The Evolution Continues

A few nights ago I was pondering my overall experiences with the Next Top Credit Union Exec competition and my work on the project I’ve been reporting on, which I’ve come to call “creating a sales environment in a culture of service and helping.” Over the past few months, I’ve been lucky enough to have people from inside and outside the credit union industry follow Aspire’s progress with this evolution. We’ve taken many steps so far to make this transition and still, the evolution continues. 

So far, we’ve focused mostly on lending-related issues. While building and growing a profitable loan portfolio will continue to be a major goal in our organization, we will also focus on ethically selling our deposit products and creating an outbound call center in our next steps of this project. Ultimately, we would like to be able to pre-approve members for loans with a firm offer of credit. To accomplish this without taking on unnecessary risk while ensuring we’re offering the products that will best help the member reach his or her financial goals, we will be doing extensive data mining to learn more about our membership and their wants and needs.      

I’ve also made new friends from within the industry who have a lot in common with me. We’re all young professionals, passionate about the credit union movement and we all want to be the Next Top Credit Union Exec! Shout out to all of the wonderful people I’m competing WITH (not against): Amanda Thomas (my “Crash the GAC” buddy), Devin Selte, Jay Hansen and Josh McAfee. You are all an inspiration to me and I’m truly honored to be amongst such an outstanding group of credit union professionals. Regardless of the results of this competition, I’m convinced that we will all be leading the credit union industry together one day in the not-so-distant future.

Everyone at CUES and Currency Marketing also deserves a shout out. Thank you, first of all, for creating this competition and for recognizing that there are many young leaders in this industry who are yearning to share their projects, ideas and visions with the credit union industry and the world! With the Next Top CU Exec search, you have given us a voice and a means to resonate with other leaders of the movement that we would not have had otherwise. Also, I have made several connections with other people in the movement that I likely would not have made if it was not for the recognition I’ve received as a contestant in the Next Top CU Exec search. 

Between the evolution that is taking place at my credit union and this competition itself, I have been able to focus on my professional and personal development in ways I never thought possible prior to now. Like creating a sales environment in a culture of service and helping, this is truly an evolutionary process for me and, like my project, this is just the beginning of a long road to success. The evolution continues… 

Alexia