to see if she could make a difference. I have had my antenna up about the importance of early education and care for a long time. My wife is a social worker; she’s been very involved in the community and in the school. I live it and breathe it; it’s part of my family. I understand the important role education has for ultimate success. Years ago I was involved in the Responsible Credit Partnership. One of the individuals in the group was Art Rolnick. I learned about the research he has done about the importance of investment in early care.
What’s your vision for First Children’s?
I want First Children’s to continue to build effective partnerships with state and local governments and communities. We need to help reinforce the importance of children getting an equal start into the education process. Partnerships are very important. You have to bring different constituencies to the party. Most of the problems are societal problems requiring a societal solution. First Children’s deploys exactly the same idea. It is providing the technical advice that is so fundamental to a business, to help these small businesses survive and be successful.
What do you like to do when you aren’t working on behalf of First Children’s?
I like to spend time with my family, and I like to exercise. We are fighting off old age by staying fit. We are very much in that sandwich generation – our children are grown and going through major events in their lives, and we have two elderly parents. I travel a lot to stay in touch with those five individuals. Movies are our escape.
What else would you like our readers to know about you and First Children’s?
I care. I want to make a difference. I look forward to those opportunities to make connections. Wells Fargo is in all 50 states; we have community banks in 39 states. I can line up First Children’s with our regional presidents to make those connections. Education is one of the key elements behind our philanthropic giving and our team focus. We have good synergies there. First Children’s is a cutting edge organization that is doing wonderful work that has an incredibly dedicated team. The model works and is scalable. It’s too bad we can’t get pre-K funded as part of education. We need to bring the force of government, or it will be an uphill battle. It’s a battle worth fighting.
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