Cheryl DeBoer Climbs From Bottom to Top

Basically a lifelong Michigander, except for a brief childhood stint in New Jersey, Cheryl DeBoer has a personal drive and pragmatic approach that allowed her to set her own goals on her own terms during a credit union career that has spanned four decades. DeBoer climbed nearly every rung on the credit union ladder – from working as a credit union lobby hostess in the 1970s as a teenager to becoming the first female CEO of the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based Advia Credit Union ($2.6 billion, 188,772 members) in 2004.

Now approaching 60, DeBoer recently announced her plans to retire from the credit union world by January 2023, and move away from the wicked Michigan winters to join her husband at their home in Florida. DeBoer admitted she’s lived a frugal life, worked extremely hard and has a healthy appreciation of life and death, since she lost her parents and brother at a young age.

“I sometimes say it’s morbid, like I have a morbid fear that I retire and die – so I need to retire young,” she said.

While her original plan was to become an attorney, she found a kinship within credit unions and worked various jobs such as lobby hostess at age 16 followed by teller at 18, then in the accounting department, as ATM department manager, as branch operations manager and eventually as CEO. She accomplished her goals by putting herself through school, and eventually law school, as a single mother. She was offended when people judged her and her career choices as a female; some believed she picked a career over family.

DeBoer sees it differently.

“I felt that I always could do the best for my family by ­continuing to progress and continuing to make sure that I was able to put food on the table,” DeBoer said.

During a 45-minute interview with CU Times, DeBoer offered her thoughts on the continued messaging problems of credit unions, growth strategies with mergers and acquisitions, her approach to leadership and the value of mentorships. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

CU Times: Has explaining the concept of credit unions become easier over the years?

DeBoer: No, it’s not any different. We still struggle with this … credit unions really still don’t have any more market share today than we did years ago. We’re all bigger. We’ve all grown, but so have all the big banks. And now we have fintechs and we have different types of competition, different disruptors in our environment than we did back then.

But no, honestly it took me 20 years to get my parents to move from Michigan National Bank. And I’m like, if I can’t even convince you, my own parents, how do I do this in the general market? Like, how do I convince people? What is our compelling reason?

People just don’t understand it still today. I believe to a great extent, some people still see us as small savings institutions with savings and checking.

In my opinion, after all these years, I think the struggle is still the same.

CU Times: What’s your approach to strategic growth and membership growth?

DeBoer: When I’m bringing over [members] one at a time it’s costly. It’s time consuming to convince people. Well, when I buy a bank, guess what? They all come over and it just happens in part of the transaction. And we convince them to give us a chance, see what our rates are like. And we’ve been very successful at that.

It’s much easier to buy or merge, and then you get the market, you get the loans, you get the customers who become members and staff by doing acquisitions.

I said to my board, when I first started, the goal was continuously making sure we’re growing the credit union. And there are numerous ways to do that because the bottom line with growth becomes better opportunities for both our membership and our staff. You know, we had 125 people [staff] when I started and now we have over 500. And just the talent that I’m able to acquire today at this size is very different than the talent you can acquire when you’re smaller.

CU Times: You were a CEO at a small credit union. What concerns do you have for the smaller credit unions?

DeBoer: I think the NCUA has been big on pushing and pushing small credit unions to do succession planning. And what they don’t understand is people don’t want that job anymore.

It’s a hard job to wear all the hats. The stress that I had at a small credit union I would say was tremendously more than it is here, because it was me and I had some people, I had good people don’t get me wrong; but here I have talent. I have people who know things and help me grow the credit union and do all these wonderful things that I couldn’t have done alone.

I love and support small credit unions too, as much as I can. We recycle our computers every three years. So if you need equipment that’s still good, I’m more than willing to donate it to smaller credit unions because they don’t have the resources; but I feel for them. All the rules and regulations, all those things we have to follow that I think of at this size entity where I have staff and talent to do that, the smaller credit unions are all having to do that more by themselves.

CU Times: What did you think when you became the first female CEO at Advia?

DeBoer: I don’t know that I really paid attention to that. I just knew that this board is going to give me a shot and I was appreciative of that. I thought hopefully I will do the things that they would like to see done at this credit union and lead in the positive fashion, always remembering my roots, of course. I think about it today, being a woman more in this environment, than I ever have. I see the number of women … there are of course tons of women at small credit unions, but when you get to this size the number is much, much smaller. It’s a balancing act. Women have to juggle their home responsibilities, the family responsibilities … you know, everything that’s going on, and I just think that’s still and will continue to always be a struggle for women.

CU Times: What’s your approach to leadership?

DeBoer: The thing I say the most is that I try to nurture and foster growth by learning and education … where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you want something and you are willing to do those things that it takes, you can do anything you want to do.

CU Times: What are your thoughts on mentorships?

DeBoer: I always look to people who I thought I could learn from in whatever fashion that was, and made sure that I tried to surround myself with those kinds of people. And I tell people here that if you aspire for a position, get to know some people in that position. Talk to them because you may find out it’s not really what you think it is, or ‘Yes I’m very excited about that!’ And I realize somebody like me, I put in a lot of years and it doesn’t happen overnight.

I told my board, my goal has always been to make sure that there’s succession planning throughout our organization. So everybody has to mentor, meaning that they have to start bringing up the next talent because you don’t know when there’ll be a need for that next level.

CU Times: What are your concerns for the future of credit unions?

DeBoer: My goal was always to stay relevant and to be thinking about the future. We foundationally have this great not-for-profit and membership-oriented organization. But moving forward we have to be competitive in a different fashion. This is again where size and scale all make the difference.

We’re paying attention to more global-type things because credit unions have to still compete moving forward, and it’s getting tougher and tougher. I used the analogy the other day with a staffer when we were talking about the balance sheet, income statement and those kinds of things. I said, ‘Think of things like Netflix choosing to raise their monthly streaming price by a dollar and they have millions of subscribers. Guess what? They just made millions of dollars more!’ We don’t have those kinds of products. Everything we have is very, very market driven. Our members are so sensitive to any type of fee scenario. So we only have so many ways to make money right now. The next generation has to develop things or come up with ways to make sure that they are able to compete.