Former bank president assumes the leadership at the Oswego port
By Stefan Yablonski
Thomas W. Schneider’s career has docked at the Port of Oswego Authority.
The former president of Pathfinder Bank has been appointed to serve as interim executive director following the Dec. 31, 2024, retirement of William Scriber, former executive director of the Port of Oswego Authority.
Schneider will serve in this capacity under a short-term contract while the board continues its formal search process in accordance with its fiduciary responsibilities, according to Francis Enwright, port’s board chairman.
“I was born on June 2, 1961 in Brooklyn and raised in New York City — grew up on Staten Island,” he said.
His father, Joseph, worked at Citibank in Manhattan — then left to start his own lease finance company.
Schneider earned a master’s degree in business administration from Fairfield University in 2002. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from SUNY Cortland in 1983. After graduating college, he went to work for Merrill Lynch.
“I came Upstate to go to college at SUNY Cortland and got married in 1985. My now ex-wife told me that she loved living in New York City — I was working for Merrill lynch at the time. But by 1988 we had our first child and she wanted to come back Upstate to Rome, New York,” he said.
He applied for and got a job at Oswego City Savings Bank.
“So I have been in this community for a long, long time. And really, to tell the truth — for someone who came from outside of the community, I have always been well-received and accepted,” he said. “This community has been great to me and I am really grateful for that.
“This is where I raised my kids. This is where I live — it is where I am staying. I love the development that I have seen in the city, county and the region over the last 10 years or so.”
Schneider has three adult sons. “All three are on the computer and technology side; we broke the chain there,” he laughed.
He said he “lost three brothers in very quick succession.”
“They were between 65 and 68 coming right off the pandemic years; two of them to cancer and the other to a brain aneurism,” he added. “I am the youngest of five boys.”
Prior to his appointment as president of Pathfinder Bank in 2000, he served as an executive vice president and chief financial officer.
“I was president and CEO at Pathfinder for 21 years. But I was actually at Pathfinder since 1988 — so it’s like 33, 34 years,” he said. “We changed our name [from Oswego City Savings] to Pathfinder in 1999. And Chris Gagas retired at the beginning of 2000 and the board appointed me as the CEO then.”
Under his leadership, the bank’s total assets grew from $216 million in 1999 to nearly $1.3 billion on Dec. 31, 2021.
Schneider has also served as an adjunct professor at SUNY Oswego, teaching a graduate-level finance course.
He served on the board of the port for 14 years in two different terms.
“Bill Scriber retired at the end of 2024 and we have a search committee looking for a permanent director,” he said. “I was the logical choice to take over in the interim. Whether or not it becomes permanent we’ll see. For now I am in the interim position. We’ll see what the board wants to do. The board has to conduct a search as part of its fiduciary duty.
“Since I am a prior board member, we want to avoid any appearance of conflict of interest. There will be a search conducted in due time in 2025 and we will see where that goes.”
“Tom was a long-term POA board member. He additionally has been part of and is knowledgeable of the many past and upcoming projects that are necessary for successful operations and growth of the port,” said long-time Port of Oswego Authority board member Connie Cosemento. “His past work as bank president is an asset to help understand and make good financial decisions.”
A unique business
“I really enjoy working with the people here. It really is a unique type of business,” he said. “It’s different than anything that I’ve ever done before. Yet I have some familiarity because of all the work I’ve done in the governance role on the board.”
Schneider has high praise for the port’s workers.
“It’s cold here at the end of the dock, cold and windy. I am working with people — a lot that I already knew. Hard work, it is hard work around the port in these [winter] conditions. We have some great people here,” he said. “It’s really quite something to see. You realize what hard work is.”
This is a new way in which he can stay involved and do what he has come to love — “and that is having a positive impact on the economic development in Oswego County and Central New York,” he said.
Schneider said he enjoys spending time with family and friends, and he enjoys watching New York sports with his sons.
“I don’t think I ever really separated work and personal life. You meet so many people in business that it becomes part of your friendship chain in your private life. So it is hard to distinguish between the two. When you are in a leadership position you take it home with you. But you also shut down when you need to. I’d stress more when I wasn’t doing my job than when I was doing my job,” he laughed. “I don’t really have a big separation between my work life and personal life; they always just kind of blended together.”
“The winters allow you to focus more on the work side of things,” he said. “I try to stay in shape. I used to exercise more. I [play] golf and ski in the winter. Golf would be my primary sport. I ‘play’ golf and I ‘ski’ — but I am not a golfer and I am not a skier,” he quipped.
Not ready for retirement
“I certainly enjoy this challenge — opportunity — and I enjoy the people here and the impact we can have on the economy in Central New York,” he said. “I never want to consider myself for retirement. I would rather keep busy. If things didn’t work out here, I will re-emerge somewhere else.”
Looking back
“Memories? Professionally? I think being able to be on West First Street, have an office that looked out onto West First Street and see a large swath of the city downtown area and being able to see all the development there. Being asked to be an adjunct professor at the college and working with organizations like the Oswego Renaissance Association — and being able to help them, being on the board of the Shineman Foundation — these are things that I always felt tied a lot of the things together for me,” he said. “Watching Oswego, Central New York collaboration between all the sectors — private, economic, nonprofit, academic — all of them — I think that alignment is crucial to productivity and you certainly don’t see that on our national basis so much. I am very optimistic and I see opportunities for the port in supporting the growth and development that is going on to the south of us. This is a community that welcomes being an energy producer as opposed to not wanting it in their backyard.”
“I love watching the transformation that is going on in the city. It’s great to see this all happening and to be able to participate in to some degree,” he continued. “I love this area and mostly it is the change in seasons, it is the people here in Oswego, in Upstate New York. It’s different from the West Coast or the East Coast, it’s more like Midwesterners.
“The ability to make change and have an impact; I am grateful that I have been in a position where I could be a part of that — have an impact. Yeah, I like to feel like at the end of the day I had a positive impact,” he said. “I never expected myself to live in Oswego, New York. But I’d like to think that I made a positive impact on the community.”
