VETRN’s President, Lee Goldberg is excited to announce that Kathleen Kelly, SVP and SBA Relationship Manager at Webster Bank, has been appointed a VETRN Board Member.
Kathleen has been a part of Webster Banks’ SBA Lending effort throughout its New England and New York market area since joining the Bank in 2017. Since that time, Webster Bank has been named #1 SBA 7(a) Lender in New England in 2018, 2019 and 2021. In 2022, Kathleen originated and closed more than $35 million in SBA loans, including for veterans, women, and minorities.
Kathleen has been involved in SBA Lending for 20+ years at various banking institutions, offering a wide array of SBA programs and services for different business needs.
Kathleen has received several recent SBA-related honors, including SBA’s 2022 Financial Champion Award, 2019 Coleman’s SBA BDO Winner and 2019 SBA’s Breakout 7(a) Lender of the Year Award.
Kathleen is a graduate of University of Massachusetts with an MBA and Northeastern University with a BS degree in Business Administration. Kathleen has also served VETRN as a Guest Expert on SBA Lending and as a Panel Judge in providing feedback to the veteran participants on their growth plan presentations.
In making this announcement, Goldberg further stated, “Kathleen is an outstanding addition to the VETRN Broad and, with her strong background in finance, lending and SBA financing, Kathleen will provide VETRN with guidance, network connections and insight into ways to further grow the VETRN Program to serve the needs of veteran small business owners.”
VETRN is proud to be an SBA Resource Partner that provides a 14-week online training program, free of charge, to the veteran and service-disabled veteran small business community. The VETRN Training Program, which is also available to veteran family members, includes mentors, peer to peer mentorship, guest experts, panel judges and professional resources for all its participants.
The 2023 VETRN Program will represent the 10th year of programming for VETRN with more than 100 graduates to date and over 100 professional resources and mentors now available to support the VETRN graduates as they continue on their journey to grow their small businesses and become successful business owners.