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Native New Mexican Champions Economic Opportunity for Fellow Entrepreneurs
The ACCION New Mexico Board of Directors is pleased to announce the selection of Robert Wertheim as 2006 chairman of the nonprofit small business lender’s governing body.

The native New Mexican brings nearly a half century of banking experience, a family entrepreneurial legacy and a strong philanthropic commitment to the leadership post.

"Small business is the fuel that drives New Mexico's economic engine. Our success hinges on the opportunities working families have to create economic self-reliance," said Wertheim, chairman and chief executive officer of the Charter Companies. "Supporting ACCION New Mexico's work is an opportunity to support that kind of economic development at the most grass-roots level."

Wertheim is a native New Mexican whose roots run deep in the eastern plains community of Fort Sumner where his family ran the local general store, Wertheim’s Department Store. The University of New Mexico graduate began his mortgage banking career in 1958 and bought his own small mortgage company in 1976. Today Charter Bank-Mortgage-Insurance has a workforce of more than 270 people with locations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

ACCION New Mexico President and Chief Executive Officer Anne Haines Yatskowitz said Wertheim brings to ACCION a pioneering entrepreneurial spirit and deep commitment to New Mexico.

"Bob's role as a champion for small business and working families was etched long before he made it out of elementary school. Working in his family's dry goods store as a child in Fort Sumner planted the early seed of entrepreneurial passion," Yatskowitz said. "He has become a respected and influential force in the business community for social change because of that passion and his belief in New Mexico’s economic potential."

Wertheim will be honored this spring by the Samaritan Counseling Center with its 2006 New Mexico Ethics in Business Award for Individual Excellence and was recently honored by Junior Achievement as an inductee into the organization's newly created New Mexico Business Hall of Fame. Also an original inductee into the University of New Mexico's Anderson Schools of Management Hall of Fame, Wertheim has a distinguished history of community and philanthropic service. He is a past board member and chairman of Albuquerque Economic Development, a current member of the Kirtland Partnership Committee and a former capital campaign chairman for Samaritan Counseling Center. He was also honored in 2004 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals as the outstanding fundraising volunteer of the year.

Before his selection as chairman, Wertheim served as treasurer of the ACCION board, a 24-member governing body comprised of business and community leaders from across the state.

Contact:
Leslie Hoffman
ACCION New Mexico Communications Manager
(505) 243-8844 ext. 238
(505) 270-0285 cell