Andrew Barnes, a veteran, has been named the first military and veteran segment leader for Wells Fargo’s Commercial Banking Diverse Segments team.Barnes will work with veteran-owned and -led middle market businesses, helping to provide access to capital and Wells Fargo resources. Barnes works out of Charlotte, but his territory is the entire country, according to Wells Fargo.
Andrew Barnes
Barnes served in the Navy Reserve for eight years, followed by 25 years with Wells Fargo. He spent much of his career in talent acquisition and helped create Wells Fargo’s Military National Partnership strategy, working with national veteran service organizations to hire more than 12,000 military veterans.In his previous roles, he formed relationships with national organizations including Veterans Bridge Home (where he served on their board of directors for 12 years), Military Warriors Support Foundation, Hiring Our Heroes, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Student Veterans of America and the Institute for Veterans and Military Families.Outside of Wells Fargo, Andrew founded a charity that assists military veterans and related organizations called the Appalachian Warrior Foundation. He also created a veteran scholarship fund in his father’s memory in partnership with Wytheville Community College in Wytheville, Virginia, where he grew up.Barnes was a heavy equipment operator in the Navy Seabees, active-duty for two years and a reservist for the remainder of his service, attached to an amphibious construction battalion.He graduated from Wytheville Community College and received a bachelor of science degree from Radford University. He joined Wells Fargo – actually, one of its predecessors, First Union – in 1999, in human resources.“That kind of helped, as we started looking at ways that we could support military veterans internally. I was using my own experiences, to be able to help with that, being in HR,” he said when I talked with him last week.The focus of his team will be on companies with revenues in the range of $25 million to $2 billion.“So, typically, I’ll be there with the relationship manager, the business development officer, or even the market executive to host those conversations. They’re the experts in that field, so they know exactly what type of resources that they’re looking for and might need.”Having served in the military helps in working with companies with veterans in leadership roles. “Having that cultural awareness from the military side of it truly helps,” he said.Veterans owned about 5.4% or 304,823 of the nation’s 5,681,118 employer businesses with at least one paid employee in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 Annual Business Survey. The largest share of veteran-owned employer businesses were in the Professional, Scientific and Technical Services sector. I learned about this from veteran Mike Mullins, director of Defense Industry Initiatives at NC State’s Industry Expansion Solutions.
