Tomsic takes over
February 5, 2010By Alison Lee Satake
One thing few people in Wilmington know about the president of Wachovia Bank’s local market, Randy Tomsic, is that he was born and raised on his family’s “century farm” – a 100-year-old family-owned and operated farm in Iowa.
Although Tomsic moved when he was 8 years old, he returned every summer to work on the farm for his grandfather until he reached high school. While he cut and baled hay and trimmed back weeds in the bean field by hand – a process called “walking beans” – Tomsic’s strongest memory of the farm is the sense of community.
“It was a very strong community of support among those farmers in that area. If someone needed help, you went to help. I can remember many times, there were health issues or if someone needed help with a harvest, you just went. Everyone circled up and you did it,” he said.
With this sense of community, Tomsic takes the lead as the new chairman of the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce this year. “I think it’s important to be giving back to a community that has given me and my family so much,” he said. Tomsic came to Wilmington in 1992 when he was hired as the city executive for First Union bank.
In his nearly 18 years in Wilmington, he has seen many changes and says he learns something every day. “I think behaviors are changing. I really believe that our younger generation and maybe the 22 to 33 year age group is very different because of their experiences right now - what they’ve seen family members go through, what they’ve seen happen to the economy,” he said.
Tomsic sees the impact of this economy as posing a challenge and an opportunity for organizations, such as the chamber of commerce. “How do you connect with the consumer today given their challenges and mindsets and what they believe is important? So, how does the chamber connect with business owners today? Are there programs or services we should be thinking about today because of the current environment that we haven’t thought about before?” he said.
Cape Fear Future is the chamber’s initiative, which aims to guide the region’s prosperity and quality of life. Though still in its infancy, the Cape Fear Future steering committee has prioritized three key areas from a list of 42 draft recommendations to tackle this year. The group will focus on branding and marketing the region to attract and retain “knowledge sector” workers, improving K-12 education in science, technology, engineering and math and boosting entrepreneurship in the area.
In addition to Cape Fear Future’s goal of attracting and retaining young entrepreneurs, the chamber is also looking at ways it can expand its membership to include the area’s young business professionals. “We’re wanting to identify is there something specific to that group we need to market in a better way or start doing?” he said.
When people get involved in their community, they have a greater investment, which adds to the quality of place. “I think the communities that are the most successful, where people really want to live are those communities that have a very engaged level of community involvement,” he said. Quality education, the arts and culture are built by people in communities and in turn make a community more desirable. Tomsic has invested his time and energy in Wilmington serving on the boards of the Cape Fear Council of the Boys Scouts of America, the United Way, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Greater Wilmington Chamber of Commerce for which he has received a strong return on investment.
Each year, Tomsic tries to take time out to go back to Iowa and visit the farm, which is now in its fourth generation. “I still love to get on the tractor. I love going back and helping with the harvest whether that is running a combine or just transferring the wagons to the field to bring bins,” he said. Like Wilmington, there’s no other place like it to get involved.
