Scott Swanson
Not long ago, Keith Hartley was an executive at a Fortune 500 company headquarters in a major American city.
Now, by his own choice, he’s managing the Edward Jones office in Sweet Home.
For Hartley, 47, it’s a return to his roots, and Sweet Home offered the best opportunity to get there.
“It was a community you could tell was alive,” he said. “ I saw families out walking. I saw kids after school heading to local businesses. For me, it was just a return to small-town life.”
Hartley grew up in a timber town, Camas, Wash., which was home to a large paper plant. His father chartered and headed the Heritage Bank there in the 1970s.
“I grew up in banking,” Hartley said. “I was the kid who came down after school to help out. I picked up the mail. I changed the reader board.”
At 15 he was a proof operator, entering transactions on a 10-key machine. At 16 he was a teller. That led to summer and college jobs working in banks as he made his way through the University of Washington, majoring in business administration with a concentration in finance.
After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in 1990, Hartley enrolled in law school at Willamette University, finishing in 1992 and passing the Washington state bar exam.
By this time U.S. Bank had acquired his father’s bank and Hartley’s parents had bought a Ben Franklin Crafts and Frame Shop franchise. He had worked for them before entering law school and, after graduating, managed their two store locations, in Vancouver and Wenatchee, Wash., in 1992 and 1993.
After one of the stores was destroyed by fire and Hartley experienced some other difficulties, he decided he “needed a new start,” so he practiced law for a year, specializing in employment issues.
In 1999, he joined Edward Jones, starting at a branch in Eugene.
“It was a chance to marry some of my legal background and finance background and management experience,” he said. “Going from a business background to an investment management background was a good transition.”
He said that one of his motivations for going to law school was “a romantic notion of helping people, of being a counselor.”
“I found that at Edward Jones.”
Hartley worked in Eugene for 12 years, until 2011, when the company’s headquarters in St. Louis, Mo., began recruiting him to join its executive team. He said running an Edward Jones branch was “rewarding,” particularly helping clients negotiate the severe economic downturn of the late 2000s.
“Why leave all that?” he asked. The company, Hartley said, routinely searches for people who’ve been on the ground floor when it needs executives.
“Edward Jones has one business model. They look for people who’ve done that work. They bring them into key roles in the home office, and they were looking for leadership in a department from someone who had been in a branch.”
In this case, he said, the home office needed someone who had a legal background, plus branch experience.
“I was pretty unique in all of that, so I was recruited pretty heavy.”
Hartley and his wife Sylvia decided to go for it, so they moved to St. Louis, Mo., where he became director of the Resolution Team for the Associate Relations Department, heading a team of 20 specialists who dealt with associate relations and human resources issues. They also handled disaster support – providing help to associates whose branches were affected by severe storms, floods, fires, or other difficulties.
“There are mechanisms for people to take care of that – insurance, families – but Edward Jones tries to take care of them in the interim until they can get long-term solutions in place.”
Having been a branch associate himself, Hartley said, he was able to “really help them understand how things work.
“That was a chance to make a difference in a way that was unique, impactful,” he said. “I’m happy I did. I grew as a result.”
But the Hartleys missed the West.
“We realized along the way that Missouri wasn’t home for us. It didn’t feel right,” he said. “There was not a lot of nature there. They have parks and things, but they don’t have wilderness. There’s a western spirit, the way people think and act. We wanted to come back and I asked for that opportunity.”
Out of the 13,000 branches across the nation, the “opportunity” ended up being in Sweet Home. The company encouraged the Hartleys to check it out, so they did. They did some research too, and they liked what they saw, he said.
Unlike other former timber towns, Hartley said, he saw “optimism, people staying here and looking forward. We saw a community engaged in itself. Folks may not think there’s a downtown core, but there is. There’s a nucleus of people living and working here, looking forward and engaging.”
Taking over in November, he’s become the sixth associate at the Sweet Home branch, which was established in 1985, replacing Teresa Grimes.
“They need someone with skills and experience to take over a branch this size, and I’m happy they asked me to take a look,” Hartley said. “You have to be able to hit the ground running. That’s why they go through the selection process.”
He and Sylvia and their son Alek, 9, have moved back to their original home in Dexter while they look for a place near Sweet Home, preferably, he said, in the “countryside, where we can simplify what has become a very complicated life.”
He said he’s been trying to “get to know folks one-on-one.”
“This will take some time,” Hartley said. “This is a business of trust and trust is not an overnight thing. I hope they come to understand my style of interaction.”
So here he is, in his words, “directing Fortune 500 company power to local clients, instead of organizing the back end.”
“It was a conscious choice. It wasn’t a random choice.” For former