There is a phrase Tim Tierney returns to again and again when he talks about his forty-plus years in banking: do the right thing. It sounds simple. He is the first to tell you it is not.

"Doing the right thing has cost me," he says without hesitation. "In the business world, I don't regret for a minute doing the right thing. But it's so easy to say and hard to do because it's easier to take the shortcut."

Tim graduated from Aquinas College in 1983 with a degree in business and a moral framework that, he believes, made all the difference. Today, he serves as Executive Vice President at High Point Community Bank in Grand Rapids and as the incoming chair of the Grand Rapids Symphony Board of Directors. He has spent decades mentoring younger professionals, established a family scholarship at Aquinas, and built a career that, by his own admission, exceeded every expectation he ever had for himself.

Choosing Aquinas
He chose Aquinas for reasons that might feel familiar to many Saints. The campus was small. "I would have been more distracted at a larger university," he says with a laugh. "The affordability was pretty good. It had a great reputation. And I was comfortable with the campus because our high school basketball games were held there."

What he got was far more than he bargained for. He came in as an unfocused underclassman and left as someone ready to take on the world. His senior year was his strongest academically, a turn he credits not to sudden genius but to maturity. Along the way, he found professors who forged him. One in particular stands out: Sister Amata Fabro, who taught religion.

"I sat near the front. We connected immediately, and she wasn't easy," he recalls. "But what I found is that if I really respected a professor, I did really well. She's the one that comes to mind."

A Career Built on Connection
After graduating in May 1983, Tierney did what a lot of newly minted college graduates do: he kept bartending, a job he had held for the last two and a half years of school. Then, September came. He joined Union Bank Trust Company as a teller, and banking became his life. The institution has since become Chase, but the career path that started there stretched across four decades, carrying him through multiple institutions and countless promotions.

He was a natural connector, he says. Talking to people behind a bank counter felt no different than talking to them across a bar. That ability to make genuine contact with people, to listen, to care, turned out to be the skill that mattered most.

"When you're working with a new group, one of the first two questions in their minds is always: does he listen, and does he care? If the answer to both of those is no, it's not going to go well. If both are yes, you're on your way." Tierney carries that philosophy into everything he does outside of banking as well. 

Getting Comfortable with Discomfort
He first joined the Grand Rapids Symphony Board in 2005, long before he had any background in classical music, and he is quick to say he remains, by his own estimation, the least musically qualified board member in the organization's history. None of that stopped him. He saw a seat that needed filling, said yes, and then helped the symphony launch a golf fundraising event that ran for several successful years.

"When you're eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old, the world's going to take you in a lot of different directions," he says. "The more you're willing to get outside of your comfort zone, the more you'll get to know people. I have a much larger friend group because of the symphony that I never would have had before."

Giving Back to Aquinas
The Aquinas connection runs deep in his civic life, too. About ten to fifteen years ago, he was approached about establishing a family scholarship at the college and agreed on the spot, though he jokes that the closer on the deal was Sr. Aquinas, who, in his words, he has never been able to say no to in his life.

"We get a letter every year about who received the scholarship. I feel really good about that. I always have."

That impulse to give back, which he describes as “paying it forward,” has only grown stronger as he has moved through the later chapters of his career. He tells a story about attending a symphony event and running into the daughter of a mentor who had passed away years earlier. He struck up a conversation at the buffet line, ended up sharing stories about her father's impact on his life, and later sent her an email so she could share it with her sisters. "I don't think we do enough of that," he says. The importance of community and sharing joy with one another is a way in which Tim continues to show his Aquinas spirit.

Life's Unexpected Turns
His personal life has taken unexpected turns as well. He and his wife adopted their first child from India. Then came a pregnancy, followed by the birth of their son, who was born with a rare genetic disorder and passed away at fourteen. They adopted again, this time a daughter from Korea. He now has one grandchild with another on the way.

"I would never have thought life was going to go this way," he says. "But you never know where it's going to take you. If your faith is strong and you keep it strong, you're going to be in good shape."

Still a Proud Saint
If he could go back and say something to the version of himself studying at Aquinas in the early 1980s, the advice would be straightforward: take it more seriously, earlier. And give more.

He describes his Aquinas experience in three words: challenging, accepting, and confident.

"I left there much more confident than when I got there," he says. "I don't have anywhere near the success I've had without going to Aquinas. And to this day, it's just as highly respected as it was when I graduated."

“People should feel proud about their alma mater,” he says. He certainly does.