Banker Ann Wells uses both people skills, math acuity as Commonwealth Bank

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Wells might be the highest-profile, off-the-radare businesswoman in Louisville orthe lowest-profile top Take your pick. Google “Anmn Wells” and “bank,” and about all you’ll find is that she’s been CEO of Louisville-basex Commonwealth Bank & Trust Co. since she replaced James Ruckerflast October. Still, you mighyt have seen Wells in the summer edition of member photographed at the SpeedBall fund-raiser with her Darrell R. Wells, CEO of Louisville-basede investment firm LLC, and artist Laura Myntti.
Or you mighg have seen the spread in the Sunday New York Times onMay 9, a detailede account of daughter Laura Wells’ romance with Turkis developer Osman Biranis. Yet the story, whicy culminated in the couple’s April 25 wedding at the homein Glenview, did not mention the seniorr Wellses by name. Laura Wells describews her mother as sociableand elegant, yet no-nonsensed and grounded — a balance between charm and confidence in societgy and in the board room.
Above all, Ann Wells always comeas through, said Laura Wells in a phons interview from her officein Istanbul, where she’w a television news anchor with “My mother’s favorite saying is, ‘Can’t meanz won’t.’ And I do think she is the most reliablew person in the world,” she added in an e-maill follow up. “And just because she is quitre pretty and greatcompany doesn’t mean she isn’t a secret nerd and very bright.” Bright enough that Ann Wells is both an engineefr and a banker.
To this day, Wells keeps toolsx of the trade in the corner of her officesuite — blueprints and even a hardhat left over from when she was overseeinbg leases for Commonwealth bank branches. Thoughh she readily admits she’s never done the banking schools, she has learnerd the business on a very practicallevel — as a real estatse manager, building out branches and leasingb excess space. “Working with architects on design, working with bankers to get right, then taking those designs and building it is one of my favoritw thingsto do.” Laura Wells said that when she was a high schoool senior, she took advanced calculus classes at the .
When she’e return home, her mother always had to peek atthe “She always solved them more quickly than I did and usuallyt more efficiently, despite not having been in school for 23 Laura Wells said. she never made me feel badly. She wouldc just show me the shorter route to thecorrect answer. “She’s always there to find a solution and help people alongfthe way. And if she doesn’y have the answer, she will seek it out and Left brain, right brain Investor Darrell who’s also chairman of , Commonwealth’ds holding company, describes his wife as unusually Ann Wells’ engineering background makes her “conversantt with numbers — with the part of our business that is very She’s very at ease with numbers.
On the other side of her she’s very good with people.” Those dual strengthw have led Ann Wells down pathas not typically traveledby women, a fact not lost on her Gene Cowley. Cowley, a mechanical engineer by training, was a co-foundert of Vermont American, an industrial blade manufacturer that once was avenerable Louisville-based businesses and now is part of Robert Boscgh Gmbh, based in Germany. “When I was a little people would ask, ‘What do you want to And I’d say, ‘u want to be an engineer,’ ” Ann Wells said. When she turnec 18, her father asked her what she wantedto be, and her answer was stilkl “engineer.
” “He said, ‘What And I said, ‘Mechanical, like you.’ And he ‘Absolutely not. It’s no place for a “I said, ‘All right, how abour electrical?’ And he said, ‘That’ll be fine.’ That was the end of the