Gerrit van Huisstede

The Maricopa Community Colleges and the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation are proud and priviledged to honor Gerrit van Huisstede as their 2009 Hero of Education.

Gerrit van Huisstede is the senior executive in charge of Wells Fargo in Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, including approximately 490 Wells Fargo Community Banking locations in those states. He has overall responsibility for bringing together Wells Fargo and its partners in all lines of business including retail, Private Client Services, mortgage, brokerage, Corporate Banking and Business Banking. He also is the lead executive for community and government relations.

Before relocating from the Netherlands to the United States in 1982 and starting his banking career with First Bank Minneapolis in Minnesota, van Huisstede worked for Van Der Have, one of the larger agricultural firms in Europe, as assistant director in its International Marketing division. He moved to Arizona in 1989 to join Citibank in its Corporate Banking group and later helped reorganize Citibank's Private Banking department.

In 1993 Norwest Corporation agreed to acquire Citibank Arizona and named van Huisstede manager of Private Banking in the Greater Phoenix area. In 1994 he was named managing officer for Norwest's Phoenix bank, and in 1996 his managment role expanded to include retail and commercial lending in the entire Phoenix Metropolitan area. In 1998, with the merger of Norwest and Wells Fargo, van Huisstede became executive vice president and regional manager for the new Wells Fargo in the Phoenix Metro area. He was named regional president and CEO for Wells Fargo Arizona in 2001, and in 2004 he became regional president for Wells Fargo's Desert Mountain region, which includes Arizona and New Mexico. In 2005 he was given additional responsibility for the company's banking operations in Nevada.