Since January 2007, Richard E. Holbrook has served as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Eastern Bank, the largest and oldest mutual bank in the country, and the fifth largest full-service bank in Massachusetts. Eastern Bank and its subsidiaries offer a full range of financial products for consumers, businesses, investors, government agencies and not-for-profit organizations.
Rich joined Eastern Bank in 1996 as Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President and was named President and Chief Operating Officer of the Bank in 2001. He started his banking career in 1980 at the Connecticut Bank and Trust Company in Hartford, Connecticut, as a commercial credit trainee. He has more than 30 years of banking experience as a commercial lender, trust officer, and planning and financial manager. He also was a director and CFO of a small biotechnology firm in Cambridge in the early 1990s, and spent five years as an administrator in the Yale athletic department immediately after graduation from Yale.
Rich serves on the Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and on the Massachusetts Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors. Rich is a director of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, the Massachusetts Bankers Association, the American Bankers Association, and the CEO Club of Boston. Rich is a director of Partners Health Care, Inc. and serves as chairman of the North Shore Medical Center. He is a director of Neighborhood Health Plan. He is also a member of the Board of Overseers of the Anti-Defamation League of New England and a director of Jobs for Mass.
A native of Worcester and a graduate of Dighton-Rehoboth High School, Rich is a 1973 graduate of Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. Rich earned a master’s degree in business administration from Harvard Business School in 1980. He lives in Medfield with his wife Susan. He has two sons, Scott, a banker in NYC, and Kevin, a student at BC.
A returning member of the Shakespeare and Leadership cast, Rich was a member of the National Thespian Society in high school, reaching the pinnacle of his acting career in 1969 playing Vincent Schmidlap in "Ask Any Girl.” He has also been featured in numerous very far off-Broadway Eastern Bank videos and productions, and starred in the non-award winning “Toys for Tots” television spots in 2012 with Vincent Wilfork, best known for his performances at Gillette Stadium.