Bayard Clark, J.D., Ph.D., joined the History Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2013 as Affiliated Faculty teaching courses in the History of Capitalism in America, the History of the American Constitution, U.S. Business History, and Museum Economics. Immediately prior he served for a year as Chief Financial Officer of the Missouri History Museum,
In May 2013, he earned a doctorate in American Studies at St. Louis University and previously a Juris Doctorate at the same school after having begun his law studies at Emory University. Clark graduated from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 1967 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in American history. There, he was a Morehead Scholar, a recipient of a NROTC scholarship, and a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity. After graduation, he served four years as a lieutenant in the United States Navy before beginning a 38-year career in commercial banking in St. Louis. His last posting in the Navy was on the staff of the Commander of the Amphibious Forces, Atlantic. For service in this capacity the Secretary of the Navy awarded him the Navy Commendation medal.
Clark retired in 2010 after spending the last 34 years of his banking career with Commerce Bancshares, a regional banking company with $32 billion in assets. For the last fourteen years at Commerce, he was executive vice president and chief financial officer with added responsibilities for mergers and acquisitions, investor relations, strategic planning, real estate and asset/liability management. Clark was the point on more than 40 bank acquisitions, which helped create the bank's current five-state lower Midwest footprint. During his stint as CFO the bank was financially strong enough during the 2008-2009 financial crisis to decline government money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP); in fact, Commerce was the largest bank in the country, by market capitalization, to make this decision. He was recognized by the St. Louis Business Journal with its 2009 CFO of the Year award.
Dr. Clark served on numerous civic and community boards during his career. He is a past participant in Leadership St. Louis and for eight years was a member of its Board of Directors, serving four of those years as Treasurer. Most recently, he served as a member of the Pierre Laclede Honors College Leadership Council at UMSL, as an Executive Fellow in UMSL’s Business School, and for nine years as a trustee of Webster University. His research interests include the history of economic development in America’s antebellum West.
He is married, has three children, six grandchildren and resides in Clayton. In his spare time, he is a dedicated trekker having ascended major mountains on five continents and with his wife, has explored the entire east coast of the United States and the Bahamas aboard their power boat.
