How JPMorganChase is building career pathways for Atlantans

In 2023, Maricela Tlehuactle Mendez, then a twenty-year-old Atlanta taxi driver, stopped into a local Chase branch to cash a check. She’d never gone inside the branch before, but to her surprise, she was treated as warmly and courteously as if she’d been a longtime customer. This was the kind of place she wanted to work, she thought—a place where she could build a career.

She began visiting the bank regularly to inquire about job openings. When a part-time position became available, branch manager Bryan Atkins, impressed by her persistence, hired her. At first, Mendez helped translate for Spanish-speaking customers, gradually taking on additional responsibilities. Today, she has a full-time job at JPMorganChase that she loves—one that has enabled her to purchase her own home at the age of 22. “I’ve had the opportunity to bring people in as teenagers, bring people in in their early 20s,” says Atkins, who has been with the bank for 17 years. “I’ve watched these people move out of their parents' homes because of the opportunities that we provide at JPMorganChase. I’ve watched them get married, have children, buy homes. It’s really about getting behind someone, understanding what their goals and their dreams are, and doing everything you can to help them get there.”

JPMorganChase believes that promoting opportunities for Atlanta’s talented workforce has a ripple effect on the local community. “Atlanta’s growth in recent years has been remarkable,” says Keith Fleming, head of J.P. Morgan's Private Bank for the South Atlantic and co-chair of the Georgia Market Leadership Team, “but the city’s progress must continue to translate into opportunity for more Atlantans. We’re working to expand that opportunity with more jobs and resources that will directly help strengthen the local economy.” Today, the firm employs some 1,800 people in Greater Atlanta. And it continues to draw on the city’s diverse and capable workforce, seeking ways to help Atlantans grow—opening new branches and new regional hubs, including the Virtual Call Center and the Technology Center, and adding 40,000 square feet of new office space in Monarch Tower in Buckhead.

Dialing in to benefits and mobility: The Virtual Call Center

Across town from the Skye Hill branch of JPMorganChase, where Mendez works, Genesis Medina, a bilingual customer-service representative at JPMorganChase’s Virtual Call Center (VCC), speaks to between 80 and 120 clients each day—answering their questions, troubleshooting, or making referrals to colleagues. Medina left her support-staff job in a law office a year ago to help JPMorganChase launch the VCC, which is part of the firm’s broader initiative to expand business investments that help create new jobs and promote career growth opportunities. When an anxious customer calls about an unrecognized charge on their bank account, she wants them to feel heard, understood, and respected, just as Maricela Mendez did on the day of her first visit to a Chase branch.

Atlanta’s large bilingual community made it an ideal location for the VCC, which is JPMorganChase’s first virtual bilingual call center, says Vice President and Operations Manager Alex Flores. After English, Spanish is the most widely represented language among customers. “We want our customers to fully understand the products and services that they’re using,” says Flores. “We feel that they have the right to do business in the language they prefer.” With a current staff of about 90, the VCC continues ramping up, and is expected to grow to 135 by year’s end.

VCC's employees receive benefits like medical, dental, and vision coverage from their first day at work, as well as tuition reimbursement. They also participate in a JPMorganChase financial education workshop where they learn about banking 101, budgeting, saving, building credit and fraud and scam prevention.

In this growing city, JPMorganChase is a highly regarded employer, not only for the broad range of career pathways it offers, but also for how it invests in employees’ professional development, helps them build long-term careers, and provides them with an array of benefits to help them meet both their challenges and their goals. “There is so much talent throughout metro Atlanta. Our virtual call center is another way we are helping people and communities gain access not only to good jobs, but to sustainable careers at JPMorganChase,” said Mike Ashworth, Chief Operations Officer for Consumer & Community Banking at Chase.

Medina says she finds it particularly satisfying to help customers inquiring about unrecognized transactions. “I love those calls,” she says, “because I’m able to give reassurance to the customer: We care about you, we’re taking care of your account, and we have the security measures to keep your account safe.” After just one year at the bank, Medina’s career has “skyrocketed,” says Flores, a 26-year veteran of JPMorganChase. Through her tuition-reimbursement benefit, Medina is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration. “JPMorganChase has been really supportive of me. We have different kinds of tools to be able to grow professionally,” she says.

Building new technology and technologists

As the home of prestigious schools like Georgia Tech, Emory, Spelman, and Morehouse, Atlanta is a pipeline for technology talent, which is why JPMorganChase made it the location of one of its 24 Technology Centers worldwide. Employees in the Technology Center help to build and maintain the vital infrastructure through which payments are processed. This includes troubleshooting issues that have real-time impact on JPMorganChase customers.

They also develop new and innovative technology products in key areas, including cybersecurity, blockchain, and risk technology.

Finally, the staff of the Technology Center engage with the community—at elementary, middle, and high schools, and at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and other local universities—to get students excited about pursuing careers in the field. At one recent event at an elementary school, kids brainstormed ideas for new apps, which engineers at the Technology Center then built for them.

The Technology Center encourages its teams to collaborate to discuss ways of leveraging technology. It’s all part of a mindset of continuous learning.

Believing in people: New employees, new branches

JPMorganChase is offering a variety of meaningful career pathways for Atlantans to launch and grow thriving careers—in local branches, the Virtual Call Center, and the Technology Center. Mendez, for instance, is both a guide for Spanish-speaking customers at JPMorganChase’s Skye Hill branch and an example of what’s possible—of how working at JPMorganChase in Atlanta can transform lives. Because it has transformed hers.

When Atkins, Mendez’s then-manager, mentioned that he’d bought his first house when he was about her age, Mendez was inspired to search for her own home—only to be turned down for a loan because she wasn’t working enough hours. Atkins oversaw her move into a full-time position, then helped her create a strategy for financing her down payment.

Atkins says he’s simply paying forward the support he’s received at JPMorganChase. Like Mendez, he knows what it’s like to start with very little and build something. JPMorganChase has been there for him, he says, not only when he wanted to grow his career, but also, more importantly, when his infant was diagnosed with cancer. He and his family found their way through, he says, with the help of the company’s benefits package and a supportive manager.

He’s extraordinarily proud of the growth he’s seen in Mendez. Mentorship, he believes, is fundamental to career growth at JPMorganChase—a company that’s devoted to recognizing and nurturing its employees’ potential, whether it’s a twenty-year-old taxi driver looking to change her life, a law-office receptionist with big ambitions, or an elementary-school student with dreams of becoming a technologist. “Where you are today has no bearing on who you want to be and who you will be tomorrow,” Atkins says. “Sometimes, mentorship means really believing in people until they can believe in themselves.”

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.

JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC