Governor Andy Beshear has appointed Paducah Bank Chief Marketing Officer Susan Guess to the Kentucky Financial Institutions Board.

The Department of Financial Institutions’ mission is to serve Kentucky residents by promoting access to a stable financial industry, implementing effective and efficient regulatory oversight, enforcing consumer protections, encouraging economic opportunities and encouraging sound financial decisions through financial empowerment programs.

Guess has a long history of community involvement. She was the second woman to chair the Paducah Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors and only the second person to chair twice.  She served as vice chair and chairwoman of the Murray State University Board of Regents during her nine-year tenure on the board. She chaired the Lourdes Hospital Foundation Board of Directors for six years. She also served a four-year appointment on the Kentucky Council on Post-Secondary Education.

She was named Kentucky’s top volunteer two times. The first time was in 1998 after she chaired a campaign to build a $100,000 memorial garden at Heath High School following the school shooting. In 2015, she received the award for her anti-bullying efforts throughout the state.  She won a national HUD community service award after starting Girl Scout troops in Paducah’s public housing.

She contributed to the Applied Public Relations college textbook, which was authored by MSU professor Marcie Hinton. Guess won two previous awards from Ragan Communications for Paducah Bank’s social media and for design for the bank’s WOW! magazine. She was recognized in NYC in June as one of the Top Women in Communications.

She and her 19-year-old daughter, Morgan, are the co-founders of the Guess Anti-Bullying Foundation. After lobbying the governor to appoint a statewide task force on the issue, both Guesses were appointed to the Kentucky Youth Bullying Prevention Task Force. They successfully lobbied for a bill to define bullying in Kentucky. That law now provides protections for all 640,000 Kentucky students. They were both awarded the Kentucky Justice Association Consumer Safety Award for their legislative work on the issue. In 2020, they received approval for an official Be Kind Kentucky license plate, which is slated to be released in June 2023. They are donating all proceeds to the state’s 16-youth mental health drop-in centers. If purchased for just 10% of Kentucky vehicles, they will donate $1.7 million in ten years. They also sponsored four kindness murals througout Kentucky.

About Paducah Bank: 
Paducah Bank is an award-winning, locally owned bank with banking centers in six locations in Paducah and Louisville and employs more than 140 people. Paducah Bank received a 5-star rating from BauerFinancial, the nation’s premier bank rating firm. The bank has earned this 5-star rating for 48 consecutive quarters! The bank also received the distinction of exceptional performance bank, a status reserved for banks that have earned Bauer’s highest rating for 10 consecutive years!  Paducah Bank was named as the #1 Best Place to Work in Kentucky among medium-sized companies and was chosen by the Wall Street Journal as one of the nation’s Top 15 Small Workplaces.  It was named Best Bank in the Paducah Sun Readers’ Choice Awards from 2012-2021 and has won the Louisville Mayor's Worksite Wellness Award numerous times. In 2019, Paducah Bank won the Governor’s Service Award. In 2020, they won the William. H. Natcher Award by the Kentucky Library Association. They won three Telly Awards in 2021 as well as the Governor’s Business Award for the Arts.