Rich White graduated from then-Gainesville Junior College in 1968 with an associate degree and earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Georgia.
The Gainesville, Georgia, resident spent 30 years in the banking industry, including various leadership roles at First National Bank of Gainesville, now called Regions Bank. He helped develop the bank's mortgage lending division, which grew to a peak volume of $1.2 billion in annual production. As president and CEO from 1995 to 2005, he presided over a $1 billion full-service bank, with a Trust Division of $350 million, and more than $3 billion in mortgage banking and servicing operations.
"When I was at what was then called Gainesville Junior College, what made the biggest difference for me was that the faculty and the staff took a keen interest in just about every student there," White said. "They believed in me and encouraged me to do a lot of things that I'd never done before. I learned that how you treat people really makes a difference, and I carried that into my banking career."
White is the former chairman of the University of North Georgia - Gainesville Foundation, Inc. and a past chairman of the Gainesville Junior College Foundation. He served on the university's Consolidation Implementation Committee and on the committee working to merge UNG's two foundations into one.
He also led a number of community organizations, including past chairman of the North Georgia Community Foundation, the Greater Hall County Chamber of Commerce, and the Georgia Mountain Food Bank.
"Even though they have a lot more students now on the Gainesville Campus, they still have this caring attitude about all of their students and each student still gets a lot of personal attention," White said.
