DeWITT, N.Y. — After decades of experience in the corporate and nonprofit worlds, Pam Brunet is excited about putting that experience to work in a newly created position at Community Bank, N.A., a unit of Community Bank System, Inc. (NYSE: CBU).

Brunet spent 17 years at Bristol Myers Squibb in DeWitt, where she was responsible for community relations, public relations, and charitable giving. She followed that up with 11 years at the helm of the nonprofit Leadership Greater Syracuse (LGS), where she learned about the other side of corporate giving as the one asking for funding.

In both roles, she learned about the importance of relationship building.

Now, she gets to put it all together at Community Bank as the bank’s new director of community and corporate relations.

“This organization has been very charitable for all of its years,” Brunet tells The Central New York Business Journal. She already knew this since Community Bank was a longtime supporter of LGS. “Giving is embedded here. You can’t just get that culture overnight, and it’s pretty powerful,” she notes.

Brunet says she met annually with Mark Tryniski, who retires as president and CEO at the end of this year, to ask for funding. She was a little surprised when Tryniski reached out to her this past spring to talk to her about filling the role as Community Bank’s new director of community and corporate relations.

While she loved her job at LGS, the opportunity to combine all her corporate and nonprofit experience into one role was appealing. “It was just too juicy not to accept,” she says.

It was hard leaving LGS after more than a decade, but “I know LGS is in great hands,” Brunet says of the organization’s new Executive Director Michele Diecuch. “I was there for 11 years, and it’s time for someone else to put their stamp on it,” she says.

Brunet started in her new role at Community Bank in late September. “My first order of business is learning about this organization,” she says.

Community Bank System operates in the banking, benefits, wealth-management, and insurance industries through its subsidiaries Community Bank, N.A.; Nottingham Advisors, Inc.; Benefit Plans Administrative Services, LLC; The Carta Group; OneGroup; Community Bank Trust Services; and Community Investment Services, Inc.

Brunet is viewing the business through a strategic philanthropy lens, determining the company’s strengths and what type of charitable opportunities align with each business segment.

To help make it easier for organizations to request support, Brunet is looking at implementing an online platform for donation requests. Along with making it simpler for organizations to make requests, Brunet wants to make sure they provide enough information so that Community Bank can vet organizations and requests.

She also hopes the exchange will open up opportunities for Community Bank to provide more than just financial support to organizations. Say a nonprofit is struggling to efficiently complete financial forms, for example, she says. Community Bank may have an employee that can volunteer some time with that organization and help out.

Supporting employee altruism is another facet of her role that Brunet is embracing. “People want to work for companies who are socially responsible,” she notes. Supporting employees who want to give of their time and talent isn’t just the right thing to do, Brunet says, but also boosts employee morale and engagement. In turn, that leads to less turnover and increased employee retention.

“That is a competitive advantage,” she stresses.

Other ideas Brunet is considering include finding ways to get Community Bank employees into schools to engage with students and foster interest in banking careers, as well as looking into internship opportunities.

Brunet says she’s looking forward to working with incoming Community Bank president and CEO Dimitar A. Karaivanov, who steps into the roles on Jan. 1.

With a shared focus on charitable giving and keeping employees engaged, “he and I are on the same page,” Brunet says.