January 26th, 2015

Re: Joe Davis

To Whom It May Concern,

First off, I would like to start this with a little background of Joe and I. I started at Wells Fargo Bank as a Personal Banker about 10 years ago with no prior banking knowledge or experience. For my first year or so I had multiple managers in and out, which created an environment that made learning and growing an impossible task. Our team had constant turn over and was a gloom place to come into every day. Then one day, 3 managers down, our new branch manager was introduced to our team…Joe Davis. I could tell from the beginning that things seemed (and were) different this time. Joe took the time to talk with me about my future, my family, my goals and most importantly…what made me happy. I was fortunate enough to have somebody like this come in and work with me when he did, and immediately I was challenging myself to higher levels and standards and looking at Wells Fargo as an actual career, not a job. Over the time that Joe and I worked together I was able to accomplish many things that I never saw as possible, and never would have been able to accomplish without his leadership and motivation. Within a year I was able to enter a Licensed Banker program to obtain my Series 7, Series 66 and CA Life and Health licenses, after which I was promoted to a Licensed Premier Banker II and my growing continued from there. As time passed, Joe noticed my desire to always help and coach my peers and clients and offered me an Assistant Manager position under him, which I accepted and spent the next couple of years doing. Joe was always given additional responsibilities to help with our district, so he would teach and push me to run our branch as if it was mine. Ultimately, I ended up accepting a Store Manager position in one of the top branches in the region and went on to manage that until the next opportunity came up…a Regional Private Banking position supporting one of the most affluent areas in the country, which I have done now for 3+ years and have been a top producer in my position almost the entire time, something which I attribute to my “upbringing” so to say under Joe’s leadership and drive to be the best.

As I sit back and look at my accomplishments and career I have built with Wells Fargo, I would be nowhere close to where I am without Joe being there to push me, teach me, educate me and strive to make me the best I can be. Joe’s leadership skills always created a fun environment to be around, while continuously looking at the end result…whether that be our goals, our growth or ourselves. Of all of the memories and knowledge I received from Joe, one of his attributes that sticks out to me the most is this…working with Joe during great economic times, as well as one of the most depressed economic times our country has ever seen he always reminded me we are here day in and day out for these clients walking through the door. We can only control what we can control and that’s ourselves…during the good times and the bad times we create the impact we have on clients and the memory and experience the clients have when they walk out of our doors. If there is a lot of bad going on outside, we will ALWAYS strive to make sure the client has a good experience inside of our doors. Joe would always

make sure we were thinking outside of the box and going above and beyond to obtain success, whether that be to hold client or employee appreciation days, BBQ/cook for the clients on the weekends, volunteer as often as we could to offer help and guidance in our community, have school -children come into the branch on field trips to offer financial preparation and awareness, constant training and self-improvement courses and so much more.

I’ll end this with a note about an experience I recently had in the branch that Joe and I worked together for many years in. I set up a meeting with a long time client that I help on a regular basis and she asked, due to schedule limitations, if I could meet her out there at our old branch. I arrived at the branch a little early to get set up and instantly had two people in line waive to me, call me by name and ask when Joe and I were coming back to the branch because it has not been the same since we left. After I finished my appointment and before I left I had 3 more people come up to me asking about Joe. The reason I share this and see importance in it is Joe and I have been gone from that branch for almost 5 years! The impact that Joe has on his employees, and most importantly on clients is in a class of its own.

Regards,

Nickolas L. Gould

Wells Fargo Bank

AVP, Regional Bank Private Banker II

925-876-4939