Pub. 7 2018 Issue 6

l e a d i n g a d v o c a t e f o r t h e b a n k i n g i n d u s t r y i n k a n s a s 6 MEET KBA CHAIRMAN CHRIS DONNELLY C hris Donnelly, President and CEO of Bank of the Prairie, Olathe was elected by his peers to serve as the 2018-2019 Chairman of the Board for Kansas Bankers Association. This August, Donnelly will celebrate 36 years in banking, and it all started at the Canadian State Bank in Yukon, Oklahoma as a loan collector. Chris was born in Syracuse, NY and at the age of two his parents moved to Yukon when his father was transferred by General Electric from Syracuse to Oklahoma City. His mother and father, Joe and Trudy Donnelly, were both from New York and his grandparents and great grandparents migrated to the United States from Ireland and Slovenia. He grew up in the Oklahoma City Metropolitan Area and is the second of five children. He graduated from Yukon High School where he says his only claim to fame was going to school with Garth Brooks. Chris’ fondness of basketball earned him a scholarship to play at Northern Oklahoma Junior College in Tonkawa, Oklahoma. This is where he met the love of his life Susan Mueggenborg from Kingfisher, Oklahoma. She too played basketball on scholarship and was on the 1979 Women’s National Junior College Championship basketball team. Chris and Susan were married while still in college and have three children: Lauren, 32; Eric, 28 and Alissa, 22. Susan has been employed by the Tonganoxie School District for 23 years. She worked as a paraprofessional for over 20 years before moving into the front office as a secretary. Lauren, his eldest daughter, is a registered nurse for a pulmonary hypertension office at KU Medical Hospital. She is married to Deric Hulett and they reside in Tonganoxie. His son Eric is a manager with Fedex Freight and lives in Lenexa. His youngest, Alissa, graduated from Fort Hays State University in May and will be starting employment at Spirit AreoSystems in Wichita in August. She is engaged to be married to Gerad Deaver in November. All three are graduates of Tonganoxie High School. After graduating from Northern Oklahoma Junior College, Donnelly went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Business from Oklahoma State University. He started a job as a loan collector right out of college in 1982. “Times were hard,” he said. “It was during the oil and gas bust, unemployment in Oklahoma was high and many banks were in trouble.” Little did he know those hard times would teach him some very key pieces of bank management that he still utilizes today. He was fortunate that a new bank president, Bob Alexander, from Liberal, Kansas came and took him under his wing. “Bob turned the bank around. I learned a lot from him.” Chris said. He left there as Vice President and became Vice President/Lending Officer at Home State Bank in Hobart, Oklahoma where he worked for the next seven years. In 1994, he was recruited to be Senior Vice President at First State Bank and Trust in Tonganoxie, Kansas. It was there he met two very important bankers in his life, Bill New and Kent Needham. He calmly smiled and said, “I have been very fortunate to have several mentors in my life. My first mentor was my father. He was a very hard worker. He taught me that I probably could not outsmart people; I just had to outwork them.” His other mentors were Bob Alexander, Canadian State Bank; Bill New and Kent Needham, First State Bank & Trust, and Byron Thompson, Country Club Bank. As he sat back in his chair and smiled he said, “All great bankers and more, yet, all great human beings.” Donnelly joined Bank of the Prairie in 2010 as the bank’s Executive Vice President and Chief Lending Officer and assumed the role of President and CEO in May of 2013. He has served on the KBA Board of Directors as well as on the KBA Bank Management Committee. He volunteered to participate in a Bank of the Prairie’s draft horse is made of old and new gears, pulleys, mechanisms, and machines. It depicts determination, grit and hard work of the early prairie culture as well as today’s. Front row, left to right: Alissa Donnelly, Eric Donnelly, Susan Donnelly, Lauren Hulett. Back row, left to right: Gerad Deaver, Chris Donnelly, Derick Hulett.