A candid chat with a mentor and mensch

By Ed Goldman

While he’s been the boss many times in his career, these days Malcolm “Mac” Hotchkiss proudly works for his wife. He’s the chief operating officer of Golden Pacific Bank. His wife, Virginia Varela, is the community business bank’s president and CEO. 

“Virginia and I have an amazing relationship,” he says over a recent lunch at The Sutter Club, the downtown Sacramento landmark founded in 1889 (only nine years after the death of its namesake, John Sutter). “In addition to being madly in love with each other, each of us is sometimes the missing puzzle piece for each other. She’s a very trusting but very exacting person; I’m like a risk manager, professionally and personally.”

Hotchkiss was CEO of a number of banks in his career, which began in the early 1970s. He says he’d been “a good Number One for so many years. But becoming a Number Two has been a wonderful learning experience. Virginia has a great management style, and it’s completely different from mine. I like to delegate things but keep my fingers in the game. Virginia is more task-oriented as a manager. She can be very tough but her staff adores her because she’s also a born teacher.” 

He pauses to come up with the most appropriate simile for his and his wife’s workplace chemistry. “I believe in managing like a music conductor,” he says, “whereas Virginia is like someone who can play every instrument in the orchestra.” He smiles and adds, “And can lead it just as well.”

Hotchkiss says that much of his workday involves him serving as a mentor to the next generation of bankers and executives, “but in all honesty, I think my mentoring is more of a two-way street than what you’d usually expect.” His own mentor, he says, “were my dad and my brother. My dad because of his work ethic and my brother because he actually helped me set up my first business, selling lemonade—which I franchised when I was still a kid!—and then, selling cleaning products door-to-door.” 

At some point he and a business partner, Rachel Spenser, opened Santa Cruz Mortgage. “On our first day, the interest rate on loans hit 17 percent,” he says. “But rather than panic, we told our customers that if they stuck with us, we’d refinance their loans the instant rates came down. In the years we were in business, we helped a lot of young people buy their first homes, and that’s still a good memory for me.”

In 1990 he took his expertise as a loan officer to Watsonville Federal Bank, where he served as executive vice president and chief credit officer for four-and-a-half years. From there he soared to the top of his field, becoming board chair and chief executive officer of ULB Corp and United Business Bank. During his 23 years there, the bank’s coffers grew from $40 million to more than $500 million. He remains the director of the bank’s Human Resource Committee and Audit Committee.

Five years ago this June he joined Varela at Golden Pacific Bank (a sponsor of this column). “She had to fill a C-Suite position. So I stepped in. I’m not sure how good I would’ve been as a house-husband.”