Dakota Prochnow

I'm Dakota Prochnow, I'm a commercial banking relationship manager in our Houston expansion market, and I've been with the bank for about five years now.

I had an opportunity to join the Ascend Training program here at the bank, which was a fantastic way to get to know everybody around the bank and kind of build a personal brand and understand what specific facet of the bank I was interested in joining.

You'd think a financial institution, a bank nearly 160 years old, might have a bit of a sleepy connotation, but truly it's a fantastic combination of that foundation that is nearly 160 years old with an amazing commitment to innovation. The culture is the pillar of everything this bank does and really values and empowers its employees to go and serve our clients. I think every company in the country, more or less, has a stated culture, but I'd venture a guess that very few of them practice that culture in the way that Commerce does.

We have the benefit of working with a very diverse group of people at the bank internally and externally, but internally having sort of a common language and common understanding of how to properly communicate with one another really helps us bypass some conflict that otherwise would be in place. So by learning how to interact with one another and communicate effectively and really listen to understand other folks' points of view, I think it positions us to be very successful.