Working and being a part of credit unions is a journey in and of itself. Sometimes the road taken to get into credit unions can be surprising, and once in, you may end up doing things or taking on roles you couldn’t have possibly imagined.

At GAC 2024, Sarah Snell Cooke talked with fintech executive Amber Harsin to discuss her credit union career journey, from how she first entered the industry as a teller to becoming a fintech CEO. Additionally, she shares advice on how others can advocate for themselves and the work they do.

Read the full transcript below:

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Sarah Cooke 00:00
Welcome, everybody. I got Amber Harsin. Here, why don't you introduce yourself, young lady?

Amber Harsin 00:08
Hi, my name is Amber Harsin. I'm a credit union technologist.

Sarah Cooke 00:13
And how long have you been in credit unions? You've been in a while. Let's talk about that career path.

Amber Harsin 00:17

Yes, yeah, I started at 18, at a credit union as a teller worked at my first credit union for six years graduated from college left for a very brief stint into the medical field and hated that. I came back two years later, as a branch manager for a small credit union in Utah worked there for six years. And as part of some mergers and acquisitions, I got the privilege of becoming a project manager for them through a core conversion, and ultimately ended up leaving to go work for the core, where I started as a member of the conversion team, and then ultimately took over product, then sales and marketing and then CEO, and conquered

Sarah Cooke 00:55

the world basically. And so it's such an interesting career path. I think a lot of people do make the jump from credit unions to business partners. But you know, going from teller to CEO, in not that long a period of 20 some odd years. Yeah, no, you're very impressive.

Amber Harsin 01:15

Thank you.

Sarah Cooke 01:16
How do you think you what do you what, what helped you along the way? Or who? Or is there like,

Amber Harsin 01:22

oh, both right, I think that we all have who's that helped us along the way, like there's, there's advocates, then that teach you or mentor you or see something in you that sometimes you don't see in yourself, that sort of helped propel you along that path, or even give me the shove into the pool, so to speak. And that definitely has happened at several points throughout my career. And second, I'm kind of bold, like, I'm not necessarily I know. So well, you know, my first when I went came back to credit unions, how I got that job was I had some friends who worked there, they said, they were hiring for a branch manager and I, I just walked into the EVPs office and was like, I should be your new branch manager, and through my resume on the desk and got hired. And then, you know, similarly, those those credit union leaders at that institution were pretty pivotal in, in my moving over to their core, that was the core we were using at the credit union, and really advocating that, you know, they felt like my skill set could be leveraged at a higher degree for the movement than just one individual credit union. Right. And, and the board of directors for that CUSO has just always been very supportive and and encouraged me to apply for the CEO job when it became available. Yeah. That's all. Got a lot of cheerleaders.

Sarah Cooke 02:43

Yeah. And there are a lot in the credit union movement. Some you don't even realize, yeah, you've got sometimes absolutely amazing. So you, how did you come into great, like you said, you started as a teller like, did you come out of high school and be like, I want to be a teller? No, no,

Amber Harsin 03:04

I have to kind of go back to a backstory a little bit about this. So I was a teen mom, and my family was homeless at the time that my child was born. And so as soon as they turned 18, I had to have some way of income, right? It was a necessity job, I went to a temp agency. And the credit union that hired me, for the first time ever was trying out hiring tellers through this temp agency. So I got placed at one of the larger credit unions in Utah, and just really enjoyed it, like Loved it, loved interacting with the members solutioning for them, helping them find solutions to their financial system problems. And then learning. The credit union helped me unlearn a lot of bad habits that have led, you know, to where my family ended up. And so I became very committed and loyal to the fact that they walked their mission by teaching me and giving me a chance, not just with a job, but also with building credit and how to manage checking accounts, they did what they were supposed to do. And it created a really deep rooted affection for the credit union industry and being able to do that for other people. And then by way of going to the core, it was kind of a way to enable them from tech, but from a technological perspective to do that for other people. Yeah. So kind of allows me to pay it forward to the next person who maybe is in a similar situation. Yeah,

Sarah Cooke 04:26

exactly. Pay it forward to dozens of credit unions too well, really, and so if I was kind of getting at the point, too, though, that you fell into credit unions, and they saved your butt. Yeah, same for me. Like, like I fell into credit unions and when we were young and dumb, and like our credit, yeah, I was like nobody, I wouldn't lend to me. A credit union gave us an equity loan against our home like consolidated debt and really saved us a lot of money and headaches and stress and all that stuff. There's a story that credit unions don't get out enough. And I want credit unions not only to be a preferred banking provider, I want credit unions to be an employee of choice, employer or excuse me of choice. And we just don't like nobody comes out of college or we know No, I want to go into credit unioning. You know,

Amber Harsin 05:18

I spent my first six years I went back to school, I went to college, because I was leaving. That was just my, like, stepping stone job in my mind of of, you know, getting I was going to nursing another like field of helping people, right. So in a different way and only made it two years and my one of my co workers was like, Do you know, you talk about how much you miss the credit unions, like all the time, like, maybe you should think about whether you made the right career choice here. And I was like, yeah, she's not, she's not wrong. I don't actually really like this. And that's what dropped me back into credit unions. And I've stayed ever since. And, yeah, and the career path that I've had in 25, for years, it's been pretty unbelievable, right? In a lot of ways. And, you know, I look back on that 18 year old who had a two year old already and was living in a trailer in our grandparents driveway, Never would I have imagined I was going to be the CEO of a tech company, in an industry that I really love. So it's been a great journey. That's

Sarah Cooke 06:20

amazing, amazing story. Like, I got goosebumps. I mean, I think a lot of times credit unions do that, to me. Anyway, some big news. But you know, your story is is great as well. The talk a little bit about I mean, even even now, but especially probably 20 years ago, when we were starting our careers. They being a woman in a professional field, but also being a female tech CEO, that's got to be challenging.

Amber Harsin 06:52

Yeah. It can be in the predecessors. To me, at Prodigy, the firm I worked at were all male. They're all 20 years, my senior for the most part, right. So they, they also had been in the workforce for a really long time. And I think it can be hard in the tech space for women to be seen sort of as anything other than maybe project managers, maybe salespeople, right? Those are marketing. Those are like these very traditional roles that you see females holding within tech, and most of the executive suite is typically held by men. And so I will say I'm gonna, I'm gonna give a little credit to credit unions here because you've got Theresa Ben Benitez, who is the CEO of Correlation, right? Yeah. And Share One has a female CEO now. And so I think we've, we've, as an industry, actually done pretty good at trying to realize that better, but if you look at the larger FinTech space and and you know, all the vendors we work with in credit unions are technically some form of a fintech. We're still a minority. And I think you have to you do have to work a little bit harder, you do have to be able to talk the talk even more so than a lot of other people for you to gain that validity up front. And then and then you're good. Like,

Sarah Cooke 08:09
and women have trouble with that sometimes. Yeah. And I'm good at this. Yeah. And,

Amber Harsin 08:15

you know, I say I'm bold, and you're like, I'm not surprised. You've mostly known me over the last 10 years. That is, has not necessarily always been the case, right? Where we sometimes minimize our talent. So we want we don't want to be seen as brass. Yes. Or brash, excuse me, wrong word. Or overbearing or domineering. And I would say from the tech perspective, you have to learn real quick to drop that. Oh, yeah. Because it is it is pretty competitive. Right? Well, Ingenix.

Sarah Cooke 08:47

And, in general, you're probably right, at the cusp, but yeah, so. But like it was you were probably kind of I mean, at least I was seen not heard kind of raise on top of me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so having my first time asking for a promotion, I was like, Do you think maybe I could, you know, and now and then when I went for the next time, about four years later, I was like, I should be your new publisher. I should be your new publisher. And here's why. Yeah, you know, so you do have to get over really?

Amber Harsin 09:30

What was what's interesting is I walked into the credit union and threw my resume on the desk, but I never asked for a raise in the six years that I worked there. I definitely asked for promotions and responsibilities, but I never made a fuss about my salary. Or you know that that even took longer for me to finally be sort of brave enough or confident enough in my own skill set to say I'm worth X amount of money, but even the first time I did that, I walked in with a file folder full of Research and was like, here's the role that I'm doing. And here's what the median and here's the average and, you know, I'm underpaid for what this is. And I got the raise, right felt like I very much had to justify it in a very different way than I think some of my colleagues or coworkers did. And, you know, that that takes a lot of time to like, drop that, that, you know, it's sometimes it's okay to ask not that the research isn't a bad idea. I think that's to be able to back yourself. Yeah, if someone comes and asks me, I post that research, right? When my team comes in, ask me for the same thing. But I felt like there was no chance of even having the conversation if I didn't do that upfront. Right. Right. And, and a lot of other people, particularly male colleagues never did that. Yeah, they just walked in and was like

Sarah Cooke 10:54
so Okay, um, what are three things you think has been three characteristics that you think

have been valuable to your career trajectory that others could adapt?

Amber Harsin 11:11

I definitely being bold, like, and that's scary sometimes. So I guess maybe Being courageous is how I would frame that a little bit differently. I also think being transparent has been very helpful. I think in for me, that's been one of the ways I've been able to build relationships and trust is that I'm kind of you get what you get your you know, what you're getting pretty quickly. And then kind of going along with being courageous is also to just not back down from the challenge. Like, even when you feel like you're not suited or you're not equipped, or you don't really know what you're doing, especially now we have so many resources at our fingertips to learn that you also don't have an excuse anymore to be like, Well, I don't know how to do that, right? Because you can log online and learn that skill, right? At least at a rudimentary starting point. And go from there. So to just not not be afraid of the challenge, and to at least try.

Sarah Cooke 12:17
Yep. Love it. So I always offer final thoughts at the end. I'll let you have the last word,

Amber Harsin 12:22

which Oh, okay. Who what's the last word? Leave people better than you found them and empower them to meet whatever their next goal is. That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks.