With a membership of 50 banks, and room to grow that number by less than two dozen, Alexis Baxley, president of the Independent Community Banks of North Dakota since last July, believes there still exists a need for community bank specific representation. In other words, when asked about the possibility that ICBND might merge with the North Dakota Bankers Association and pool critical resources, Baxley was resolute: “I would say ‘no’ to that.” Representing community banks, she said, will be her passion for “as long as we have a dollar in the bank.”
Less than one year into ICBND’s top job, Baxley described herself as an “association nerd” and a generalist. “I’ve always been someone who’s too much of a ‘Jack (or Jane) of all trades’ to specialize in any one thing,” she explained. Having a broad knowledge base, she added, “can be beneficial in problem solving — and in policy work.”
Baxley spent seven years leading the North Dakota School Boards Association prior to joining the ICBND. She had also worked with the North Dakota Petroleum Council, the state’s oil and gas trade association. In both roles, she learned how North Dakotans were actively supporting their communities. “Banking kind of felt a lot like that,” she said, “so I was excited to do some of that again.”
And while the banking knowledge she needs to succeed at ICBND is growing, she believes it’s her advocacy chops where she delivers value. “It doesn’t matter if I’m doing advocacy for banking or advocacy for a school board. The process is similar. It’s relationship building,” she said.
Baxley brims with confidence in her abilities at the Capitol. It wasn’t always that way. She grew up on a western North Dakota ranch, in one of those empty places where the land and the sky are equally formidable. Hers was a rodeo family, but she had no interest in horses or cows; she couldn’t wait for the deliverance that came in the form of a driver’s license. At college, she leaned into advertising and public relations, imagining a spot for herself at a big city agency. But she graduated into the Great Recession. She lucked into an interview with an association management firm in Bismarck, not her field but she didn’t feel she could say no. “I think I was one of two in my program to get a job,” Baxley said.
The day after Baxley started that job, the legislative session commenced. She learned about associations; she was introduced to the concept of advocacy; she began to see how public relations undergirded government relations. “It was really the beginning of everything,” Baxley said. “I was very young and felt like a child in a room full of grownups.” Yet it didn’t take long before Baxley saw herself as one of the adults, with the recognition that advocacy was “what I wanted to do.”
At the ICBND, where the asset size of member banks spans from $35 million to $13 billion, Baxley applies her natural optimism to the challenges that result from bank mergers. Fewer bank charters doesn’t automatically mean fewer bank offices, or fewer bankers, she said. Figuring out how to stay relevant and serve those bankers is a problem she believes ICBND can solve. “We believe in the value of the association, the value of our offerings,” she said of the association’s staff. Of eight people employed by ICBND, three technically work for ICB Services, the for-profit card services organization that ICBND has a 48 percent stake in, and two work for ICB Marketing, the association’s marketing arm. That leaves Baxley and two others focused on lobbying and education. “We’re hopeful that we can differentiate ourselves.”
In late winter, Baxley was active at the Capitol fighting proposed health care mandates, which threatened North Dakota’s reputation as a business-friendly state. While health care mandates aren’t typically what one thinks of as a banking issue, “certainly health care mandates matter to us as employers and benefit providers,” Baxley said. She believes mandates tend to snowball. “Once you start feeling a little less pain as a policymaker in implementing one type of mandate, the rest often flow. Mandates never go away.”
That’s a conclusion one can confidently draw after spending a decade and half as a lobbyist. Though confident in her abilities, Baxley said she never wants to be the smartest person in the room. “I very rarely am,” she laughed. Yet she’s smart enough to know that a cellphone filled with phone numbers will get her closer to whatever she needs whenever that need arises.
Old contacts and new ones will provide Baxley with a “bigger basket of experts,” she said. “That means I have a bigger bag of weapons and allies to work with. And I love that.
“To me, that’s confidence and that’s power,” Baxley added.