Northern States Financial appoints 2 board members
WAUKEGAN - Northern States Financial Corp., holding company for NorStates Bank, an FDIC insured financial institution, announced George Bridges and Joel Leonard have been appointed as directors of the company to serve until the next annual meeting of stockholders.
Bridges and Leonard will also serve as directors of NorStates Bank, the addition of Bridges and Leonard increases the number of directors to ten.
Bridges received his bachelor's degree from National-Louis University with honors, and his juris doctoral degree from IIT/Chicago-Kent College
of Law in 1987. Bridges was appointed an associate judge in 1995. In 2012, he was appointed a circuit judge by the Illinois Supreme Court
and was elected to his position in November 2014. Bridges spent the majority of his twenty-one years in the judiciary in the Criminal Felony
Division. Prior to his retirement, he served as the presiding judge of the felony division, the co-chair of the Illinois Supreme Court Seminar
Series Committee, a member of the Supreme Court Committee on Education and on the Supreme Court's Juvenile Justice Sub-Committee.
In the years before his appointment, he was employed as a law enforcement officer, where he twice served as the chief of police for the City of Waukegan. He also spent a number of years as a prosecutor with the Lake County State's Attorney's Office and a period of time in private practice.
Leonard received his bachelor of science degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1981. Leonard spent the majority of his career focused on the management of portfolio positions and risk, as well as trading and hedging review and evaluation. He served as a Market Maker in Equity Derivatives on the CBOE in Chicago, was a managing member of The Advent Fund in Chicago, and was a partner with Cornerstone Trading Group in Chicago. Leonard is currently a partner with Golden Horseshoe Holdings in Kalamazoo, Michigan, serves as an Investment Advisor for Balanced Asset Strategies in Chicago, Illinois, and is a Partner and Portfolio Manager with DCO Capital Management in Chicago, Illinois. Mr. Leonard also serves as Director for NEMI Northern Energy & Mining, Inc. in Vancouver, British Columbia.