R. Crosby Kemper III served as the chairman and CEO of UMB Financial Corporation and UMB Bank, n.a. from 2001-2004. Prior to that, he served in other senior positions with UMB Bank in Saint Louis and Kansas City, as the executive director of the British Institute of the United States in New York, and as an English instructor at the University of Sichuan in Chengdu, China. He was appointed by Gov. Bob Holden to chair the blue-ribbon Citizens Commission on the Future of Higher Education in Missouri. He also founded successful, free, outdoor Shakespeare festivals in Kansas City and Saint Louis. He is vice chairman of the Truman Presidential Library and Institute Board of Directors. He is on the Board of Trustees for the Kansas City Symphony and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the private, nonprofit corporation that has owned and operated Monticello since 1923. He has also served on the boards of the Jefferson National Park Association, Westminster College in Fulton, MO, and Webster University in Saint Louis. He edited the book Winston Churchill: Resolution, Defiance, Magnanimity. Kemper received a bachelor’s degree in history from Yale University.