For immediate release Jan. 10, 2000

Robert McKenzie recently joined the staff of the Federal Reserve System's check standardization project as the vice president in charge of implementation management, announced Jack Guynn, president and chief executive officer of the Atlanta Fed. McKenzie assumed his new role on Jan. 1, 2000. The check standardization project is being managed by the Federal Reserve's Retail Payments Office, which is based at the Atlanta Fed.

In this assignment, McKenzie will manage and coordinate site preparation, develop and manage training programs, work closely with Federal Reserve automation support and local offices, and manage the conversion and post-conversion support for the System's check operations as they transition to a standardized check processing software.

Most recently, McKenzie served as senior vice president and senior change manager with Bank of America, previously NationsBank, where he led implementations of a standard item processing environment across the organization. McKenzie was involved with implementations related to the Boatman's Bank and the Bank of America (California) mergers. He also managed the effort to convert Barnett Banks from a Unisys-based item processing shop to an IBM-based shop as the bank moved under the NationsBank umbrella. Earlier in his career, McKenzie was a check officer and leader of Federal Reserve System work groups in the Sixth District before he moved to the private sector.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta serves the Sixth Federal Reserve District, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia and segments of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee. As part of the nation's central banking system, the Atlanta Fed participates in setting national monetary policy, supervises numerous commercial banks and provides a variety of financial services to depository institutions and the U.S. government.

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