Janet Garufis (BA, English, ’77; MA, English, ’02) only started training as an endurance runner a little over a decade ago. It was at the suggestion of one of her two sons, who hoped that the discipline would help her cope with the 2007 death of her husband. Yet you could say that the marathon is an apt metaphor for Garufis’s life journey, from false academic starts to a banking career with zero shortcuts to the top.
Now the chairperson and CEO of Montecito Bank & Trust, Garufis, among CSUN’s three Distinguished Alumni Award honorees in 2018, credits her success in the male-dominated industry to her steady rise through the ranks, from an unassuming start as a bank teller at Security Pacific National Bank in 1972. The Boyle Heights–born Garufis took the teller job after dropping out of UCLA, an academic choice that had proven an ill fit for her after graduating from a private girls’ high school. Speaking to an interviewer with the Santa Barbara Independent in late 2017, Garufis described UCLA as the biggest mistake of her life, but she went on to say, “It’s only through failure that you can become your next best thing. If you’re not willing to take the risk where failure is an outcome, you’re not going to grow.”
She would return to college in 1973, first attending Santa Monica College, then transferring to CSUN to complete a bachelor’s degree in English, all the while continuing to work at the bank. By the time she graduated CSUN, in 1977, she had learned practically every job on the floor through a combination of innate curiosity and a willingness to pitch in wherever needed. She entered training in operations management, which might not seem like a natural fit for a Humanities grad, but branch banking relies on relationships. Garufis mastered that combination of soft people skills and problem-solving drive that Humanities degrees emphasize, and that makeup would help her rise through ranks of steadily increasing responsibility in retail, commercial, and private banking operations.
Garufis has succeeded in part by identifying and filling niches of previously unmet need. After graduating from Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington in 1986, she built and managed a small business loans division for Security Pacific. When Bank of America acquired the smaller bank in 1992, Garufis’s new employer tapped her to do the same for them: With riots having erupted across Los Angeles in spring of that year, local businesses affected by fires and looting needed rapid response loans to help them rebuild in the community.
Despite all her success in banking, Garufis had her own unmet need, and in 2000 she took early retirement to pursue her lifelong dream to become a literature professor. She entered the English master’s program at CSUN and graduated in 2002, then went on to a Ph.D. program in education at University of California, Santa Barbara. She completed all coursework for the degree, but her dissertation completion was derailed as her husband was stricken with worsening symptoms of Parkinson’s disease.
Garufis had taken what she thought would be a permanent break from banking to immerse herself in the world of letters. In the end the most practical decision was a return to the banking world, but it would be on her terms. She applied to Montecito Bank & Trust and was quickly hired as a vice president by founder Michael Towbes, who knew a great leader when he met one. Montecito is a regionally focused savings and loan institution where lending decisions are driven by familiarity and interest in the strengths and needs of the community, a brand of “relationship banking” ideally suited to Garufis’s sensibilities and vision. Within two years, she was promoted to president and CEO, and Towbes handpicked Garufis to take over as chairperson of the board upon his illness-related retirement in April 2017.
While Garufis’s service to the community is rooted in banking, it certainly doesn’t stop there. She serves as a board member to a wide variety of nonprofit and professional organizations benefiting the arts, K-12 and higher education, health, housing, children’s welfare, and women in business.
Likewise, detailing the scope of her previous honors would exceed the space of this article. Suffice to say, she’s been recognized as a trailblazer for women in business and banking, a shining light in charitable giving and volunteerism, a role model in health and wellness, and, perhaps most important, an inspiration to young girls to think expansively and pursue excellence wherever life takes them, even when it’s not precisely where they expected to land!
The College of Humanities is proud to have been part of this outstanding alum’s incredible journey.