Natalie Bartholomew is a career banker with over twenty years of industry experience in roles across lending, retail, culture building, strategic planning, human resources and marketing. Currently, she serves as the Community President of First Community Bank in Northwest Arkansas.

In 2017, Natalie started The Girl Banker blog to highlight the topics she found important: advocating for women in banking and balancing parenthood with professional life. Natalie is also passionate about educating young women on opportunities within the banking industry and raising awareness of what it means to be a community banker. 

The Girl Banker platform has grown to include speaking engagements at banking conferences all over the country, and in 2019 Natalie launched The Girl Banker Podcast. The Girl Banker was featured in American Banker, the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal, the ABA Bank Marketing Newsletter, among other financial industry newsletters.

Natalie received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Arkansas and is a graduate of the Graduate School of Banking in Boulder, Colorado where she now serves as a faculty member.

Natalie’s deep engagement with the business community has been recognized over the years by a variety of industry honors: 2015 Young Woman of the Year by the Greater Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce for the Northwest Arkansas Business Women’s Conference, 2015 Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class, 2018 Women In Business list, 2019 Arkansas Business Journal’s Forty Under 40 class, 2020 Independent Community Bankers of America Forty Under 40 class, 2021 and 2022 Arkansas Money & Politics Power Women in Banking list, 2022 Arkansas Money & Politics Women in Business list, 2022 AY Magazine Intriguing Women list, and the 2022 University of Arkansas Department of Agricultural Business and Economics Young Alumni Award.

She is a member of the American Bankers Association Bank Marketing Conference Advisory Board and a former member of the Emerging Leaders Council of the Arkansas Bankers Association. Natalie also has a passion for philanthropy and sits on various boards and committees that serve the Northwest Arkansas region. 

Her absolute greatest accomplishment is being a mom to two sons, Brody and Witten, and a wife to her husband, Colt. They live together on her family’s farm in Northwest Arkansas. 

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