Betty Rengifo Uribe’s customers range from startup entrepreneurs to corporate executives to second-generation family-business owners.

They all have different banking needs, but it’s not hard for Uribe to relate to them: She’s had all of those jobs herself.

“I can sit in their chair and I can look at the bank through their eyes,” said Uribe, the top L.A.-area executive for San Diego’s California Bank & Trust, part of Salt Lake City’s Zions Bancorp.

She took an unusual route to becoming a bank executive. She moved to Orange County from Colombia at the age of 12 and quickly demonstrated an aptitude for business. By her mid-20s, she had already started and sold a company that manufactured surgical lighting components – ones that plenty of California women might be familiar with.

“Kaiser Permanente’s gynecological light is my light,” she said.

The process of selling that business attracted Uribe to the possibilities of a career in banking. There was also the fact that she had just got accepted into a Ph.D. program and wanted an alternative to the ramen-noodle lifestyle.

“I was tired of being a starving student, so I sold that company and said, ‘Let me see about banking,’” she said.

In 1988, she took a job with San Francisco finance giant Wells Fargo & Co., where she would work for 19 years. During that time, she also owned and operated two other companies – first a manufacturer of high-end custom furniture, then a chain of franchised tire stores – with varying degrees of success.

“It was a good learning experience,” she said. “I can identify with the glories of being a business owner and the pain of being a business owner.”

There were no bumps in the road at the bank, though, as Uribe eventually rose to a national position running merchant banking west of the Mississippi.

But about 10 years ago, something much more important beckoned.

Back in Colombia, Uribe’s father had turned a single tractor-trailer into a thriving transportation business, hauling wheat and coffee throughout the mountainous country and becoming a millionaire in the process. When he died, a cousin ran the company into the ground and incurred a massive amount of debt in the process.

Uribe took it upon herself to save the family business.

For two years, she flew to Colombia many weekends – while still handling her Wells Fargo duties during the week. She would take a late flight on Friday, rest for the six-hour journey to Bogota, and arrive on Saturday morning in time for a full slate of meetings.

“Fortunately, I don’t require a lot of sleep,” she said.

She didn’t need the money, but she wanted to pay back the company’s creditors and preserve her father’s legacy.

“I sold the company when my father’s name was finally restored,” she said.

After turning around the business, Uribe joined Comerica Inc. in Dallas in 2007 and then moved to California Bank & Trust in 2011. She said her current bank’s commitment to small-business owners is something that’s especially meaningful to her.

“The people that we bank are people just like me,” she said. “When I was first starting my business, I went to a bank and I couldn’t get any financing because I didn’t have the credit history.”

Uribe draws on her experiences not only when dealing with customers, but when staffing bank branches.

“The kind of people that I hire are people that really understand business inside and out – who can be that adviser to people that I didn’t have when I was growing my businesses,” she said.

But while she wants her employees to work hard for their customers, she doesn’t want them overdoing it. Uribe said she’s stepped out of important meetings to take calls from her children and wanted to set the precedent that it’s OK for her employees to do the same.

“Balance is extremely important,” she said.

And she takes that to heart. Uribe is an early riser, getting out of bed between 4 and 4:30 a.m. But instead of reflexively reaching for her smartphone, she spends about an hour each morning writing in her journal, what she calls “spiritual time.” Then she’s in the office before 6:30.

“I like early mornings,” she said. “When people are sleeping, that’s when you create an advantage.”

Betty Rengifo Uribe, 52

Title: Executive Vice President, Business & Personal Banking Division

Bank: California Bank & Trust

Rank, Local Deposit Market Share: 16, 0.9 percent

Residence: Carbon Canyon

Family: Children Kristopher, 29; Alexandria, 19; and Sandra Nicole, 17.

Activities: Traveling, dancing (salsa, merengue, pop and tango), reading, swimming, singing

Years in L.A. Area: 41