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Banking has become increasingly automated in recent years, but plenty of human power is still required. This is especially true of a bank’s back-office operations, which basically involve making sure all the money moves to where it’s supposed to be.

Overseeing the back-office team at City National Bank is Jan R. Cloyde, who was recently hired as an executive vice president and director of banking services. Cloyde is one of several senior executives exiting from Home Savings of America in the wake of that thrift’s acquisition by Washington Mutual Inc.

As for her new job, Cloyde says: “I’m working to gain efficiencies, looking at the processes, cutting out steps that don’t need to be done. Delivering a copy of a check? There could be a more effective way to do that.”

Cloyde received a B.S. in sociology in 1972 from Oklahoma State University, and then went on to pursue her master’s degree at the same institution, studying student guidance in higher education. When she moved with her husband to Dallas, all the universities and colleges were fully staffed, and she was forced to look elsewhere for work.

The old Republic Bank (now part of NationsBank) accepted her into its management-training program where she fell in love with commercial banking. Cloyde later went on to become an executive vice president at First Interstate Bank and then an executive vice president and director of banking services at Home Savings of America.

Cloyde’s work largely involves managing people, and she prefers to do that through organizing her workers into teams.

Her team-building spirit extends beyond work. Five years ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and since then, she has become a founding member for the Los Angeles Chapter of The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. While at Home Savings, she helped organize her co-workers into teams to participate in the Race for The Cure, which is slated to take place in November. She aims to form another such team at City National.

Cloyde, who continued working even during chemotherapy, found that having a team at her disposal did more than just make her job possible. “It was important to me in my recovery because I build teams that’s my management style and I had this whole team rooting for me,” she says.

Lauren Hollingsworth