CUES Podcast

CUES Podcast 164: What It Takes To Be a Great CEO In this CUES Podcast episode, host Carla Kalogeridis welcomes guests Deedee Myers, Ph. D., CEO of DDJ Myers , and Peter Myers, Senior Vice President at DDJ Myers, to discuss what it takes to be a great CEO in the credit union industry.  The conversation covers several key aspects of CEO selection, onboarding, and performance. You’ll discover:  The...

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, guest Lee Wetherington, senior director of corporate strategy at CUES Supplier member Jack Henry , discusses the impact that artificial intelligence is already having on credit unions. Two areas that will be improved by AI are member experience and service and fraud mitigation, he says. “The top two use cases are member service—specifically, in short to mid-ter...

In this episode of the CUES podcast we talk about payment trends and strategies with guest Tede Forman, president of payment solutions at CUES Supplier member Jack Henry. He leads the company’s strategy and solutions for payments and spoke about why Jack Henry actively participated with the Federal Reserve to help develop its real-time payments network, FedNow. “We wanted to offer this opportunity...

In this episode we talk about human-centered leadership. Returning to the show as our guest is CUES’ own VP/Consulting Services Lesley Sears, who heads up our CUES Consulting offerings. She explains the difference between a business-centered culture and a human-centered one and shares why centering your people will ultimately be better for the business. “In business-centered leadership, you'r...

Knowledge is key to success in business lending, according to Jim Devine, co-founder, CEO and chairman of Hipereon, a financial training company based in Washington state, and lead faculty member for CUES’ School of Business Lending , which starts April 1. In this latest episode of the CUES Podcast, Devine says his aim with the school each year is to “make sure ... that everybody going out the bac...

Fintech, including artificial intelligence, is at the top of many credit union leaders’ worry list for 2024. The guest in this episode of the CUES Podcast, Scott Snyder, has ideas for how to approach these concerns that should be steadying. A recognized thought leader in technology and innovation, Snyder has more than 30 years of experience in emerging technologies, business strategy and innovatio...

The 2023 CUES Emerging Leader says the best advice he got about the CUES Emerge program was not to go into it with a preconceived notion about what his business case for the competition phase would be. In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Jayde DelGado, CCM, branch manager for $1.8 billion Harborstone Credit Union , Lakewood, Washington, tells the story of a 1:1 meeting with his CEO, CUES member G...

Resilience is “about being tough, but it’s also about being flexible, and truly resilient leaders know when to be which,” Heather McKissick, I-CUDE, says in the latest episode of the CUES Podcast. McKissick is the CEO of CUES. The decision about when to be tough and when to be flexible, McKissick explains, “depends on the forces that we are up against—because some things you can predict because of...

Erica Taylor says her best advice for credit unions on how to best further their DEI journeys is to listen, really listen, to staff and their communities.  “Start with listening and truly listening to hear..., listening to understand people,” says Taylor, VP/communications and community relations for $20 billion Golden 1 Credit Union, headquartered in Sacramento, California, which was named the in...

In this episode, Lesley Sears talks about the implications of research showing that newly promoted employees are more likely to leave your organization—and what you can do to mitigate their flight risk. “When we promote somebody, we’re assuming we’re building loyalty,” says Sears, CUES’ VP/consulting. “We’re … really feeding into and developing this person. But statistics have shown us that that’s...

Terrance Williams says it was his dad who taught him to be a leader who listens, an intern who asked him how he knows insurance is still the right career for him and his parents together who instilled in him his mantra of “paying it forward.” In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Williams, the new president/CEO of CUESolutions provider TruStage ®, illustrates his leadership style by describing his...

Chris Jones and his team have formed a new company named to represent well what they do. Jones is a senior benefits consultant and partner in PARC Street Partners . PARC stands for plan, attract, retain and compensate—all key elements of the company’s work to help credit unions create a succession plan, attract, retain and compensate key executives so that both the executives and the credit union...

Hybrid, remote and in-person work gets talked about a lot these days. The conversations are often about which companies are staying remote, which are calling every employee back to the office, and which jobs can truly be done effectively from someplace other than a physical location. But a topic that’s been less talked about so far is the impact of our new choices about where we work in terms of c...

From a past episode of the CUES Podcast, we already know that Scott Hackworth is an able data guy. In this show, he talks about the compensation data and corresponding trends that stand out in this year’s CUES Executive Compensation Survey and CUES Employee Salary Survey . He also describes the suite of data analysis tools included in the CUES compensation surveys and how they may be helpful to bo...

Peter Glyman finds it fun to say “yes” to a fintech integration with a Jack Henry product. Glyman is managing director of corporate strategy at Jack Henry , a CUES Supplier member and the sponsor of this episode. In the show, he talks about his fintech experience as the co-founder in 2006 of personal financial management tool Geezeo, which Jack Henry acquired in 2019 and subsequently integrated wi...

In the latest episode of the CUES Podcast, Lesley Sears defines the differences between climate and culture and explains how they together create the workplace your staff members experience every day.  VP/consulting for CUES, Sears then rises to the challenges of describing each of the nine elements of climate in two minutes or less. In that short span, she defines each, explains what to look for...

According to Deedee Myers, Ph. D., in this latest episode of the CUES Podcast, more and more CEOs are looking at their organizations and asking themselves, “What does it need to be in the future?” The answer to that question, she says, has to be put in the context of unprecedented times with the hybrid remote work environment taking hold and the need for leadership skills really changing. “As huma...

Omar Jordan says a mantra he lives by personally and professionally is, this one from Tony Robbins: "Stop being afraid of what could go wrong, and start being excited of what could go right."  As founder/CEO of the credit union service organization Coviance , Des Moines, Iowa, Jordan believes that credit unions would benefit from not being afraid to take a risk to see what good could com...

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Lesley Sears says she loves the commercial in which “Polly Pratz wore many hats.” While the commercial is for an online university, Sears loves the many hats idea as it relates to having an organization-wide skills taxonomy—a system for deeply understanding the skills of each employee and the organization overall.  Having a skills taxonomy can help an organizat...

A decade before CUES member Dana DeFilippis, CCE, became CEO of Merck, Sharp & Dohme Federal Credit Union in Chalfont, Pennsylvania, she decided she wanted the job. Coming to credit unions from public accounting, DeFilippis prepared for the CEO role by adding leadership of the IT department to her duties as VP/finance of the $825 million institution, excelling at opportunities her CEO gave her...

Tyler Leet takes credit union cybersecurity very seriously. For him, it’s not just a job. It’s a duty. “We have an obligation,” says Leet, director of risk and compliance services for the regulatory compliance group at CSI , Paducah, Kentucky, the sponsor of the latest episode of the CUES Podcast. “Businesses have an obligation, credit unions have an obligation to keep their members secure, their...

The 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations are central to the corporate social responsibility program for $8 billion United Nations Federal Credit Union, New York. These goals such things as living wages, clean water, ending poverty and empowering women and girls, explains Yma Gordon in this episode of the CUES Podcast. Gordon is VP/Corporate Social Responsibility and Impact for UN...

In this episode of the CUES Podcast, Alex Johnson underscores the idea that knowledge is power when it comes to credit unions' success in understanding and making decisions about fintech. The creator and author of the Fintech Takes newsletter, Johnson describes ways credit union leaders can track trends in fintech and even recommends several of his favorite fintech resources.  In the show, Jo...

This episode of the CUES Podcast covers the key connection between skilled and authentic leadership and management and organizational and employee well-being. “This is really what we need to focus on ... as leaders and as organizations,” says guest Laurie Maddalena, MBA, CSP, CPCC, CEO of Envision Excellence . “How do we support the well-being of our cultures and create cultures that cultivate wel...

Bruce Bauer understands how credit unions sometimes push establishing a charitable donation account down on their list of priorities. But Bauer, an executive benefits specialist with CUESolutions provider Cuna Mutual Group , rather wishes they wouldn’t.  In this episode, Bauer explains that credit unions that have charitable donation accounts can get additional revenue from the same budget line it...