Orv Kimbrough on impact banking, human potential, and regional prosperity.
Orv Kimbrough believes a financial institution is only as healthy as the community it serves. Since joining Midwest BankCentre as CEO in 2019 and becoming Chairman in 2020, Kimbrough has led the bank to deepen its commitment to values-based banking and shared prosperity—while tripling its net income.
Midwest BankCentre’s approach to impact banking is rooted in a simple belief: where you bank matters. Kimbrough believes financial institutions have a responsibility not only to safeguard deposits, but also to put capital to work in ways that strengthen the communities they serve. Through Midwest BankCentre’s model of local reinvestment, deposits help fuel opportunity for small businesses, nonprofits, faith-based organizations, affordable housing, and families across the St. Louis region.
Kimbrough explained that access to reasonably priced capital is an important component of community transformation, but it is most powerful when paired with strong community partners, supportive services, and a shared commitment to helping people reach their full potential. In that way, banks become part of a broader ecosystem working to create long-term prosperity for the region.
Kimbrough places Midwest BankCentre within a holistic ecosystem where organizations like Beyond Housing delve deep into essential needs such as housing and then wrap services around families as they work to improve their own well-being.
Beyond Housing also delivers perhaps the most crucial element of all: a vision that people can do better for themselves and their children.
“People have to have a vision for their lives,” Kimbrough said. “And if they don’t, they can borrow a vision from Beyond Housing.”
Kimbrough knows the challenges first hand. As he shared in a recent book Twice Over a Man: A Fierce Memoir of an Orphan Boy Who Doggedly Determined a Finer Life and on his website, he was born to a drug-addicted mother who died when he was 8 years old.
“There are conditions and challenges that stunt people’s growth,” Kimbrough said, “and from a dignity and humane standpoint, our objective is to remind people that they are not a function of their circumstances. They are not capped at their challenges. They have to see past all of that into capacity.”
In addition to Midwest BankCentre’s direct financial services to neighborhoods like North County, the bank also supports organizations like Beyond Housing in a myriad of other ways. For example, in 2025, Midwest BankCentre successfully secured $3.2 million in affordable housing grants through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines’s Competitive Affordable Housing Program. Beyond Housing is one of three local nonprofits to share the funds.
Since 2015, Midwest BankCentre has facilitated more than $18 million in FHLB Des Moines affordable housing grants for St. Louis nonprofits, improving living conditions for 841 low-income households.
Kimbrough’s personal connection to Beyond Housing dates back to his days as an intern at the ECHO Emergency Children’s Home, where he lived for a time during his childhood. He remembers meeting Beyond Housing President and CEO Chris Krehmeyer while giving a high-stakes presentation to a panel of people looking at the agency’s programs, finances, management, and other aspects of its operation. Krehmeyer was on the panel, and Kimbrough followed up with him after his college graduation.
“He’s always been a sound thought partner and a great mentor as it relates to leadership and community development,” Kimbrough said.
Kimbrough took a nontraditional path to his current leadership role. He was serving as an independent director on Midwest BankCentre’s board when the CEO position came open in 2018. “This job was not a slam dunk, for sure, because it wasn’t something that aligned with what I had experience in, but I really felt compelled to join the bank,” Kimbrough said.
“Part of what interested me in it was my background—I hadn’t seen anybody who looked like me in a top banking spot. The other motivator was my lived experience growing up in the foster care system in marginalized communities,” he said.
His background also includes a pattern of tackling new subject matter with enthusiasm and determination. “I studied business, theology, and social work—which gives you an insight into my curiosity,” Kimbrough said.
His curiosity continues to serve him well as Midwest BankCentre’s leader and as an advocate for the St. Louis region. “I find every day that I’m learning something new from the people I get to work alongside, both in the bank as well as in the community.”
Kimbrough looks forward to a future in which more of his fellow business leaders across the St. Louis metro area recognize that a commitment to structured involvement in our most marginalized communities will accelerate transformation. “My message to St. Louis is that you can’t separate North County from the rest of the region,” he said. “We are many neighborhoods, but one region.”
