James Gathard

Jim Gathard, was until May 2008, a student lending executive at Bank of America, where he represented the product internally to consumer products groups and externally to key financing partners. Prior to Bank of America, he was a VP and Strategic Planning Executive for JPMorgan Chase Education Finance. Mr. Gathard also managed Chase Education First, the firm’s joint venture with Sallie Mae, as an executive and a board member. He also led the renegotiation of multi-year loan servicing and forward purchase commitment with Sallie Mae. Before Chase, Mr. Gathard was a Chief Marketing & Sales Executive for Bank of America/NationsBank and had line of business responsibility for balance sheet, risk, operations and distribution of education credit business. Earlier, he was a VP of Student Lending at Chase Manhattan, where under his leadership the bank achieved industry status as the premier education loan originator. Prior to joining the student lending industry in 1984, Mr. Gathard worked at the State University of New York for over 10 years in roles ranging from Vice President for Enrollment Management and Director of Student Financial Services. He has over 20 years of experience in the "front-end" of student lending, as well as experience on the analytic and institutional side of education lending. Currently, Mr. Gathard is the Principal of National Consulting Services (NCS), a consulting firm providing advisory in the area of student lending to a number of the top 25 lenders. (This is me - Update Profile)