40 Under 40 Alumni Spotlight: Brent Baldwin, 2006

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Then: Senior vice president, UMB Bank
Now: Executive vice president, Commerce Bank

In the nearly 20-year span since being honored for Springfield Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 awards, Brent Baldwin has worked at three companies, starting with UMB Bank, then BancorpSouth and most recently Commerce Bank.

“I’ve been in commercial banking all that time,” says Baldwin, 54, who was named executive vice president at Kansas City-based Commerce Bank’s Springfield operation in 2018 and now works with a “group of high-quality clients to drum up business for the bank.”

Another constant for Baldwin has been his community work, and his recent civic highlights include serving the past two years as co-chair of United Way of the Ozarks’ community campaign.

“From the time I came to Springfield in 1999 to the present, each of my employers has been very supportive of community involvement,” Baldwin says. “With the United Way, that was actually one of the first organizations I got involved with when I first moved to Springfield.”

Advice to young professionals? Young folks tend to get a little bit impatient and want to know what’s next. I think if they do the best they can in the place they’re in, that the next step will take care of itself.