2024 40 Under 40: Thomas Ganaden

When Thomas Ganaden last year joined State Bank of Southwest Missouri, he didn’t bring a lot of banking experience with him. He’d worked a year for Great Southern Bank back in 2018-19. But leaders in his new company saw his potential and quickly gave him a big task him: to develop from scratch processes and tools to analyze commercial borrowers.

“It was an intimidating task at first since the average tenure of our other bank officers is 20-plus years,” says Ganaden, a 28-year-old vice president. “With the assistance of other professionals and various resources, I was able to jump right in.”

He ended up co-leading a team to rewrite the bank’s entire commercial lending policy – and also closed $9.3 million in loans in his first nine months.

Outside of the bank, he serves at High Street Church in the young adult ministries and as a small group leader, as well as coordinating a church-sponsored 5K race called One Sole Purpose.

Your first job? Shoveling snow. Me and my buddies would be on-call during snowstorms, and we would get called to start shoveling at any time in the night. What I remember most was that it was hard work, it paid well and we would always make a trip to Waffle House when we finished. 

Favorite hobby or creative outlet? I love hunting of almost any kind. 

Favorite local food order? The Triple Chocolate Concrete from Andy’s Frozen Custard.