CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Five hundred employees of Goodwill Industries of the Southern Piedmont have completed training in financial literacy through a partnership with Charlotte Saves.

 

Forty-one Goodwill employees have participated in an emergency-loan program Central Carolina Federal Credit Union created in partnership with Goodwill.

 

And 150 Goodwill employees, many of whom never had a checking account, have opened credit-union accounts.

 

All that activity grew out of a Goodwill initiative spearheaded by volunteer Cheryl Keller, a retired Bank of America executive who recently was named volunteer leader of the year by Goodwill Industries International. Keller, a Charlotte native who retired in 2007 after a 27-year career with Bank of America, says her impulse to volunteer was rooted in her experience at church as a child, and from the corporate culture at Bank of America.

 

“Our philosophy was, it’s not just about our customers but our community, and it’s all related, customers are part of the community,” says Keller, whose roles at Bank of America included marketing, risk management, middle-market business lending, public-utility finance and information technology.