At the YMCA, Leis is More

George Leis, president of Montecito Bank & Trust, is having a new lease on life!

George, who is also a board member of Santa Barbara Zoo, the Santa Barbara Historical Museum, the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, and the Channel Islands YMCA, becomes chairman of the national YMCA in February, succeeding CiCi Rojas, the first Hispanic to hold the position in the organization’s long history.

“I learned to swim at the Y on Long Island, when I was six or seven years old in Deer Park in Suffolk County and have been part of the Channel Islands Y since 2008, serving on the committee and the board,” says George, who is also a regular at the Y on Hitchcock in our Eden by the Beach.

He joined the national board in 2019 and will serve a two-year term as chairman.

The organization, founded in Boston in 1851, has 2,700 clubs across the country with 200,000 staff and 500,000 volunteers in 10,000 communities nationwide.