Growth is easy to announce. It’s harder to mean it.
At The Bank of Glen Burnie, we’ve never been interested in growth for its own sake. We’re not chasing a footprint. We’re not optimizing for scale. We’re a community bank — one that has been rooted in Anne Arundel County since 1949 — and the only kind of growth that has ever made sense to us is the kind that puts more neighbors in front of more bankers who actually know their names.
That’s what this post is about.
Over the past several months, BofGB has added four new team members — professionals who bring deep local roots, genuine community investment, and the kind of career experience that makes a real difference when you’re sitting across a desk from someone trying to figure out how to grow a business, buy a home, or plan for the future. These aren’t just hires. They’re part of what we believe community banking is supposed to look like: local people, serving local people, with a shared stake in what happens to this corner of Maryland.
We want you to meet them.
Jerray Slocum — Vice President, Annapolis Market Business Officer
Annapolis Loan Production Office
If you want to understand why BofGB opened its new Annapolis Loan Production Office (LPO), start with who’s helping run it.
Jerray Slocum joins our team as Vice President and Annapolis Market Business Officer — and his biography reads like a master class in what it means to show up for a community, year after year, without ever treating it as optional.
Jerray holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and has spent his career building relationships across the region’s banking landscape. Before joining BofGB, he held roles at numerous area banks, including his latest position as a Relationship Manager at Shore United Bank — developing a deep command of branch operations, business development, and client relationship management at each stop.
But it’s what Jerray has done beyond the balance sheet that sets him apart.
In 2023, Jerray was selected as one of 48 individuals to complete Leadership Maryland’s rigorous, hands-on leadership development program — dedicated to building a better Maryland by harnessing the strength of its local business and community leaders. That’s not a credential you put on a résumé and forget about. It’s evidence of a banker who believes his job doesn’t end when the branch closes.
Jerray has served on the Foundation Board of Hospice of the Chesapeake, one of the most important nonprofit organizations in the region — supporting families navigating some of life’s most difficult moments. Additionally, he served as Board Chair for the Anne Arundel County Arts Council, and as a board member for several other community organizations, including the Baltimore Washington Medical Center Foundation, and the Salvation Army of Annapolis/Anne Arundel County.
This is a person who gives his time to things that matter — not because it’s good for business, but because he understands that a banker’s role in a community extends far beyond lending decisions.
At the Annapolis LPO, Jerray will focus on commercial lending and deposit services for small and mid-sized businesses in southern Anne Arundel County — a part of the county that has long deserved a genuine community banking option. He’s not just new to BofGB. He’s exactly the kind of banker this community has been waiting for.
Cliff Woodward — Vice President and Commercial Lending Officer
Glen Burnie
Commercial lending is, at its core, a relationship business. You can run the numbers on any deal. What you can’t manufacture is the trust that makes a business owner pick up the phone and call their banker before they call their attorney — the kind of trust that only comes from showing up, consistently, over time.
Cliff Woodward brings that kind of presence to BofGB’s commercial lending team.
Based in Glen Burnie, Cliff joins us as a Vice President and Commercial Lending Officer — serving the small and mid-sized businesses that are the backbone of northern Anne Arundel County’s economy. His focus is on the businesses that don’t make the headlines: the contractors and manufacturers, the professional services firms, and family-owned operations that have been building this county for generations and need a lender who actually understands what they’re trying to do.
At BofGB, commercial lending decisions are made locally. That’s not a tagline — it’s a structural reality that changes everything for a business owner. When you’re working with Cliff, you’re working with someone who can look you in the eye, understand your business model, and advocate for your deal to people who are also invested in this community. You’re not submitting an application to a national credit algorithm. You’re building a relationship with someone who has a stake in seeing your business succeed, because your success is this community’s success.
Cliff’s addition to the team reflects something we’ve been hearing from the business community: northern Anne Arundel County businesses want a lender who will sit across the table from them, not manage them from a distance. That’s what Cliff does. Welcome to the team.
Jerross Jackson — Branch Manager
Odenton Branch
A branch manager sets the tone for everything. The culture of a branch — whether customers feel known, whether the team is energized, whether the branch is genuinely woven into the life of its neighborhood — lives and dies with the person in that role. Hire the right person, and a branch becomes a community anchor. Hire the wrong person, and it’s just a building with a drive-through.
Jerross Jackson is the right person.
Jerross joins BofGB as Branch Manager of our Odenton location — a community that has grown significantly over the past decade and where the demand for relationship-based banking has never been higher. He brings banking experience, a genuine passion for service, and the kind of leadership presence that makes both customers and colleagues better.
What matters most about Jerross isn’t any single credential. It’s the approach. Community banking works when the banker at the front of the branch treats every customer like a neighbor — because they are. It works when the branch participates in local events, supports local organizations, and becomes a place people think of not just when they need to make a deposit, but when they have a question, a problem, or a goal they’re trying to figure out how to reach.
That’s the vision Jerross brings to Odenton. And it’s the vision that has guided BofGB for nearly 77 years.
If you’re in the Odenton area, we hope you’ll stop in and say hello. The branch has always served this community — and with Jerross leading it, we’re excited about what the next chapter looks like.
Joseph Cardenas — Branch Manager
Severn Branch
Community banking is ultimately a local enterprise — and “local” means something specific. It means knowing the streets your customers live on, understanding the schools their kids attend, recognizing the small businesses they shop at on the weekends. It means being part of the fabric of a place, not just operating within it.
Joseph Cardenas carries that understanding into his role as Branch Manager of BofGB’s Severn location.
Severn is a community with deep roots and a growing population — a place where families plant themselves, build their lives, and want a bank that’s doing the same. Joseph brings to that branch something that can’t be taught in a training program: genuine investment in the people he serves. He’s not managing accounts. He’s managing relationships — and he understands the difference.
Under Joseph’s leadership, the Severn branch will continue doing what BofGB branches have always done: answering the phone when you call, knowing your name when you walk in, and treating your financial goals as worthy of real attention and real thought. That’s the community banking promise. Joseph is here to deliver it.
We’re glad to have him on the team — and we think Severn is going to be glad too.
What Four New Hires Actually Mean
Staffing announcements are easy. What’s harder to communicate — and more important to understand — is what these four additions actually represent.
They represent BofGB’s belief that community banking is not a nostalgic concept. It is an active investment. Every time we hire someone who lives in Anne Arundel County, works in Anne Arundel County, and has built relationships in Anne Arundel County, we are putting money, talent, and capacity back into this community. We are creating jobs that stay here. We are building relationships that compound over time into something that national banks — with their call centers and their credit algorithms and their quarterly earnings targets — simply cannot replicate.
Jerray Slocum, sitting across from a small business owner in Annapolis and understanding their situation because he’s been at Baltimore Washington Medical Center Foundation board meetings and Hospice of the Chesapeake foundation meetings — that’s community reinvestment in its most direct form. Cliff Woodward making a commercial lending decision with local context and local accountability — that’s what keeps money circulating in this economy instead of flowing out of it.
We talk a lot about community banking as a philosophy. These four hires are what that philosophy looks like as a practice.
Come Meet Them
If you’re a business owner in southern Anne Arundel County, our Annapolis team, John Camden and Jerray Slocum, would love to talk and get to know you. If you’re a customer of our Odenton or Severn branches, stop in and meet Jerross or Joseph — chances are they’ll know your name before too long.
And if you’re a business in northern Anne Arundel County with commercial lending needs, Cliff is right here in Glen Burnie, ready to have a real conversation about what you’re building and how we can help.
That’s what we do. We show up. We stay. We invest — in people, in businesses, in the community that has trusted us since 1949.
Welcome to the team, all four of you. You’re already home.
Ready to connect with one of our team members? Visit us at thebankofglenburnie.com or call 410-766-3300. We’d love to hear from you.