By Roy Martinez
For Doug Bready the road to the top in the banking business has had its twists and turns. Bready, Regional President of Vantage Bank Texas in McAllen, started his journey in Orange, Texas. He then traded the city of Orange for the burnt orange of the University of Texas, where he earned his chemical engineering degree.
It was at UT that he met his best friend, Elaine — whose family ties would later lead him to the Rio Grande Valley, says Bready. “When I graduated, I realized I couldn’t leave my best friend here, so I asked her to marry me!” That was 36 years ago.
More twists and turns followed as Bready’s engineering career with DuPont took him to New Orleans, to West Virginia and was about to take him still further away from Texas. But a visit from his in-laws Glen and Rita K. Roney changed everything. His father-in-law planted a seed, suggesting the opportunities were great in McAllen to “do some different kind of engineering — land development.” So in 1981, he and Elaine moved to McAllen, where he started a new career as a real estate developer.
It was his real estate career that served as a business training ground for Bready. “Times were challenging in the economic climate of the 1980’s,” he said, pausing, as he recalled the days. “I wish I had taken more business courses in college. I knew little about business. I learned by running the development company.” Four years in real estate gave him important new tools for his next move.
In 1985, Texas State Bank needed a banker with real estate experience. This was the opening that vaulted Bready into the banking business. He also rounded out his business education at Southwestern Graduate School of Banking in Dallas, Texas. He learned that a key to success in banking was building lasting relationships with customers. “Such relationships are important in order to establish client trust and to understand a customer, and his or her business, on a level which is hard to describe.”
Bready’s parents instilled in him a vital lesson, “I learned that it was very important to care about other people and to understand things so thoroughly, that whatever decision I made, it could be properly implemented to achieve the desired results.”
When Texas State Bank was sold in 2008, the opportunity to join Vantage Bank Texas presented itself. Today, as Regional President of Vantage, Bready excitedly talks about the bank and its valley ties. He believes that Vantage is poised to grow and prosper because the bank combines the financial stability people seek with the highest level of expertise.
“Today, banking is different in a couple of respects. We at Vantage Bank recognize the value of our customer’s time; we travel to see them where they are, rather than expecting them to come to us. Second, with the internet, if you think about it, most people don’t go to the bank nearly as much as they used to. We are very technology oriented,” he continues, “we use the latest technologies to help our customers discover how to run their businesses better. That’s a key ingredient when working with Vantage Bank, where we act as a facilitator for each and every client.”
“Most importantly, Vantage Bank Texas wants to understand our clients’ businesses, so that we can better serve them. We pride ourselves on our company core values — integrity, people, and solutions. We strive to help our clients, our friends actually, run better businesses,” he said.
When asked what is most important in his life, Bready replied his wife, his two sons and his faith. “And, of course,” he added, “banking and serving the people of McAllen is what I look forward to every day.” TBB
