Center Bancorp, parent company of Union Center National Bank, announced the hiring of a commercial lending team, Linda Parish and Martin Whalen, who will assist Center in expanding its commercial & industrial loan portfolio.

“We are thrilled to welcome these successful professionals to our banking team that will be able to hit the ground running, and complement our existing management team,” said Anthony C. Weagley, president & CEO. “We have confidence that collectively, they will put us in a position to successfully grow the market in all aspects of business development.”

Parish has been in banking for more than 25 years starting out at Goldman Sachs and serving with large money center banks such as JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, where she was a vice president and commercial banker specializing in middle-market banking and commercial growth. Most recently she held the position of senior member and director of Commercial Landmarks in Long Branch, NJ, where she specialized in consulting and negotiating financing for clients needing debt and/or equity.

Whalen’s career spans more than 26 years in banking and commercial real estate financing including at CB Richard Ellis, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Whalen led project finance initiatives for both proprietary and advisory clients for real estate investment and development firms at Brookstone Realty Advisors, and was vice president for real estate finance and securitization at Credit Suisse, USA in New York.