Gail Snowden

president, FleetBoston Financial Foundation

Gail Snowden heads the Community Investment Group (CIG) within FleetBoston Financial and is a member of the company's Leadership Advisory Group, comprised of the top 36 executives. She directs and invests the bank's resources into low and moderate-income communities through the delivery of innovative financial services, wealth and equity creation programs. Ms. Snowden oversees a diverse group of business units that includes Fleet Community Bank Small Business Services, Fleet Development Ventures, established as the first urban investment bank in America chartered by a commercial bank, and Commercial Real Estate Lending. Recognition for FleetBoston Financial's approach to low and moderate-income markets has included winning the 1998 Presidential Ron Brown Award and a profile on Ms. Snowden in* Fortune* magazine's March 1998 feature article, "Banking in Urban America". Most recently, Ms. Snowden was appointed President of the FleetBoston Financial Foundation, one of the nation's largest financial services philanthropic organizations and named Outstanding Corporate Philanthropist in 1999. In this additional role, she will set strategy at an international, national and regional level for Fleet's $25 million philanthropy portfolio, and will be responsible for all charitable giving at the Bank. She is a recipient of numerous awards including: the Abigail Adams Award (2001), honorary Doctor of Public Service degrees from Simmons College (2001) and Bridgewater State College (1997), an honorary Doctor of Law degree from Babson College (1998), Doctor of Humane Letters from Emmanuel College (1998), the 1996 YWCA Academy of Women Achievers Award and the 1992 SBA Small Business Minority Advocate of the Year. She was selected as an Outstanding Member of both the Boston Urban Bankers Forum and the Urban Financial Services Coalition (formerly the National Association of Urban Bankers). She also received the YMCA Black Achievers Award, the Simmons College Alumnae Achievement Award and the New England Women's Leadership Award. A frequent local and national public speaker, she was named one of the nation's Top Business and Professional Woman by *Dollars and Sense* magazine and one of 50 African-American Women at the top in corporate America in the March 2001 issue of *Ebony *magazine. Ms. Snowden is a 1967 graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe College and earned an MBA from Simmons Graduate School of Management in 1978. She currently resides in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.