Wheatland Bank Has New President Cheney High And WSU Grad To Run Davenport Company

Susan Pittman will be the new president and chief executive officer of Wheatland Bank.

Pittman, who has managed the financial institutions practice at the McFarland & Alton accounting firm since 1995, will also become a director of Wheatland as well as its parent holding company, Community Financial Group Inc.

She will take over March 1.

Pittman will succeed Dick Ludeman, who is moving to East Wenatchee to serve as president of Central Washington Operations.

The bank will open a branch in Quincy next month and plans another in Wenatchee, said Chairman Roger Underwood, who praised Ludeman’s work with Wheatland’s loan portfolio.

Wheatland, based in Davenport, has branches in Cheney, Wilbur, Odessa and Ritzville. Assets are about $85 million.

The company was restructured in 1998. Community Financial Group became the holding company for Wheatland.

Pittman, 37, may be the youngest bank president in Washington. She was raised in Reardan and Cheney, and graduated from Cheney High School and Washington State University, the latter in 1984.

After graduating, she joined Touche & Ross, now Deloitte Touche, as an auditor of savings and loans. She moved to McFarland & Alton in 1988.

The Spokane firm was auditing just one bank at that time, Pittman said.

Since then, the financial institutions practice has grown to include more than 50 banks, credit unions and mortgage companies in three states.

She was named manager of that practice in 1995, when she also became a shareholder in the privately held company.

Pittman said much of her time in recent years has been spent as a consultant. As such, she said, she has worked with many of the best managers in the banking business, many of whom have already offered encouragement.

Community Financial Group Chairman Roger Underwood said Pittman’s enthusiasm and fresh perspective will more than compensate for her lack of experience as a day-to-day bank manager.

“Wheatland needs to make a change,” he said. “We decided we would just as soon have someone who did not have a lot of time in banking.

Underwood said he has known Pittman since she was 3 years old.

Another McFarland & Alton manager, Allison Yarnell, will also join Wheatland and Community Financial as chief financial officer of both entities.

Yarnell, a graduate of Ferris High School and the University of Montana, has headed the institutions practice at McFarland & Alton.