My Journey to Credit Union Leadership: Grady Bond of Travis Credit Union

Name: Grady Bond

Credit Union: Travis Credit Union ($4.8 billion, Vacaville, Calif.)

Title: Chief Retail Officer

Age: 41

Number of years at current credit union: Less than one

Educational background: Bachelor’s of Business Administration from the University of Michigan

CU Times: What are your key responsibilities in your current role?

Bond: Functionally, I head our distribution channels for the branch network, contact center and digital banking, as well as enterprise member experience. I also oversee the deposits and payments business, which includes our core deposit product management as well as credit and debit cards. Within those, I also focus on growing our member base and improving the member and employee experience.

CU Times: What drew you to the credit union industry?

Bond: The reputation of the credit union industry is hyper-focused on member experience. That, coupled with Travis Credit Union’s own reputation and efforts in giving back to the community, really excites me.

CU Times: What unique skills, experience and attributes do you bring to your role?

Bond: From a skill standpoint, I bring the combination of having a strong analytical approach to identifying and solving business problems, and good relationship-building with my team, partners and senior management. From an experience standpoint, I bring broad experience across multiple disciplines within financial services that span both the corporate and member-facing sides of things. Having had success in both of those areas is relatively unique given how different the skill sets can be.

Additionally, I’ve got deep industry expertise in deposits, which – while it is always important and core to banking – is a very hot industry topic at the moment.

From an attribute standpoint, I’m bringing humility. I’ve come into this role knowing there’s a large scope. There are things that I’m not necessarily an expert in. I’m excited to sit down with people and say, “Teach me. Tell me how this works. Help me learn.” I’m always in learning mode and will never pass up an opportunity to learn from others.

CU Times: Which person (or people) do you credit the most for helping and supporting you along your career journey?

Bond: My wife. She has made sacrifices in her own career aspirations that have allowed me to do the things I needed to do from a career perspective to be successful. We’ve been married almost 20 years, and she has always supported me in my career.

From a career mentor standpoint, there are so many, but I will say Ryan Bailey (whom I supported as his finance partner almost 20 years ago at Bank of America, and has since hired me at multiple stops across his own very successful executive banking career), Lindsay Sacknoff (a wonderful former boss and current SVP, Deposits & Omni-channel Banking at USAA) and Nandita Bakhshi (who I most recently reported to when she was CEO at Bank of the West). All of them took a real interest in me, my development and my career. Each of them helped me and wanted me to be successful. They advocated for me to go into opportunities and roles that were risky or a stretch for me. They had faith in me and supported my growth. Their support helped get me to where I am today, so I am very grateful for them.

CU Times: What are some of the biggest differences between working in your current executive level role and your previous, non-executive roles?

Bond: Expertise in subject matter. When I was coming up as an individual contributor in various areas, I was a very strong subject matter expert, down to every detail. I knew my work and my business, projects, technical details, etc., inside and out. Within the executive ranks, my scope of responsibility is so large that I can’t possibly be an expert down to that level in all the areas I need to be educated in and know well enough. I am much more reliant on other people to be effective. Because of that, I’m surrounding myself with great people who know their stuff and are experts in their areas. All of us are working together as experts in different areas, but a shared vision will continue to help Travis Credit Union succeed.

CU Times: What’s a challenge you faced when you first joined your executive team, and how did you overcome it?

Bond: I’ve been in my role at Travis Credit Union for a couple of months now, so I’m still learning, but the challenge for me right now is trying to figure out where I can have the biggest and best impact. A lot of that requires being clear and candid about people’s expertise, wishes, roles and responsibilities. I’m making connections with people here and having good, open honest dialogues. I’m having a ton of one-on-one time with people, as well as group time, to think through what challenges exist within the organization, and how we can come together to best structure the organization and focus priorities to achieve our objectives.

CU Times: How would you describe your current leadership style?

Bond: I lead by example with an emphasis on openness and transparency. I am a firm believer in putting in the time and personally doing the things that might not be super glamourous so that when I need others to come along for the ride, they are on board and know I’m not asking them to do anything I wouldn’t be willing to spend time on. I’m non-hierarchical and like to be approachable at all levels. If I need a specific answer on something, I’ll reach out three levels down for the sake of educating myself or for efficiency. I give people that same sort of treatment on the flip side; you can reach out directly to me wherever you are in the organization.

I like to create an environment that’s fun and that people enjoy being involved in. We spend a lot of time at work so it’s more productive when my people enjoy what they are working on and who they are working with.

On the analytical side, I take a very data-driven approach and challenge the team to do the same. I really want to make sure that when we analyze things and then render a decision, we are factoring in all the relevant, available data – so not just qualitative considerations but quantitative, too.

CU Times: Do you approach your job any differently now compared to how you did pre-pandemic? If yes, how so?

Bond: My approach to my job has evolved since the pandemic, particularly in terms of utilizing technology for communication. I’ll give you an embarrassing example. In my prior role, I had a dispersed team. I’d have my one-on-ones with my team via phone because everyone was in a different location. When the pandemic hit and we all switched to Zoom, I made the joke of, “Why weren’t we doing this before with our remote people?!” I felt more connected to my remote people than I ever had in the past.

CU Times: What’s next for you on your executive career journey? Do you have any specific career goals you’re working toward?

Bond: My goal now is to excel in my role as Chief Retail Officer at Travis Credit Union. Success for this organization, its employees and our members are critical outcomes. We have some great things coming up that will benefit our members and their member experience. I’m focusing my time and energy on making those the best they can be.

CU Times: What big-picture impact do you hope to make within your credit union, as well as for your members and community?

Bond: We are setting ambitious plans and goals here at Travis Credit Union, and when we successfully achieve those we’ll have the big picture impact of improving the financial lives of our members and communities, and becoming their preferred financial partner. To be able to do that, to be part of the Travis team that achieves that, will be extremely fulfilling.

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

Bond: I would tell my younger self to take more risks earlier on in my career. Some of the greatest successes I’ve had were when I took risks that then really accelerated my growth. For example, I went from predominately corporate back-office roles with no branch experience to running an entire region of branches. That was a big risk, but it pushed my career into overdrive. Believe in yourself and get out of your comfort zone.

Would you or someone you know like to share your journey to credit union leadership? Please reach out to Natasha Chilingerian at nchilingerian@cutimes.com. To qualify, you must have been placed or promoted into a new senior-level leadership role within the last three years at a credit union.