About 15 years ago, Mark Wade faced unexpected challenges that redefined his purpose. “I had a brother who passed away in 2007, another brother who passed away in 2008, and my wife was diagnosed with stage-three breast cancer in 2008,” says Wade, the top executive at Bank of Texas. As a way of dealing with tragedy, he threw himself into his work—and emerged with a new mindset. “I want to be known, at the end of the day, for hiring great people, developing great people, and running a good bank,” he says.
Wade will have ample opportunity for fulfillment in his new role at Bank of Texas, which he joined in 2001, just 12 days before 9/11. He was leaving a vice president job at Bank One (which Chase later acquired in a $58 billion deal) and submitted his resignation to his boss at the time, Norm Bagwell. “When I left Bank One, Norm told me, ‘Hey, you’re making a big mistake.’ Seven years later, Norm joined us,” Wade laughs. During that seven-year interim, Wade ran Bank of Texas’ corporate banking division and started heavy equipment and healthcare banking groups.
When Bagwell was named CEO in 2008, Wade was promoted to president and chief operating officer. “I ran North Texas,” Wade says.
All the while, he was learning from Bagwell, who remained in the captain’s chair for the next 14 years. “Norm prepared me for this role,” Wade says. “He knew he would step aside and do something different within the company. I look back on it, and I can see that now.” Wade credits Bagwell with teaching him how to work with people, see all sides of a situation, and where to spend his time as a leader. “I’ve known him for 27 years,” he says. “I’ve worked for him for 20 of those. A lot of who I am today and the things I’ve learned are because of Norm—there’s no question about that.”
In 2019, executives at Oklahoma-based parent, BOK Financial, asked Wade to transition from his role as president and COO of Bank of Texas to overseeing commercial banking across the organization. While running 10 markets in seven states, he helped integrate acquisitions in Colorado and Arizona into BOK, among other accomplishments over the past four years.
Now, as Bagwell steps into a chairman role and Wade takes the helm, he hopes to work through a list of goals he made with his predecessor last year. “I’ve always been pretty simple-minded from the standpoint of putting your goals and where you are trying to get to on a single piece of paper,” he says. Topping the list are continuing to build company culture and collaboration, increasing effective sales growth, and augmenting loan growth.
Wade also hopes to expand the bank’s market share in Texas and business in Arkansas for BOK Financial, which has a total of $45 billion in assets. “We are only in the northwest corner of Arkansas, and it’s not a big piece of the puzzle, but it’s an important piece of the puzzle,” Wade says. “The majority of the growth [opportunities are] here in Texas.”
Bank of Texas has offices in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston, and recently added a San Antonio outpost. “We view it as a market—from a commercial standpoint, from a treasury management standpoint, from a wealth standpoint—where who we are, and how we go about business, will fit very well there,” Wade says.
As he continues to drive growth for his company, Wade will rely on the tenacity he developed during the personal crises he faced. “I’m not the smartest person in the room, but I’m going to outwork people,” Wade says. “I’m going to have grit, perseverance, and passion.”
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