We spent some time with Anderson in mid-August to learn how she's settling into her new role and her plans for BECU. Responses have been lightly edited for space and clarity.

CU Times: How has the role been going so far, and what have you been prioritizing?

Anderson: You know, what's exciting about this role is, one I'm a first-time CEO, two I'm in the credit union movement for the first time, and three it's my first time at BECU and here in the Pacific Northwest. So it's a lot of firsts for me. It has been a wonderful time to get started, I've had some really good and sage advice from mentors and other CEOs, and I've spent a lot of time with McKinsey's book "CEO Excellence." So I felt like I was coming in with some level of preparation in addition to 30-plus years in financial services.

I would say the first six, seven months or so have really been about listening and learning. I did 30-plus deep dives with the organization, used that time to get to know the team and have them get to know me, and learned a lot about the business. The second thing I did was begin to understand the movement. It was very clear when I started using language like 'profitability' and 'ROA,' and people very quickly suggested I use some different language. It's helped me to understand that the movement is in fact very, very different. Our return is around return to member, not necessarily return on assets, and that was a very big shift and pivot, but one that I quite relished. The third thing was getting to know my board – I have a new kind of boss and leader, a board. I'm so excited about this particular board, they are encouraging, engaging, experienced in their own right, and they have a lot of support and commitment for this organization.

In terms of priorities, there are four that we are really focused on at the moment. The first is, we set a new vision and strategy for the organization. It was 100% grounded in what has been BECU's purpose forever, which is around assisting our members with their financial well-being and supporting them in our communities. In doing so, it really helped me get to know and understand our members better – their needs, their desires, their aspirations – and that helps me understand how to point that strategy at the right segments, and deliver the right bodies of work for our current 1.4 million members and those who will come.

The second big strategic priority is organizing ourselves for success. And if you think about it, there are different ways to organize. Today we're probably organized around talent and skill set, so people in roles who have certain capabilities, and the organization can look a little bit disjointed. Where we're going is to organize around key strategic priorities. So we have a line of business leader, a digital and member experience leader, an analytics and business delivery leader – instead of organizing around skill set we're organizing around how we want the business to run.

Anderson (center) poses for a photo with fellow BECU employees. (Credit/BECU)

Third, we're creating a clear execution path, and this is all about prioritization and focus. There are many, many things we want to do, and many, many things we're excited about, but we needed to be a bit more planful and structured in our approach to execution. There are things we must do because they're required of us as a regulated financial institution. There are foundational things upon which we build solid capabilities and then there are innovative things we want to do that really start to reimagine how we serve our members and communities. And that's how we've started to create prioritization, and get projects in the right buckets and capacity assigned to those things, and I believe we will execute much faster and cleaner than we've been able to before.

The fourth thing is inspiring or re-inspiring our team members around culture. If you think about any organization over the course of the last three to four years, whether it's the pandemic, social unrest or a new social contract in the way we work, everything has changed. And now on top of that, we're adding a new CEO who has a new vision and strategy. So this is about getting people excited about where we're headed, inspired to double and triple down on our purpose, and really get ready to move and execute in the way that we plan to go.

CU Times: When your CEO appointment was announced, you said BECU's "purpose aligns with my core passion of financial well-being." Can you elaborate on that?

Anderson: To me financial well-being is a critical and central ingredient in the lives of people who are trying to create their own path and a path for their families. I certainly saw my parents navigate and manage around their financial well-being and assets. My mom worked at a hospital and had a credit union, and she would always tuck a little money away. So when we had a school project or field trip, or I needed a new uniform, we'd say, 'Come on, let's go to the credit union,' and that's where she'd find her rainy-day savings for these kinds of purposes. I also saw what financial access did for our family, the ability to make sure we had access to groceries to get food on the table and cars to get us to and from school and work. The financial support to have those things matters greatly. To me, the fact that as a society we are still dealing with a lack of financial access and well-being, I think we have to solve that problem. The longer I've stayed in the financial services space, the longer I've become committed to trying to do my very best to alleviate this problem. And that's where BECU comes in. It's purpose is so clear around this work. Every day, employees show up thinking about, 'What can I do in the financial best interest of my members, and how can I help them along their journey from access, to health, to prosperity, to freedom?' I believe credit unions are well-positioned and have a special place in the ecosystem to take on this work. Because of the cooperative model, we have the ability to be patient partners with our members over the long-term. We don't have to worry about quarter to quarter earnings or P/E ratios or shareholders – our one and only focus is our member.

CU Times: How is BECU managing things like remote work, hybrid work and the return to office since the pandemic?

Anderson: While many of our employees continue to serve members in our Neighborhood Financial Centers, other employees currently operate in a flexible, hybrid environment. Like many organizations, we continue to evaluate our strategy moving forward. We have intentionally taken our time and approached the work by first understanding the needs and concerns of our employees. We did this by conducting a series of listening sessions earlier this year. We are also exploring more opportunities for meeting in-person to drive connectedness and collaboration across the credit union. Our goal is to introduce a structure that will allow employees to continue to have the flexibility they've come to enjoy, while also creating the level of connection and engagement that will drive our organization forward.

CU Times: What does a typical work day look like for you? How do you manage your time and create work-life balance?

Anderson: It's funny, I was just saying to someone that I should probably get a time management coach, because I bet you I could do this better! I like to do everything, so I want to have every meeting, every conversation and all that. So I can't really talk you through a typical day because they are all very different, but I can tell you about components of my day. What's interesting is my day is starting to align around some key categories.

The first thing, and I actually learned this between my last job and this job, is that self-care matters a ton. I get up around 4:30, I exercise and I have a 'moment of devotion,' because that gets me in the right mindset for the day. Then a big chunk of my day is around business updates. I do deep dives with my teams, business reviews, financial updates, risk reviews, all the things that help me understand how the business is performing and whether we're on track. The next big bucket is things that I call communications and health of the organization. These are my one-on-ones, spending time with teams, this week for example I'm spending time with our SVPs and VPs, hearing what's on their minds. And then we do recognition team events. So all of these things allow us to communicate in two ways – how am I feeling, and what do I need? And I'm listening as much as I'm delivering.

The third piece is around relationship building, not only with my board, but by meeting all the trade associations. We just had a great meeting with GoWest and AACUC. And people have been more than welcoming, just fantastic.

And what probably clutters my calendar a fair amount but is a place that I'm committed to spending time, is mentoring others and giving back. Over the years I have developed a followership of people I've worked with and met, and when they reach out for a quick chat or they have a question, I find the time, because it's so important that I give the benefits of everything I've received to the next generation.

Anderson (front row, third from right), celebrates the grand opening of BECU's new financial center in the Columbia City neighborhood of Seattle. (Credit/BECU)

CU Times: What career advice would you give your younger self?

Anderson: The first would be leaning into your authentic self, and learning how to tell your story. I think we feel like, 'My work is going to speak for itself, I'm going to tick off the boxes and do what I've been asked to do.' But you also have to tell people the impact that you provide on that organization. What did you do? What did you deliver? What were your results? People often say, 'How do I get a sponsor, or how do I make sure that my manager notices me?' The story you tell is that story that says, I can get from an assignment or an idea all the way through to execution and impact, and that's the value that I bring. And notice me for that, recognize me for that, and allow me to continue to grow.

CU Times: Three women, including you, now lead three out of the top five credit unions by asset size. What are your thoughts on that?

Anderson: It matters greatly. It's important for the industry, for members, for people trying to decide whether the credit union movement is something they want to join. I think it's important for them to see diverse representation at the top of all credit unions, but certainly the largest ones. Given the amount of response, reaction and welcoming that I received, I realized how important it was for the BECU board to have made such a bold and progressive decision, and I hope that their decision leads to others like it.

Leadership around this topic starts at the top. Some of the boards, which are quite frankly still very homogenous, need to start to diversify themselves, and then that will lead to diversity of leadership at the C-suite level, and then I guarantee you that leads to diversity throughout the organization. So many organizations talk about, well, we're creating a pipeline, we're going to build it from the bottom up, and we've all seen those studies that say it'll take 20, 30 years for those folks to rise to the tops of those organizations. It actually has to start at the top. I'm excited to be in the seat, I view it as an honor and a privilege, but I also plan to use this platform as a messaging tool across this industry to say, there's more work needed, and the sooner the better.

CU Times: What needs to happen in order for more women and people of color to be elevated to senior-level credit union roles?

Anderson: First, you have to disrupt the current model of an embedded board with long-term members, the lack of term limits, and the 'because I'm here I hire my friend or colleague or someone I know who looks like me to be in the C-suite.' The way boards are staffed, the way boards make decisions, and then who they put in those leadership seats has to change. The second step is the DEI programs, which have gotten started – and I'm proud of some of the dialogue that I've heard in the credit union space around DEI – but it needs to move from talk to action. And this is around, how to you incentivize for the right hiring behaviors, how do you open up your slate to understand where talent is and how you bring talent in? Even something as simple as how you hire outside of your normal areas of geographic focus, if that's what it takes to bring on new talent.

The last thing is to move DEI programs from information sharing and labeling to representation with some hard, key metrics around it. And then all the way through to, how do I link DEI to our purpose, so that everyone in the organization feels like they've got a stake in DEI being successful? Because it's better for us as an organization, it's better for our members and communities because we reflect who they are, and it's better for business outcomes.