Classification Talk for Ryan Gerstner

Ryan Gerstner
Account Executive at Blue Valley Insurance
Rotary member for 4+ years

I grew up on a farm near Frankfort, KS, which is about 35 miles northeast of Manhattan. The Frankfort area was the birth place of such luminaries like Greg Musil and…..well, that’s about it. Frankfort was a great place to grow up and will always be a special place for me. I have a lot of great memories and all the success my teams had in sports have unquestionably shaped my outlook and approach to life. Besides my parents, I have two brothers and two sisters. One brother lives in Mission, KS and the other is finishing up at KU before taking a job in downtown KC. One sister is a sophomore at KU and the other is completing her senior year at Frankfort and will hopefully make a good college selection like most of her siblings did. In August 2008, I got married to my beautiful wife Kay who is finishing her last year as Chief Resident in UMKC’s Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency program. For the time being we live in a condo in downtown Kansas City, which gives me a small taste of the urban lifestyle that KC needs a lot more of to attract more talented young people to the metro.

After Frankfort I moved onto my beloved University of Kansas where after a two year detour in computer engineering, I found my passion for business receiving a B.S. in Business Administration. I graduated right after 9/11 in December 2001 and if not for that tragedy, I likely would have ended up doing investment banking in New York for at least a while. Instead, I started in UMB’s management trainee program in January 2002. After 8 months of credit analyst work, I spent a couple of months in loan administration/loan review before Bryan Biggs hired me to be a loan officer in UMB’s Overland Park office. I have been fortunate to work for several quality financial institutions.

Shortly after Bryan moved to Metcalf Bank, I moved onto the Bank of Blue Valley where I did a blend of Commercial & Industrial, real estate, and small business lending. After a relatively brief term at Blue Valley, a long time friend hired me away to work on larger loan relationships at Commercial Federal Bank, which before I even started was acquired by Bank of the West (BOTW). In my 3.5 years at BOTW, I specialized in large commercial real estate loan relationships (typically $5 million and up). It has been really enjoyable to see how many of the largest projects in the metro have been put together. In December 2008, I got my property, casualty, life, and health licenses, and I accepted an opportunity to sell personal and commercial insurance lines with a college friend of mine at Blue Valley Insurance in Overland Park.

In addition to many real estate related organizations, I serve on the Kansas City chapter board of the KU Alumni Association. I am a proud Rotarian and have enjoyed meeting and working with so many quality people on so many causes that positively affect people around the world.