Domestic Abuse: Exploring the Darker Underpinnings of Finance

Hi, Mary Wisniewski here, Cornerstone Advisors editor-at-large and host of Money Isn’t Everything.

In today’s show, I am speaking with Tansley Stearns, who is the president and CEO of Community Financial Credit Union in Michigan.

We’re talking about a topic that is not often discussed at credit unions or banks, but it is a subject of the highest stakes, and that is domestic abuse and the financial implications.

Tansley, who previously worked at the Filene Research Institute, talks about what her credit union is doing to try to help these individuals and the importance of helping in the darker moments as much as the joyful ones.

We also talk about ways to make credit unions a place where more people want to work, not just stumble into it.

As Tansley says, “I think a lot of people are saying everybody’s got to come back, and we’re not saying that.”

Here’s our conversation.

Tansley, welcome to Money Isn’t Everything. Thanks so much for joining me today.

Thanks for having me, Mary. It’s an honor.

Oh, thank you.

Well, I was just emceeing this credit union event that was focused on fintech, and there was one main takeaway, and that’s been a takeaway that’s true of the industry for a long time.

You’re in a commoditized industry, so how do you stand out?

You’re definitely doing something that stands out.

There are multiple things, but I thought one thing I would love to start with is you’re exploring the darker moments of finance with one of your marketing and product campaigns called Choose the Bear.

Tell the audience a little bit about what this is and what inspired the thinking.

Absolutely.

Well, thanks so much for asking, and I’m proud of this on a host of levels.

Just to give you some grounding in where this started, we think at Community Financial about listening as a superpower.

When we are doing work that’s creative or innovative, or quite frankly just trying to carry forward into the future, it is all about starting with the voice of our member, our team member, and our communities more broadly.

As we do that listening, we hear a lot about these darker moments.

We’ve thought a lot in our strategy about the fact that there are financial underpinnings, whether you’re talking about divorce or death or domestic violence, which we’ll talk a little bit about.

We’ve been building solutions around those with those that are impacted.

In particular, when we talk about domestic and sexual violence, we have had a relationship with an organization called First Step for a number of years, and I sit on their board.

We’ve done a lot of work with them.

What we’ve done more recently is that we had an opportunity through our innovation and insights team to work with survivors, to listen to their experience, and do some testing around some solutions to help with the financial underpinnings that often occur with domestic and sexual violence.

We’ve been doing some of that testing.

We had a newer team member, who just celebrated their one-year anniversary, that, having seen some of this work and heard what we were working on, came up with what we describe as a movement, which is grounded in this social question that came up around Choose the Bear.

For your listeners that haven’t heard about this, the question was posed, if you’re a woman and you were to meet a strange man or a bear in the woods, which would you choose?

Unfortunately, most women overwhelmingly say the bear.

I’ve been poked a little bit by some of my male colleagues and friends about, “Well, you know, that’s a silly question, Tansley. Bears are really dangerous.”

But the fact that women choose the bear does send a really clear message about some of the situations that many of us find ourselves in.

Marrying this work that we’ve done in listening, some of the work that we were doing with survivors to test new solutions, this team member came up with this movement called Choose the Bear and pitched the idea to us.

They shared that it was really grounded in what they saw us doing from a strategy standpoint.

It’s really about meeting people where they are, understanding what survivors go through, really creatively thinking across our organization about how we can bring solutions to life so that it isn’t just one moment in time or one answer.

It continues to grow and build.

We’re really enthusiastic about how we carry that forward, and we also hope to bring others along on that journey.

Yeah, Tansley, there’s so much I want to unpack here.

One of the things is, I just feel like a sizable amount of people don’t really understand what happens on the financial side of things.

One thing I have heard is someone is controlling the money flow and this other person just does not have access, so it’s manipulating someone in this way.

Tell me more about what you’re hearing on the financial implications of this particular situation.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, it’s really dark.

We actually have a story from a member who moved to the great state of Michigan for a new relationship, and unfortunately that relationship turned into something that was really destructive.

What we heard from this member was that they did not have access to a car. They didn’t have access to any money.

So, you think about, how might you change a situation that you might want to get out of?

Getting to someplace really matters.

If you don’t have access to transportation, and if you’re in, in this situation it was a rural area of Michigan, that’s really, really difficult.

Taking those resources and holding them away from those that have been in these situations really can have significant negative implications.

What we’ve been able to test with survivors are just no questions.

We’re not asking you to tell us what you’re going to spend these resources on.

It may be modest amounts of money that might be borrowed.

The borrowing does matter too, because there’s a lot about agency that’s important to these situations and people feeling as though they have control of the situation, control of these resources, that they are going to be responsible for those really matters.

We have hundreds of these stories that we’ve heard from survivors, and that’s just one.

But I think, to the fundamental part of your question, I think it is often about control.

Keeping that control tight, unfortunately, can keep people in these situations.

That’s what we love about this movement, is that it is a partnership and it is about ensuring that those that wish to make a change in their life have that control back in their hands.

Yeah.

Tansley, I’m wondering because the emotional state here would be really heavy, to say the least.

I imagine that first step, like connecting with a credit union even, would likely be challenging.

How are you thinking about outreach, and what have you already seen that might be effective?

What might you suggest to another credit union that would be interested in pursuing something like this?

Absolutely.

One of those most important things that you are hitting on is our connection with First Step and other agencies that are in service to those that have been impacted by domestic and sexual violence.

They are experts in this field, and they’ve helped to inform the work that we’re doing.

Before we launched this Choose the Bear movement, we worked with the executive director, Lori Kitchen, and we tested things like language that we’re using and messaging and even the approach, and again, that testing with survivors.

I think building solutions, and even the content, with those that are experts is a really important first step.

Also, working with an agency like First Step so that, as people are reaching out for support and guidance, they can suggest that there are resources like Community Financial that can walk with them.

Then we’ve been working to tell that story.

I’m really proud that we have an internal agency that is building this creative, and that is really important to us.

We have videos and messaging that’s very closely connected to this movement.

Then even what may seem like a small thing, on our website we have a way for you to quickly exit out.

That’s something that we learned from First Step.

If a survivor is working to make a change and they want to reach out, it may be that they’re being closely monitored.

So, being able to very quickly move away from that research is important.

I think what makes the work that we’re doing so powerful is that it is informed by those that have been impacted.

It is really grounded in that listening, and we think that makes it more relevant and powerful.

Yeah.

What about from a financial product standpoint?

Are there certain features you already feel like these are essential features that this particular audience would benefit from?

Yeah.

Like I said, we’ve been testing this loan product that is really about any sort of use case.

We want to make sure that there is agency that’s connected to that and people feel the responsibility for it and that they have choice to use it in different ways.

Again, every situation might be different.

Just being able to, let’s say, go to an apartment complex and be able to put the money down, to be able to have that first month’s rent paid for.

It might be used for that.

It might be used for a car.

It might be used for resources.

We’ve even heard for kiddos that are in need.

Whatever that is, again, we think the loan product works really well.

Some of it is just about the typical underwriting questions that we might ask might be really different.

The other thing that I would add is that we’ve done a lot of work with our team to train them on this, and again, we did that in coordination with First Step as an agency.

I want to say very clearly, our team members are not social workers, although there’s some super interesting research that the Filene Research Institute did about the frontline team members of credit unions.

They do tend to be a lot more similar in their drives to social workers than salespeople.

So many people on our team have been really excited about being involved here.

But they’re not social workers.

There is a delineation about where our work begins and where it ends.

Again, that’s what makes a relationship with an organization that serves those impacted by domestic and sexual violence so important.

Tansley, I think from my perspective, you’re really standing out here because I do not see that.

I mean, I’m not hopping around at every credit union’s website or bank’s website, but this feels like a provocative move to make.

Typically, I think of the visuals that I see on sites as more like a couple walking on the beach, that’s your retirement.

But that’s not really life.

It’s not usually life.

There are ups and downs and all-arounds.

Did it feel like you’re a bit of a pioneer here?

What does that feel like, or maybe you see other examples?

What I believe to be true is, first of all, this is being done with an amazing team.

So I don’t think that I’m a pioneer.

What I do believe is that we have a strategy that’s grounded in just what you described.

Life is complex, and there’s a lot of joy.

We certainly believe that we can be there with couples as they plan that retirement and hopefully get to run down that beach.

We also know that all of us go through these darker moments.

Whether that’s domestic or sexual violence, which is the focus of the conversation today, or it’s divorce or death or losing a job, all of those moments that are darker and joyful have financial underpinnings.

I often get asked this in terms of a commitment to a career in credit unions.

“That sounds so boring.”

Really?

I know. People do say that.

They say that to me too. They’re like, “Oh, you’re in a boring world.”

I’m like, no.

What’s true about credit unions is that the tools that we have bring joy and they can help support in those darker moments.

When we talk about those, we can remove stigma and we can ensure that people have someone walking with them.

Because in these darker moments, unfortunately, these are sometimes moments when everyone else walks away, including loved ones and friends.

If Community Financial can be there in those darker moments, we also can be there in the joyful ones.

That’s what makes life so beautiful.

Tansley, I did a little digging on you as a person.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but literature seems to be important to you.

I think I saw that you like Mary Oliver.

I do love Mary Oliver.

You do? Okay.

I sure do.

I’m bringing it up because I think it paints a bit of a picture.

Literature is something that explores the dark moments.

Certainly Mary Oliver is exploring the dark moments.

Do you see that as influencing the way you guide the credit union?

One of the things that I believe matters deeply to leadership is storytelling.

I think for credit unions, one of our gaps is sharing our story and sharing it in a way that’s vivid.

When you think about the market share that we have as a movement, it is not nearly what it should be from my perspective.

As financial cooperatives, I think we are the very best tool, and because we’ve not necessarily shared that story in a way that has connected fully, we don’t have the market share that we should.

I do believe that as leaders, we have a responsibility to tell really powerful stories and to engage people.

I think as organizations, we have that same responsibility.

I’m often teased because I talk about impossible dreams, and Lewis Carroll founds that language.

I think as leaders, we have to be hyperbolic because leadership is a lift, right?

Wherever I go, people are going to always be more cautious than where I’m going to be, and wherever I stretch to, people will be leaning back from that.

Particularly in financial services because we’re cautious by nature, highly regulated environment.

That hyperbolic invitation, I think, is going to stretch us to the places where we can make even more impact.

I’m enthusiastic to see that happening.

You see it, right?

With somebody who’s been with us for less than a year to come and pitch this kind of bold idea that demonstrates how, as we dream boldly, others will come along with us.

Yeah.

I do think that’s true.

The more authentic you are, the more the type of people that you’re hoping to employ find you.

That exaggeration that you said, it reminds me of fashion runways.

That look that goes down the runway is like, wow, who would wear that?

Well, sometimes me. I would wear it if I could.

But it’s usually dialed down a little bit for the mainstream.

Yeah, for sure.

Also, I hear congratulations is in order because you were just, make sure I got this right, part of the HerStory exhibit at America’s Credit Union Museum?

Yes.

Thank you so much.

Of course.

Tell me about what that’s like.

What I’m really humbled by is the opportunity to stand with the other women that were honored at HerStory.

I’ve been to America’s Credit Union Museum a number of times ahead of last week’s honor, and it’s so important to me.

My grandmother Edith was a genealogist, and she did that before the interwebs.

What that means is that she spent time in graveyards.

In fact, she used to take me for picnics in graveyards, going to libraries.

Finally, we have something in common.

I used to play in a graveyard, which my mom hates when I share that, but it was an old, beautiful cemetery and I grew up by it.

Yeah, absolutely.

What my grandmother taught me is that our history is very important.

It’s not only important to understand who we are and the perspectives of our past, I think it informs our future.

What I love about America’s Credit Union Museum is that it is in the home of the human being who brought that very first credit union to life.

The stories that his family shared of him going to work as an attorney by day and then coming back home and opening their doors so that those that needed a safe place to save their money or a place that they could trust to take out a loan would come together, just really is at the core of who we are as credit unions.

To be honored there means so much to me because I’ve devoted my career to this space.

I do hope that, as somebody that’s in an earlier stage of their career, I can still say that I wish for us as a movement to have people that don’t just stumble into credit unions, which is my story.

I didn’t really know much about them.

I graduated university and found a job posting.

I hope that there is a day when people are breaking through from university and high school and running to credit unions.

I think the more of our stories that are represented in places like America’s Credit Union Museum, the more of that will happen.

Tansley, you set me up perfectly, so thank you for that.

This is the one segment of the show that I say, “That’s What You Said.”

What you said is, “One of my impossible dreams is to ensure credit unions become an employer of choice for those shaping their career options.”

Yes.

You just referenced it above this quote too.

What I hear is that, I can’t decide if it’s getting worse or better, but it seems to be there’s this fear that increasingly people don’t know what a credit union is, let alone want to work for it.

Do you interpret it that way too?

Is it getting worse?

It’s hard to say.

I don’t know if it’s worse or better.

What I know is that it can be so much more than what it is.

When I think about the next generation, and if you look at the data and you get to know kiddos and those thinking about their first journey into their career, when you talk about credit unions, their eyes light up.

They don’t know about the work that we do and the power of credit unions and cooperative finance.

So, we’ve got a lot more to do to ensure that those that really do find it important for their financial institution and their employer to do right by the world, we are squarely in that space.

We have such an opportunity, I think, to paint a picture.

One of the things that we are thinking deeply about as a credit union is, how do we show people what that career trajectory might be?

I think people frequently think about working at a financial institution and think of a typical teller job and become a branch manager.

They may understand that there’s a CFO and a CEO.

There are so many robust roles here at the credit union.

Whether you are dreaming about telling your story in marketing, which we talked about earlier, or about a career in HR, or as a legal professional, as an IT professional, we’re thinking so much about AI, there’s a tapestry of roles within credit unions that can be so powerful.

One of the things I’m so grateful for in my career as a credit union leader is that I’ve had a chance to wear a lot of different hats.

Being able to do that in a credit union is such a gift.

Yeah.

I think that’s wonderful.

What about, are you seeing certain employee perks that you think are necessary to be competitive right now?

Without question.

I think one of them is that idea of wearing different hats.

I think it’s unusual for people today to stay in a job for a very long time.

It used to be you might stay somewhere for 30 or 40 years.

Today, longevity might mean two or three years.

There’s a really powerful researcher named Dr. Sinead FitzGibbon who’s done some awesome research about this idea of attrition is attraction.

One of the things we talk about here is this can be a space to experiment in your career and give some gifts for a period of time.

We’ll celebrate you when you go and fly on to another role in another place.

I think being able to tell that story is one of the things that employers of choice can do.

One of the other things that we talk a lot about is curiosity and learning.

It’s so unusual now to have subject-matter expertise drive your journey.

My degrees were in English and psychology, and most people scratch their heads when I say that.

I bet, because I can imagine the rooms you’re in.

Yeah.

When I graduated from the University of Michigan and started working in marketing at my first credit union, there was no such thing as social media.

Facebook didn’t exist.

If I weren’t learning and growing, I wouldn’t be much of a marketer.

I think today, what really makes an exceptional team member is that they are curious, willing to learn and adapt and grow.

We can really offer that within credit unions.

The last thing that I would say, and I think this is unusual for us, is we are really thinking differently about the way that remote work will continue to play a role.

I think a lot of people are saying everybody’s got to come back, and we are not saying that.

What we are saying is that it’s very role-specific.

A role certainly on the front line here, if you work in one of our branches, that’s going to be a role that’s in person.

If you work in IT here, that might mean something different.

Continuing to be very flexible and imaginative about the future of work, we think, is a way to win and to have people think about credit unions as an employer that they wish to come to.

I think that’s really cool because it does feel like the industry as a whole has been pretty rigid of, “We want them all back in office.”

It just feels like you’re going to lose a lot of talent or miss out on a lot of talent if that’s the stance.

Yeah, for sure.

We’ve been able to attract people that, if we were very rigid, wouldn’t.

We have several people that live in the state of Wisconsin that work here.

We have people that spend a couple of months in another state, and we’ve been able to make that work.

I think that openness and sort of breaking our brains around the way that work used to be and being open to the ways that it can be is an important way to win.

Tansley, we opened up on a component of financial health.

Broader than that, I see credit unions’ appetite for working with fintechs seems to be definitely growing, and there are more fintechs selling to credit unions as well.

But I know you have a wider perspective on this too.

Are there specific areas within fintech broadly, or perhaps a slice of financial health, that you’re really excited about in terms of its possibilities to either expand financial access or help a certain population in some specific way?

I believe the partnership to be so important.

One of the gifts of my time at the Filene Research Institute was pairing fintechs with credit unions.

That was early days, and SavvyMoney was one of those early-stage partners with us.

It was so fun to be able to see credit unions thinking more broadly about the kinds of tools and solutions that could be brought to bear.

The truth is, as credit unions, even the largest among us are fairly small.

Partners matter, and fintech partners are a huge piece of that.

One of the things that keeps me up at night is the University of Michigan does a study every year about consumer sentiment, and credit unions have been waning in the way that our service is seen for the last several years in comparison to banks.

My perspective on that is it has everything to do with technology.

My daughter McKenzie does not think about service as her personal connection in a branch.

She thinks about it in terms of this device she has attached to her hip.

The ways that we partner with the right fintechs at the right time really matters.

We recently just introduced Atomic, one of our newer partners.

Yes.

That’s going to allow us to make it easier for members to bring their direct deposit to us.

It’s a really simple use case, and it matters deeply in terms of, if somebody wants to come to us.

We talked about just what we started in terms of someone that’s impacted by domestic abuse and they want to easily bring their paycheck here.

Now we can make that happen in just minutes.

Really thinking about, what are the big needs that consumers have?

How does that tie to your target market?

That ensures that it’s not just a bright, shiny object, but truly a partner that can add value.

Yeah.

I think that’s such an important part of how the industry always says making it easier for the member or the customer.

Especially someone who’s just suffered from, or still suffering from, a really dark moment, the last thing you want to be doing is, how do I fill out this form, or I’ve got to call, wait on the phone?

I can’t imagine how terrible that would feel.

Terrible feeling.

We’re just in the middle of that on the issue of losing a loved one.

We know that one of the darkest moments in someone’s life is you lose somebody that you care about deeply, and there are huge financial implications.

The last thing, to your point, you want to do in your mourning is have us come in and say, “Hey, fill out these 50 documents.”

That’s one of the things that we’re testing right now.

How do we use a fintech provider to make that process of losing a loved one a little bit easier?

At least we can take that burden and remove it so that that mourning process...

Yeah.

I will definitely want to follow that journey because that is super important.

Thank you for mentioning it.

I just have one last question for you, but before I do, any last things you want to get out of your heart and soul for the listeners, or where to find you, or where to find out more about Choose the Bear?

Sure.

Find out more about us always at CFCU.org.

You can find me on LinkedIn, Tansley Stearns.

I would also just say my challenge to all of us is to keep dreaming boldly.

My hope is that credit unions can continue to really grow in relevance when we listen closely and use that listening and marry that with our subject-matter expertise to bring new ideas to life.

This Choose the Bear movement is just one example of many that I think all of us can be inspired by.

Last question, Tansley.

What is the image on your phone’s lock screen?

I feel like it has sweet flavor based on seeing the background in front of you.

You’ll very much enjoy it.

It’s my daughter McKenzie and me.

We were at a music festival, and I do love Jimi Hendrix.

They had a bathtub, so that’s McKenzie and me in a bathtub.

You know what?

We started with the bold move.

We’re ending with the bold move.

Tansley, I’m going to call you the avant-garde credit union executive.

It’s wonderful.

Thank you so much for being on the show today.

It’s been a true delight.

Thank you so much for having me.

Okay, so I learned all kinds of things in this conversation, but one thing that I learned in particular is how super crucial it is to understand your members’ needs, to the point where Tansley and her team worked with an agency to discover that survivors need a very quick way to exit a screen when they’re looking at the material online.

That’s because they might be closely monitored.

Two weeks from now, you’re in for a non-standard episode.

It’s Thanksgiving, but I’m still going to say hi.

See you then.