New Multicultural Engagement Director Focused On Giving Back & Building Trust

In late January, Mountain America Credit Union ($18.4 billion, Sandy, Utah) demonstrated its commitment to better serving underserved and underbanked communities by hiring Jennifer Tarazon into the newly-created position of director of multicultural engagement. According to the credit union, she’s primarily tasked with “establishing relationships with underserved and underbanked demographics, with a specific emphasis on coordinating Spanish-language efforts within the credit union.”

Tarazon, who has a law degree from Brigham Young University and brings over 15 years of professional experience in community and economic development, recently talked about how she’s approaching her new role, and what inspired her to devote her career to helping underserved communities, with CU Times.

CU Times: How are you going about establishing relationships with underserved and underbanked demographics?

Tarazon: I’m really lucky to have had the last few years in Salt Lake [City], so I was able to meet a lot of people in my previous roles, and that’s really helped. But first and foremost for me, I think trust is the most important thing, especially in communities of color and especially in the Hispanic community. Every day, I’ve been setting up meetings and going into the community with different partners and saying, ‘What have we done that hasn’t been so great in the past, what have we done that’s been really great, and what are your needs? Because I’m trying to learn from you. I’m not here to tell you what to do, I want to know how we can better serve you.’ That’s been really great because I really do not like transactional relationships. I want to build a relationship [and say], ‘Here’s my personal number, here’s my email, let’s connect, and even if Mountain America can’t help you, I know so many people that I can connect you with who can help you.’ I want people to know as we’re meeting them that we are a resource for them in any capacity that we can help with. So that’s been really important in establishing that trust and letting people know that if they call I am going to answer the phone, and if they text me, I’m going to respond.

Also, in talking to these communities, I ask, ‘Which organizations do you trust?’ That’s something that has been lacking – when I go to new organizations and people say, ‘This organization sounds cool,’ [I’ll then say,] ‘Have you talked to somebody from the community who can verify that’s where they actually go?’ So it’s been a lot of word of mouth, and talking to trusted community partners and leaders.

I was at a conference a couple weeks ago [where I learned] the most populated age for Latinos is 13 years old and the most populated age for non-Latinos is 62. So we’re going to miss the boat if we’re not also looking into relationships with kids, because even though they’re not opening bank accounts, they’re going [into branches] with their parents. I experienced this growing up in East LA, where I had aunts and uncles who didn’t speak English, and I would go into the banks with them and translate for them. [Kids] are building those relationships even at that age, and in five years, they’re opening bank accounts, taking out student loans and buying cars. If we’re not establishing that relationship of trust right now with them and their families, it’s a missed opportunity.

We want to provide financial literacy to parents and kids in language [and in a] culturally competent [manner], but we also want to tell those kids about professional development opportunities. [Mountain America] has a large Latino employee population, and not only is it cool and culturally relevant to speak Spanish, but in all industries, they pay you more if you speak Spanish. For a lot of younger kids, especially children of immigrants, sometimes it’s a little shameful if your parents aren’t speaking English, but we want to communicate that [speaking Spanish] is actually a benefit for their family.

CU Times: What defining life experiences inspired you to focus on advocating for underrepresented populations in your career?

Tarazon: My family is from Mexico, from Chihuahua. As a migrant farmworker, my grandpa came seasonally to work in the U.S. I think he had a second-grade education, and my mom didn’t finish high school. So where we are now as a family is very unique and we’re very lucky. My mom is the one who really has that hustle. She went to California when she was 19 and brought my grandparents with her, and one of the stories I always heard growing up was that when she was going to buy her first house, it was ‘for sale by owner.’ And somehow with the loan, she didn’t realize there was a balloon payment attached to it. It was the 70s, and the owners thought, ‘Here’s this young Latina woman who speaks with an accent, she’s going to default and lose the home.’ And the owners of the home knew that the house was eventually going to be torn down by the city to build a freeway, and so they were going to get a buyout from the city, but they didn’t tell my mom that. She figured out at some point that she had something like a $20,000 balloon payment, so she started scrimping and saving every penny she had and sold her car, and when the loan payment was due, the owner was really surprised that she had the full amount.

A year or so later, the city called and said, ‘We’re going to pay you $100,000 for this house because we’re going to tear it down to build a freeway.’ And she was like, ‘What are you talking about? I didn’t know this.’ So the city was really helpful and said, ‘We’re not just going to give you the cash, you’re going to find a house, and from there we’re going to put in the money for you.’ So that was our origin story of building wealth as a family in the U.S. My mom actually ended up buying a small apartment building with that money.

She always told me that story growing up, [but emphasized that] it’s not a common story. The more common ending to that story is that the person loses their house, that they put all their money into this loan and lose everything. She drilled into me that outcomes for other people are very different, and told me to help people whenever I could because for our community, this is not the typical outcome.

Right after college I worked for a nonprofit in East LA called TELACU, and the CEO there always said, ‘When you get a hand, give a hand.’ I’ve suddenly been the beneficiary of that, and this job has been wonderful to me because I’m able to give back in a really tangible way to a community when I’ve received so much in return.

CU Times: What appealed to you about this role?

Tarazon: The description and title was so interesting to me, because for a lot of these multicultural roles they don’t talk about engagement. That to me is the key, because these communities don’t need to be talked at or told what to do. With the engagement piece, we’re working in DEI but through really actionable, tangible things that we’re doing in the community to help people that you see really direct outcomes from immediately. To be able to see a family who was underbanked or unbanked walk away with their first bank account and know that they’re creating generational wealth is incredible.

Before I took the job I talked to a lot of friends who ran the gamut – Latino, Asian, transgender – all these different people I’m friends with, and I said, ‘You’re a member of Mountain America, what’s your experience been?’ And every single one of them said, ‘I was treated with respect. I had a good experience, and I would recommend them.’ That was very telling, especially in Utah where we have a reputation, and in certain areas people are kind of nervous about whether they’ll be accepted.

CU Times: What are some common misconceptions about unbanked and underbanked people?

Tarazon: Sometimes people think that people who are unbanked or underbanked are bad at managing their money, and that they choose not to use banks because they’re bad at managing money. And there’s an element of truth that there is a certain mistrust of banks by minority communities, but that isn’t the main reason [why they’re unbanked or underbanked]. Those consumers carefully allocate every dollar that comes into their home, and they are budgeting really well to make sure they can make ends meet for their family. So it’s not that they’re not managing money well. Part of it too is that most of them don’t have enough money to keep a bank account open. There are so many fees and minimum requirements at banks to be able to have a bank account. One of the great things about Mountain America is the minimum requirement [to keep an account open] is $1.

Some of the people who live in those underbanked and underserved communities tend to be people of color, who perhaps live in a banking desert, and oftentimes have jobs where they can’t make it to a bank. I have a lot of friends and family in LA who work in the food service industry during crazy hours, and what’s available to them are check cashing places. Also, [people in] our communities like to go talk to someone in person, and [check cashing] places have people there, ready to talk to you and take your checks. Whereas a lot of us who are banked use our phones or go to the ATM, a lot of those communities, especially those with language barriers, want to go and talk in person. So it isn’t a matter of not being able to manage your money or not trusting banks, a lot of it is how the banks are serving those communities.

CU Times: How is Mountain America helping underserved communities access digital banking?

Tarazon: That’s going to be the next stage. Right now, the one-on-one, personal colloquially is the main go-to when people come in [to the branch]. One of the things I’m doing is going into our Spanish hubs, talking to our branch managers and saying, ‘Tell me about what’s been working in your branch and what hasn’t been working.’ The main thing has been that people come in with their entire families in the Hispanic community and say, ‘Here are all of our issues and what we need help with.’ And there are a lot of questions around documentation. So that one-on-one [interaction] is still the main focus right now, and digital is the next frontier.

CU Times: What are the short- and long-term impacts you hope to make on the communities Mountain America serves through this role?

Tarazon: Right now, not just in Utah but in the whole country, the landscape is changing faster than we can really conceptualize. I want to know that we are serving our members the best that we can, and the way they need to be served. An exceptional customer service experience is going to perhaps be a little different for a Spanish-speaking, first-generation member than it is for [others]. I’m finding ways to help build trust, bring financial empowerment to them and then see long-term change. When you look at who is unbanked and underbanked, you’re looking at Black, Hispanic and Native American communities, and those households are more prone to relying on bill payment services, money orders and check cashing services than any other. And so for us, in the short-term it’s about finding out what the needs of the community are, which have primarily been financial education. As we know, that’s one of the big steps to building generational wealth in a family. Because once you educate the parents, educational outcomes are greater for their kids. The biggest thing for me is to see our minority communities reach their financial dreams, no matter what those dreams are.

We want to make sure they’re financially stable and in the right place, and we know that if we help them get there, they’re going to come back to us. We’ve built that trust, and if they need a house loan or to buy a car, we know they’ll come back, but right now it’s, ‘What do you need in the immediate term? How can we help you look long-term at your financial plans?’ And we know that a thriving minority community is going to help Utah’s economy, it’s going to help the U.S. economy, and we are very soon not going to be minorities in many states. It’s really imperative for all of us to look at these communities and say, ‘These are Americans that need help, how are we going to help them?’ Because their success is our success in the long run.