Wintrust Financial Corporation was founded by Edward J. (Ed) Wehmer alongside a close group of banking colleagues and industry professionals in the early 1990s. Driven by the vision to create a customer-focused community-banking alternative to massive impersonal financial conglomerates, the founding team launched the organization's very first localized bank branch—Lake Forest Bank & Trust—in Lake Forest, Illinois, in December 1991. Under his long-standing leadership as CEO and president for decades, Wehmer scaled the enterprise from a single storefront operation into a multi-billion-dollar holding company managing a vast network of separately chartered community banks across the region before transitioning to his current role as founder, senior advisor, and chairman emeritus.