Board of Directors

Alice Cole
Chair of the Board

Alice Cole is the fourth member of the Paine family to serve as Champlain National Bank Board Chair and is the first woman to hold the top role. Her grandfather, A.G. Paine, Jr., founded Essex County National Bank in Willsboro in 1923, the predecessor of what became Champlain National Bank. She joined the Bank Board in 2005 and has served on the Executive, Audit, and Asset/Liability and Investment Board Committees.

Ms. Cole has more than 40 years of experience in the banking and financial sectors, working for both large national and community banks during her career, including BNY Mellon, Fleet Bank, First Interstate Bancorp, and Marine Bank and Trust Company. She was a Managing Partner of Essex Asset Management from 2009 – 2016 and continues to work as a private Financial Services Consultant. Ms. Cole is a Certified Financial Planner™ and a Certified Investment Management Analyst™.

An honors graduate of Occidental College, Ms. Cole earned two Bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Political Science.

She is Trustee Emeritus and former Board Chair for the Berkshire School where she served for more than 20 years. She currently serves on the Advisory Board of Douglass Winthrop, an Investment Management Firm.

Locally, she serves on the Adirondack Garden Club, which was founded by her grandmother, Francisca Warren Paine in 1928, and remains committed to conservation of plants and trees native to the Adirondack region. She also serves on the Investment Committee of the Garden Club of America.

Ms. Cole and her husband, Wallace H. Cole III, are residents of Willsboro, and maintain a home in Vero Beach, FL. They have two children; Haydn Cole of New York City, a Financial Planner who also serves on the Champlain National Bank Board, and William Cole, who is the Chief of Technical Operations for Bullrock Renewables in South Burlington, VT.