Trendsetters

VP-actuary, lobbyist / Florida Farm Bureau Insurance Cos., Gainesville
On the nightstand: "Ender's Shadow," by Orson Scott Card.
Habit he'd like to break: "Sitting on I-10."
Family: Wife, Bronwyn; sons, Quinn, 7, and Bailey, 3.

Don't go to actuary Rade Musulin to dispel the stereotypes about his profession. "Kind of nerds," he volunteers, "propeller-heads ... tend to be solitary ... speaking in Martian." Musulin, then, may be the exception that proves the rule. The 43-year-old vice president with the Florida Farm Bureau Insurance Cos. in Gainesville is as likely to brief the Capitol press corps and lobby legislators these days as he is to digest a gigabyte of data.

"I'm kind of transforming from a guy with a pocket protector to a guy with a cell phone," he quips. Along the way, he's become an influential voice on hurricane insurance. In June, he will chair the Florida Insurance Council industry organization.

A New Jersey farm boy educated in mathematics at Johns Hopkins University, Musulin became an actuary because he found it intellectually challenging. For a lover of complicated math problems, Musulin is a natural with the simple example. The losses from Hurricane Andrew, he says, equaled the cost of giving every Florida child a free education through post-graduate school. He may be the only actuary to ever have had a sound bite on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

He employs his verbal dexterity to lobby that Florida has taken a misguided approach to risk since Andrew. Owners of inland and moderate-priced homes, he argues persuasively, subsidize windstorm protection for affluent coastal property owners. Florida's post-Andrew efforts to control market forces haven't done enough to encourage stronger buildings or dissuade people from buying and building in risky areas. Another storm could saddle the state with a huge, 20-year debt to be paid off by policy holders.

"We're going to end up leaving a legacy to our children that's not going to be pretty," he warns. "The economics beat the politics every time."

Private Banking: The Art of the Deal
Jacqui Bradley

Senior VP / Private Client Advisory Group/SunTrust Banks, Orlando
Children: Calvin, 11, and 8-year-old twins, Allison and Randall.
Cherished artwork: Her first major acquisition, Sam Gilliam's New Haven.
Recommended reading: Walter Mosley's "Devil in a Blue Dress."
Summer vacation plans: Two weeks in France.

For years, Jacqui Bradley collected the work of African-American artists such as Romare Bearden, William H. Johnson and Bob Thompson. So much so that Art & Antiques magazine in March named her one of the top 100 collectors in the nation. Don't ask her to name her favorite artist; she's just happy that many African-American artists are receiving the recognition they deserve.

Recognition of another kind was on the minds of Bradley and SunTrust a year ago, when she became senior vice president of the newly formed Private Client Advisory Group in Orlando. The bank wanted to devote more attention to servicing customers with greater than $2 million in investable assets. Bradley leads a group of six certified financial planners who hold Series 7 brokerage licenses and manage $300 million in personal assets. They act as concierges. Each person has only 60 customers to help with investment management, hedging strategies, taxes, personal trusts, deposit and credit services and even sending Christmas cards.

Bradley, 43, a Cleveland native with an undergraduate degree in economics and political science from Yale College and an MBA from Columbia University, began collecting art in 1987 while living in midtown Manhattan and later Harlem. She worked at McKinsey Consultants and Moody's Investors Service, among other stops, before following husband Clarence Otis to Florida in 1995, when he became chief financial officer of Darden Restaurants, which owns Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze and Smokey Bones.

At SunTrust, Bradley wants to hire more advisers, especially those who know central Florida well and have stimulating interests in their own right. They make the best advisers, she says. "I know in my heart we're making a difference in people's lives -- and for generations," Bradley says.

Thrift: Setting Itself Apart
Diana Neely
Florida regional manager / Third Federal Savings and Loan, Seminole
Recommended reading: "Listen Up, Leader," by David Cottrell.
Family: Husband, Van; three grown children; five grandchildren.
Viewpoint: "It's important whatever you do for a living, you don't compromise your own values."
Community: Neely is active in the All Children's Hospital fund-raising guild in St. Petersburg and is on the board of the Science Center of Pinellas County.

Veteran banker Diana Neely was overseeing operations at 62 Florida branches for AmSouth Bank in 1999 when a newspaper classified caught her eye. Third Federal Savings and Loan based in Cleveland wanted someone to head an expansion into Florida. The thrift described itself as a different kind of financial institution -- a mutual with, among other things, values of personal responsibility, respect and trust. "I thought, gee, there are savings and loans like I started with 30 years ago," Neely says. "It just sounded almost too good to be true."

Neely signed on. Since 1999, she has opened 14 branches around the west coast of Florida, Palm Beach County and North Miami. Third Federal doesn't break out Florida assets, but two branches already are over $100 million in deposits. Neely says Third Federal sets itself apart by paying mortgage lending and investment officers strictly on salary -- no commissions -- to avoid conflicts of interest. Also, like thrifts of yore, it tries to offer better deposit rates and loan terms than banks. Seniors are an important Third Federal market. The average age of its certificate of deposit holders is 71.

With that customer base, Neely looks for experienced hires. Most employees have at least a decade in banking, and turnover is virtually nil, Neely says. She says she wants employees to work until 5 p.m. and then be at Little League games or other activities with their families. Fortune has placed Third Federal on its "Best Places to Work" list for two consecutive years.

Third Federal has no plans to open in more Florida markets; Neely says the emphasis will be on existing branches. "We want them to develop and get to know their communities," Neely says.

Bank: An International Asset
Robert Diez

Chief international officer, senior VP / Colonial Bank, Miami
Recent reading: "Who Moved My Cheese?" by Spencer Johnson.
Family: Wife, Sandra; daughters, Victoria, 10, and Corina, 2.
Dividend: A third child is expected in late May.

In starting Colonial Bank's international division in Miami, Robert Diez didn't find much to build on beyond a seldom-used, 1960s-vintage Telex machine. On its third international transaction, it started smoking. Deadpans Diez, "It wasn't used to such heavy usage."

From that start three years ago, Diez, 42, built Colonial's international division into an operation that last year had $3 million in income and $140 million in assets -- 10% of Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial's south Florida assets.

Diez, a third-generation banker, came to the U.S. from his native Venezuela in 1976 to attend college. After graduating from the University of Miami, he worked at banks locally before returning to Venezuela in 1984 to broaden his experience and contacts. One contact: A colleague, Sandra, whom he wound up marrying. They relocated to Miami in 1989 to escape upheaval in Venezuela.

Diez was with Eastern National Bank in 1998 when he followed Eastern President and Chief Executive Officer Jose Valdes-Fauli and other Eastern officers to Colonial. Within six months, Diez made Colonial's newly formed international division profitable.

Diez has kept the division on what he calls a "very conservative path." Colonial concentrates on cookie-cutter trade finance -- dealing with top-tier institutions on letters of credit and other trade transactions and financing. Diez expects to expand Colonial's correspondent relationships to 80 from 60 by the end of the year. He also may move Colonial into new markets. "We're an example of how you can be successful without being overly aggressive," Diez says.

However, he has been aggressive in replacing Colonial's meltdown-prone technology. "Now we're state-of-the-art," he says.