Pinnacle Financial Partners Opening in Bowling Green with a Team of Veteran Local Bankers

Rick Seadler leads a team of 4 to start, with more associates and offices to follow

Pinnacle Financial Partners is bringing its distinctive brand of banking to more clients in South Central and Western Kentucky by hiring its first team based in Bowling Green. Long-time Kentucky fixture Rick Seadler, who serves as Pinnacle’s regional president for South Central Kentucky, has recruited a team of four bankers with deep local roots.

• Michelle Gorman, Financial Advisor
• Bill Forbes, Financial Advisor
• Lisa Basham, Treasury Management Advisor
• Elizabeth Vickery, Financial Advisor Assistant

“Each of these experienced bankers is well established in Bowling Green and the surrounding areas and has earned exceptional reputations for their dedication to clients,” Seadler said. “We’re empowering them to make decisions locally and arming them with Pinnacle’s full range of financial services. Our firm’s asset size gives us the significant lending limits and sophisticated products of a much larger institution, and teams like this deliver them with the local, personalized service of a small, community bank. That’s what makes Pinnacle special, and it’s exactly what Kentucky needs right now.”

These associates will start work right away and come together in a temporary office in the fourth quarter, with eyes on a permanent, full-service location in 2023. Though the team can manage any product or service Pinnacle offers, Seadler will continue looking for the best banking talent in the area to offer local services like mortgage, wealth management and trust in addition to lending, operating accounts, treasury and cash management services and more.

Meet the Team

• Michelle Gorman, financial advisor
  Gorman comes to Pinnacle from American Bank & Trust but spent the bulk of her career at US Bank in Bowling Green, where she served as a branch manager, small business specialist and wealth management private banker. She began her financial services career at INTEGRA BANK in 1997. Gorman has served on the boards of the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce, Barren River Child Advocacy, Leadership Bowling Green and Junior Achievement of South Central Kentucky.
• Bill Forbes, financial advisor
  Forbes joined Pinnacle in 2021 and serves clients throughout South Central and Western Kentucky and the surrounding areas. He began his banking career in 1990 as a commercial credit analyst with National City Corporation in Louisville. He also managed commercial banking relationships for FirstStar Bank and was a commercial banking team lead at Commerce Bank. Prior to coming to Pinnacle, Forbes was the market president for US Bank in Knoxville, TN. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance from the University of Louisville and is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking.
• Lisa Basham, treasury management advisor
  Basham most recently worked as a treasury management and payments consultant at US Bank in Bowling Green and has served that bank and its predecessors since 1996. She also earned experience as a commercial lending assistant and in community marketing. Basham is a graduate of Western Kentucky University and Leadership Bowling Green. She is an active volunteer at multiple local nonprofits and is a Warren County native.
• Elizabeth Vickery, financial advisor assistant
  Vickery has worked for years as a financial controller at multiple LLCs and prior to that was a commercial loan specialist for US Bank, where she began work in 2008 as a teller, then teller coordinator and sales and service coordinator. 

“Like a lot of cities in the Southeast, Bowling Green has long been dominated by a few large, national banks that don’t always prioritize the community’s best interests,” said Terry Turner, Pinnacle’s president and CEO. “As those banks consolidate and reduce service in some markets, it leaves a void that Pinnacle was designed to fill. Those are the circumstances that led to our founding in Nashville in 2000, and we’ve launched in more than a dozen markets since. Communities appreciate our geographic model that focuses on hiring the best local bankers and trusting them to make decisions, meet clients’ needs and deliver personal service.”

Pinnacle is regularly named among the top companies to work for in the nation, including a top 30 finish in FORTUNE magazine earlier this year, multiple top 10 finishes among Best Banks to Work For and dozens of local awards and first place finishes. Since 2020, Pinnacle has expanded into four new markets, all of which posted very strong starts thanks to hard working teams of dedicated veterans who win over clients.

• Atlanta, GA
  Opened in January 2020, now with 66 associates managing $642.3 million in loans and $321.2 million in deposits
• Huntsville, AL
  Opened in June 2021, now with 20 associates managing $35.3 million in loans and $215.6 million in deposits

• Birmingham, AL
  Opened in June 2021, now with 24 associates managing $246.7 million in loans and $33.8 million in deposits

• Washington, D.C. and the National Capital Region
  Opened in November, 2021, now with 21 associates managing $78.3 million in loans and $6.1 million in deposits

“Pinnacle has been working in Kentucky since 2017, and I’ve had clients here since long before then,” Seadler said. “We are already part of this community, and today we’re planting a flag that we want to do much more. Like all cities, Bowling Green needs strong financial leadership from an institution with the resources to help direct capital and investment where this community needs it most. Our job is to help grow the local economy, support business leaders and their employees, and make a lasting, positive impact on Bowling Green.”

Pinnacle began a meaningful partnership with Western Kentucky University in 2021 that includes athletic sponsorships and the Game Changer Challenge, which provided a five-figure marketing package to a local small business. Pinnacle has supported multiple local nonprofit organizations and was the inaugural sponsor for Birdies for Brittney and continues its lead sponsorship, helping provide WKU scholarships to Warren County and Bowling Green graduates.

Pinnacle Financial Partners provides a full range of banking, investment, trust, mortgage and insurance products and services designed for businesses and their owners and individuals interested in a comprehensive relationship with their financial institution. The firm is the No. 1 bank in the Nashville-Murfreesboro-Franklin MSA, according to 2021 deposit data from the FDIC, is listed by Forbes among the top 25 banks in the nation and earned a spot on the 2022 list of 100 Best Companies to Work For® in the U.S., its sixth consecutive appearance. American Banker recognized Pinnacle as one of America’s Best Banks to Work For nine years in a row and No. 1 among banks with more than $11 billion in assets in 2021.

Pinnacle began working in Kentucky in 2017 with clients in and around Bowling Green and Louisville. The firm officially launched its first team and office in the state in 2022 by recruiting a high-performing team of local bankers to deliver the resources and sophistication of a large financial services firm with the personalized service of a small, community bank.

The firm began operations in a single location in downtown Nashville, TN, in October 2000 and has since grown to approximately $40.1 billion in assets as of June 30, 2022. As the second-largest bank holding company headquartered in Tennessee, Pinnacle operates in 15 primarily urban markets across the Southeast.

Additional information concerning Pinnacle, which is included in the Nasdaq Financial-100 Index, can be accessed at www.pnfp.com.