Alumni | Business and IndustryAugust 07, 2024

Cashing in Education for Career Success

Written By: Ian Silvester

In the heart of Ozark, Arkansas, Tracie Walden, ’96, found herself at home in a place she once swore she’d never be. With a view of the Arkansas River, the four-story operations hub for Bank OZK doesn’t have a grandiose façade, nor was it built on a street named Wall. Instead, the building sits on the corner of Commercial and Seventh streets, acting as the heartbeat for more than 240 locations across nine southeastern states.

As she enters the building with a secure key card, the company’s operations hub doesn’t scream office or bank, for that matter. It says home. It’s been where Walden planted her roots for nearly three decades dating back to two years after graduating from Westark College with an associate degree in accounting – a discipline she became passionate about in high school.

With her background, banking might sound like a natural transition, but a work-study in high school already had Walden second-guessing things.

“Instead of going to class every Friday, I went to work and was placed at a bank – not Bank OZK – for accounting,” she explained. “I met their head accountant; she spent about half an hour with me, telling me what her job was, and then she sent me to the filing department. I spent the rest of my senior year filing physical signature cards in numerical order in file cabinets. At that point, I said, ‘I will never work at a bank.’”

Walden planned to leave banking behind after high school when she moved from Beebe to Ozark and enrolled at Westark College. She didn’t lose her passion for accounting after the disappointing work-study, and she pursued it as a major. However, what she planned to do with her degree didn’t materialize quite how she thought.

“When I finished with the associates, life started happening for me – family, children – I just went straight into the workforce,” Walden said as she recalled completing the degree at the pace she could after attending part-time and full-time between 1992 and 1996 while navigating the sudden death of her father.

She found a job working for a construction company, and things went smoothly until the business closed unexpectedly. With a young family at home, Walden turned back to the industry she swore she’d never return to.

“A job with stability was my number one concern, and what better place to work than a bank, like OZK, that’s been here forever,” she said with a laugh. “So, that’s how I got back in, and now I see the better side of things.”

Walden returned to the banking world, working in branch support, where she ordered customer checks. But as someone who “just can’t sit still,” Walden made it her goal to learn all she could about banking.

“I learned absolutely everything I could,” she said. “When I finished my job, I would ask my coworkers what I could help with or if they could teach me about what they were doing. It was a small team, so I just learned as much as I could. Over the years, when (Bank OZK) had needs for somebody to do this or that, I was always open to the possibilities and trying new and different things.”

In the years since, Walden jokes that she has done just about everything involved with Bank OZK’s operations. Her willingness to take on a new challenge at one point sent her to a banking technology and operations course through the University of Georgia. She might not have completed a bachelor’s degree, but Walden said she is “very proud” of the banking school degree she earned.

Today, Walden is the managing director for deposit operations for the largest bank in Arkansas and one of the top-performing banks in the entire country – a much different role than filing signature cards and more fulfilling, she says. She credits her determination to learn new skills and a change of heart with helping her find her home at Bank OZK.

“Don’t stereotype what you think banking jobs are because banking is so much more,” she said with a grin. From IT, customer support, fraud management, and human resources to face-to-face interactions with tellers, there’s a little something for everyone in banking, Walden asserted.

But sometimes, “you’ve just got to be at the right place at the right time, and you’ve got to prepare yourself for that opportunity.”

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