Meet Angie Muhleisen, President and CEO of Union Bank and Trust, community activist, advocate for education, wife, mother and a lover of our city. She’s quick to tell you that Union Bank and Trust exists to make customers’ dreams come true. She’s also quick to tell you that the reason the bank encourages its employees to be involved in the community is because of the lessons she learned from her parents. And, if you ask, she’ll tell you why she loves Lincoln so much.
Lincoln is a great place to raise a family, a very safe community, we have great public and private schools, the University of Nebraska, entertainment, people make you feel at home . . . it’s a very friendly place where it’s easy to make friends.
You’d be hard pressed to attend a meeting of a nonprofit organization in Lincoln that doesn’t include someone from Union Bank. They’re involved in the Lincoln and Lancaster County United Way, you’ll see them involved in Rotary, volunteering at The Lied Center for Performing Arts, serving on the Board of Leadership Lincoln . . . and the list could go on. That desire to serve starts with the CEO and is encouraged by everyone in the Bank.
Muhleisen herself is involved with the Bryan College of Health Sciences where she serves on the Board, Nebraska Wesleyan University, and The Lied among other organizations. She believes in education so much that she joined with the rest of her family to provide scholarships to graduates of high schools in Lincoln so they can attend a year at Southeast Community College at no cost. Listen to the interview for the details.
We know there are really good students in Lincoln’s schools who just don’t have the resources to go to college.
When we asked Muhleisen what could make Lincoln even better, she didn’t hesitate to encourage fellow residents to reach out and get to know people they may not encounter every day. She especially feels this is important because Lincoln has many immigrant and refugee families.
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A Childhood Lesson Becomes a Business Practice
One day I returned home from school and all of our furniture was gone. My mom said ‘Angie, we’re sponsoring a Vietnamese family, this was in the 70’s, they needed the furniture more than we did. Your father had a moving company come and take our furniture for that family. That speaks volumes of who my parents are, and that has carried over to the bank.
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What Makes Lincoln Special
For the size of city we are, to have that high level of programs that are accessible to the entire state . . . people come from all over . . . and such a variety of programming, and to be able to expose our youth to those programs, that in itself makes it important.
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Encouraging Employees to Get Involved
We want the employees of Union Bank to take their passion and use it in the community. If they’re willing to take their time and use their talent and treasure, we try to support them in that.
Never one to be pretentious, we captured this photo from a short video of Angie on a child's riding toy at Gateway Mall.
Here's Angie talking with TEDxLincoln Curator Randy Bretz during the 2017 event.
Angie (on the right) with her parents and her brother Mike Dunlap.
