Jim Cole
Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Jim is an attorney who was in private law practice in North Carolina before entering the trust industry with Wachovia Bank. After ten years in North Carolina, he moved to Kansas City and joined the Trust Department of Commerce Bank. Leaving Commerce Bank in 1983, he spent 17 years at the former First National Bank of Kansas City (now, Bank of America). Jim left Bank of America in 2000 to become the Executive Vice President in charge of the Trust Department of Country Club Bank (now Country Club Trust Company).
In Jim’s trust career, he has consulted with literally thousands of bank customers concerning estate and financial planning issues. He has spoken on numerous occasions at seminars and continuing education programs to lawyers, bankers, other trust professionals and lay groups.
In 2014, Jim was elected to the Kansas City Estate Planning Society's inaugural Hall of Fame for his contributions to Kansas City's estate planning community. He is a member of the Kansas City Estate Planning Society and the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association. He is past president of the Corporate Fiduciaries Association in Kansas City. For three years, he co-chaired Leave a Legacy, a community-wide initiative supporting planned gifts to not-for-profit organizations. He also is a Past President of the Mid-American Planned Giving Council and the founder of the annual Building Blocks of a Planned Giving Program. He currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Kansas City Estate Planning Symposium, and he was the first Chair for the Estate Planning “Fundamentals” Program for young lawyers and other estate planning professionals. He also currently serves on the Planned Giving Council for Children’s Mercy Hospital for which he is a past chair.
Other past board and advisory board involvement includes the Visiting Nurses Association and the Visiting Nurses Association Foundation, Shawnee Mission School District and the Shawnee Mission Education Foundation, University of Missouri – Kansas City, Park University, Truman Medical Center, Baptist Medical Center and Prime Health HMO.
Originally from upstate New York, Jim received his undergraduate degree from the State University of New York at Geneseo. He holds his law degree from Wake Forest University in North Carolina and has been admitted to practice law in Missouri, Kansas and North Carolina. He has also been admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States.