Today we’d like to introduce you to Tomasz Kwiatkowski.
Tomasz, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
First and foremost, thank you so much for having me and for the opportunity to share my story.
What may be interesting is that I am seven-feet tall. I was born and raised in Poland. My accent has improved although I used to sound like Borat. I grew up playing soccer before making a transition to track and field and finally, identifying my passion and love for the game of basketball.
I moved to the U.S. as a first-generation immigrant in 2006 at the age of 19 by myself to pursue a better quality of life and my dreams associated with playing basketball. My first year in 2006-2007, I spent in Maine attending Lee Academy Prep School to fulfill all the academic requirements to become eligible and earn an athletic scholarship in college. Simultaneously, the team I was on played basketball across the greater New England area to get exposure to U.S. Division 1 Universities. During that time, I was fortunate to get recruited by Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, TX. I ended up earning a full scholarship from that institution and coming to Dallas in 2007. During my time there, I was fortunate to earn a BBA degree in Marketing. I started my corporate career at EY in their Global Incentives & Tax Credits practice in 2011. A year later, I transitioned back to school to get my Master’s degree in Dispute Resolution and Conflict Management and work on campus in various external relations roles. Once I finished school, I ended up in SaaS software sales traveling across the state of Texas, Colorado, and Oklahoma to target new clientele amongst upstream oil and gas companies. When the oil and gas downturn hit, I joined PlainsCapital Bank in April 2016 after they gave me a great opportunity to work in Frisco, TX to help expand that market.
In my role as a Business Development Executive I am responsible for generating commercial lending leads and increasing depository volume growth through extensive outside sales and community building efforts. In addition, I promote and expand PlainsCapital Bank’s footprint in the Frisco Market, throughout Collin County and North Texas geographical area. I strive to establish business partnerships with local businesses, sports organizations, and charitable organizations. Lastly, I utilize social media platforms such as LinkedIn for content creation and brand building to give back, build a better corporate brand and drive new business.
In addition to my day-to-day duties, I dedicate a lot of time to non-profit world, kids and the opportunities to give back. I am involved extensively in several local non-profits such as Boys & Girls Clubs of Collin County, American Heart Association and Project Unity.
As a hobby, I host “The Tomasz Show” podcast that features community leaders, entrepreneurs and influential figures. I have been fortunate to develop relationships with many inspirational people on a daily basis and came to the conclusion that I would like to document that journey for the benefit of the younger generation. The episodes are available on iTunes, Spotify, etc. and highlight respective guests’ stories and their particular growth pillars that helped them get to where they are today. My objective is to help listeners extract a lot of value around the areas of personal and professional development.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There is a quote that I like a lot: “A smooth road never makes you a perfect driver”. I genuinely believe that has a direct correlation to the life we live.
There were many obstacles and challenges I faced and I think the following 3 had the biggest impact on me:
At the age of 16, I was diagnosed with an enlarged thyroid and a heart arrhythmia. My heart would race to over 200 beats per minute during light workouts. The doctors wanted to shut my basketball career down. I was told I could never play basketball again unless I underwent two medical procedures with emphasis on the heart. After the consultations with my family, I successfully underwent the thyroidectomy and cardiac ablation in Poland. Today I am a 100% healthy man and without the medical expertise from those doctors, I would not have played basketball and ended up living and working in the U.S. today.
I was fortunate to accomplish a lot of from the basketball perspective in Poland. I was a starter and a part of the Junior Polish Championship Team in 2006. When I got to the U.S., I realized that I am no longer the tallest or the biggest. I was definitely not the one that could jump the highest. The competition was much tougher. I ended up not playing as much at SMU as I imagined. If anybody ever played sports, they know how challenging that is. I had folks advising me to transfer, seek an opportunity to play somewhere else, etc. It is so easy to do these days. To me, I looked it at as giving up, quitting on my teammates. I decided to fight through the adversity, earn my business degree and earn a chance to play. Although I did not earn more minutes, I felt that I earned a lot mentally by pushing through all the way to the end.
I lived in the U.S. for 13 years. I have never thought that the path to stay here permanently would be that difficult. I originally thought that if I am fortunate to have 2 degrees from SMU and if I am a taxpayer and a contributor to the local economy that was good enough to stay. I was wrong. There were two times when my back was against the wall and I thought I would have to go back to Poland. That said, that because of the generosity of many people around me, my determination and a level of hustle, I always somehow managed to prevail. After all, I was fortunate to get married and my wife is a U.S. citizen. For that reason, I was able to claim permanent residency and peace of mind after long 13 years. My biggest lessons of patience and resilience to date.
All right – so let’s talk business. Tell us about PlainsCapital Bank – what should we know?
I think it would be a great idea to highlight some history of PlainsCapital Bank (PCB) and where we are today . The organization was founded in 1988 by former Hilltop Holdings Vice Chairman and Co-CEO Alan White and a group of investors who raised the capital to acquire Plains National Bank, a Lubbock financial institution with one branch and $198.8 million in assets. Alan, who retired in 2019, partnered with a team of young bankers who dreamed of bringing relationship banking to Lubbock, and they began to grow the bank one relationship at a time. The Bank has expanded to Dallas by opening the first branch in 1999. Today, PCB sits at about $10 billion in assets and is a part of a thriving financial services parent company, Hilltop Holdings. The organization pursues a community banking strategy in over 60 locations across the state of Texas with the main focus on commercial and private banking. PCB strongly believes in its competitive business model of experiencing big city services with a small town treatment and always remains true to its formula for success — taking care of employees, customers, communities, and shareholders.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
I genuinely believe that there are several characteristics that could qualify as essential to success. Getting exposed to a lot of adversity early on in your career, expanding your communication skills and building relationships withpeople that are smarter, more experienced and wiser than you, could at least set up a great foundation. That being said, the world is constantly changing and new technologies are being deployed to our disposal. Keeping an open mind, not allowing for complacency to settle and continuously striving to learn new skills will certainly broaden your perspective, diversify your skillset and make you more valuable over time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.plainscapital.com
- Email: contact@plainscapital.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plainscapital
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plainscapital
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/plainscapital
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