Gail Shelly

First Vice President

Washington Mutual Bank

Age: 41

When Washington Mutual acquired Great Western Financial Corp. last year, Gail Shelly and her quality-service management group were not laid off like many of their colleagues but quickly incorporated into the new company. The reason: the group has a crucial role to play in creating and retaining customers for the Seattle-based banking behemoth.

Although not yet a well-known name to Los Angeles consumers, Washington Mutual quickly became a local powerhouse by acquiring both Great Western and American Savings. Now Shelly has one of the biggest jobs at Washington Mutual: to ensure that the quality of customer service is high enough to draw new customers.

Washington Mutual is betting that a good reputation for service will win converts among those disgruntled by the service from banking giants like Wells Fargo Bank and Bank of America.

Shelly said her group is empowered to make changes quickly, without going through the corporate power structure. “There are not a lot of egos here, in terms of decision making. We don’t do a lot of ‘silo-ing,’ ” she said, using a popular management-theory term for making decisions through the corporate hierarchy.

Shelly has been in banking from the time she was a college student working part-time as a teller. In the ensuing 20 years, she has worked “every aspect of the banking industry, from line management to lending to regional management.”

A former supervisor remembers Shelly as someone with a “can-do” attitude who also shared credit with co-workers.

“When I gave her an assignment, I always expected to her to win,” said Arleen Scavoni, senior vice president at First Bank. And while Shelly often won company awards, “I was never at an award ceremony where her co-workers did not win something, also.”

While banking experience is crucial to success in her current job, Shelly says that even more important is the ability to see the big picture. “We don’t get caught up in process. We take care of things quickly, with a lot of thought and intense focus.”