Alex Gekas does not open this conversation with numbers or strategy. She opens with a moment that stopped a boardroom cold. A simple story about a member, a credit union employee, and an act of care that never showed up in a report. It moved her to tears, and almost no one outside that room would have ever known it happened.
On The Credit Union Connection, host Sarah Snell Cooke sits down with Alex from Callahan Associates to talk about a storytelling project that grew out of moments like that. What quickly becomes clear is that this is not about content or campaigns. It is about all the quiet, human impact credit unions create every day and how rarely those moments make it beyond the walls of the institution.
The conversation feels refreshingly unpolished. Alex is candid about the fact that there was no perfect plan before launching the project. They acted first because the stories were already there. Hospital visits. Small gestures. Decisions that changed someone’s week or even their life. The format never mattered. The feeling did.
Sarah pushes the discussion into familiar territory for anyone who has spent time around credit unions. The industry loves to talk about rates and products, but hesitates when it comes to emotion. There is a fear that stories are not big enough, not polished enough, or not ready for an audience. And yet the moments that linger are the simplest ones.
By the end, the conversation does not resolve into a tidy takeaway. It lingers instead on an idea that feels both obvious and overdue. Credit unions already have the most compelling stories in financial services. The only real question is whether they are willing to tell them.
NOTE: The below AI-generated transcript to the video might not be 100% right, but are any of us really?
Sarah Cooke
Hello and welcome everybody. I am your host here at The Credit Union Connection. Sarah Snell Cooke, of course, I’m here today with Alex Gekas, welcome.
Alex Gekas
Hi Sarah. Good to see you.
Sarah Cooke
Good to see you as well. Now, Alex is from Callahan Associates, and they have a really cool program that I asked them to come on and talk about. But Alex, why don’t you do a little further introduction of yourself and the company?
Alex Gekas
Yeah, absolutely. So as Sarah said, Alex, I guess I’ve been at Callahan for about 15 years. I oversee all of our marketing communications, events, creditions.com, our media website, and yeah, so been doing that for a while, and Callahan, we’ve been around for 40 years. So that crazy, around for 40 years. And you know, under our logo, it says the credit union company may really want to we continue to try to help credit unions think differently about how they approach strategic growth, and that’s really the path that we can continue to be on. So very excited about that.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, no. I mean, it’s weird introducing Callahan, because everybody knows. But no, it is good for those who don’t know. And so, yeah, you all started this member impact stories project for international credit union day. Can you give us a little background on that?
Alex Gekas
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it’s really interesting, because I was sitting in a board meeting, and one of our board members shared this story, and it’s the first story that’s posted on printing in stock com, in the member story section. And you have to go back a couple pages now, who’s been getting a lot of submissions, and it was a story about this member who was in the hospital and her son was in the hospital and her husband was in the hospital, all at the same time, and one of the member service reps sent them pizza and coke to the office. There is this whole this whole story around it, and I’m not doing it justice. Please go read the story. But I remember sitting in that board meeting and I cried, and I just felt like, what an amazing what an amazing story. And these types of stories, this emotional connection that credit unions create with members each and every day, it often flies under the radar. And that’s not the only story that you know. An executive has sent us via email or texted us or told us in person, and so we have this platform on credit ends.com, and what we realize is, how do we share that impact in a larger way? And so that was really, how do we help these stories come from under the radar and really get the attention that they deserve? And right now, it’s really a mix. People have been coming and asking, Can we submit video? Does it have to be tax? Can it just be tax? And we really want it to be anything and everything that feels accessible to you, to the credit union, because the story, it’s really about the story. It’s not about what format the story it’s in. It’s not about how catchy the headline is, or any of that. It’s really about the impact. And so we’re really excited about it.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, and this, so my, one of my, I guess my 26 year long beef now with credit unions is, you know, getting their stories out. Because, yes, you can affect that member and they who lives that story, one on one on one basis, and you’re going to get some word of mouth from that, I am certain. But getting that at scale is something that we haven’t really been able to do. And so, like, what are you I don’t know if that that seems like it’s part of the purpose of what you were doing, but you know, what is the ultimate goal with sharing these?
Alex Gekas
Yeah, and people have been asking, because we’ve gotten a lot of there have been credit unions that have reached out to other executives on the team, saying, Hey, I heard about this. How can we contribute? And that’s really exciting to see. We’ve been asked, if it’s about advocacy. We’ve been asked kind of, what you said, like, what is the overall goal? And really it’s a couple things. The first being, we want to create a ripple effect. If some credit union reads a story and says, Hey, I have those stories, does it encourage them to capture them? Does it encourage them to make it part of their culture, to share them in front of staff, to encourage staff to uncover them, to use it in marketing like do they have those that authentic story become part of who they are. They already have them. Most every credit unit has these stories, but they might not have the mechanism to collect them and share them. So we’re kind of trying to create that, that inspiration. And then this might seem like a silly goal, but it’s really to create this positive place where we can all go and see why we do what we do every day. It’s really just kind of the feel good. There’s the whole like good news channel type concept, and that’s really what this is, is meant to be, and it really complements what’s on credit unions.com already, we have those inspiring case studies about how credit unions are. How we want credit unions to think differently about Dream Success, and this is a kind of an amplification of that on the on the member side.
Sarah Cooke
And so, do you have any favorites yet?
Alex Gekas
It’s funny, because I have quite a few favorites. And when we started to get them in again, some of them were we were all teams in each other saying this one is so this one really made me cry, or this one really touched my heart. There’s a lot of memorable ones. So there’s one about a member service rep who gave a Twinkie to a diabetic member who was about to go into diabetic shock. And so I now have this, this, this Twinkie story, kind of in my mind. So that might be, that might be my favorite one, or it’s the most memorable to me. It’s The Sweetest one. Yeah, there you go. No pun intended.
Sarah Cooke
I’m a pun master. So what is, how do, where do see, this is very casual, obviously. Where do credit unions go to submit their stories, or who do they get a hold of? You can give us a link. Shout out to your link.
Alex Gekas
Yeah, absolutely. So we actually added it to the navigation on creditedness.com to make it easy. So up at the top, there’s a link that says, member stories. If you click on a story, you can there’s the submission is at the top that sends you to Callahan. It’s a form. It should be easy to fill out. We also have the member story project@callahan.com which is kind of a mouthful. We have had a lot of credit unions submit them via email, and I don’t, I believe it, just because it’s accessible. Hey, we have these five member stories, and I just send them to you. Our editor in chief, Rebecca, is, you know, handling all of those. So we’re happy to take them in any form. Like I said, I want it to be accessible, and that’s why it can be a video if you have those, but video production and all that, it’s a lot. So we want just the verbal stories too.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, one of the things that you kind of brought up a little bit earlier is the operationalizing of collecting these stories inside a credit union is one of the biggest issues. And the thing is, like, what I’ve learned, you know, you if you have, like, a Dropbox folder or something, where your MSRs and your loan officers have access and they can just write a quick note. Now you can even do it with AI, make a quick note about what the story is that they just literally experienced with a member, and kind of shove it off to wherever this collection places. There are some amazing things that that we could do as a as a community with those are with those types of stories as well.
Alex Gekas
Yeah, I agree, and we really wanted to get up and running quickly. So I would say in terms of, what are we going to do with all the stories? I feel like that’s a question that I’ve gotten. And while I like to have a great plan, I also like to take action and so creating the project and getting it up and running, because it was the action. And I’m kind of seeing where the stories are. We’re kind of seeing where the stories inspire us to next. We will be sharing them on places like social media, in the credits.com daily newsletter. We’re going to do a monthly a monthly like top five, top 10. So there’s ways that we’re going to try to circulate them and kind of spread that, spread that inspiration, but I think there are bigger things we can do with them, and what those bigger things are, I’m not sure we know yet. Open to ideas. It’s all about, it’s all about being collaborative. So open to ideas that others might have on how we can, how we can amplify the work.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, yeah, and credit unions I mean, they love, they love sharing these stories. But again, it’s usually like storytelling one to one. And so yeah, hopefully they’ll maybe use video, like you were saying, to actually tell the story verbally versus written as well. And you know, I mean, I got a million pictures of ideas running through my head as we’re talking about it, because this is really something that has been attempted in different places, and it Maybe the outcome wasn’t quite, quite expected. And so, yeah, I really wish you all the best with this project. Thank you. Yeah, that’s my number one thing is that I believe that the lack of brand awareness of credit unions is their number one threat. And you know, everybody who has a lot of people have these great. Credit Union stories. I mean, my husband and I tell this often. My husband, I, we were young and dumb, got that old little jam, and, you know, our credit was able to help us out with a home equity loan. And it’s, I mean, it just saved a lot of stress period as a human, as an individual human being, and anxiety, I’m sure, that wore on our marriage. And if it had been longer term, that could have been a problem, you know, eventually we could have sold our house, or had to, you know, sell or lose our house. And so that’s kind of stuff that credit unions are like. They very often want to market their rates and their rates are great, whatever. I mean, most are great. But really the I think it’s more about these types of stories, that it’s so much more than saving somebody $5 a month or $100 not that that’s not important too. But you know, you’re saving homes and marriages and so many individuals, like people have so many feelings. I’m getting on my soapbox. People have so many feelings about their money, even though it’s, you know, a lot, yeah, numbers, and there’s a lot of mental health tied to that. So I, again, I’ve got like, a million ideas, oh yeah, through all these stories, but it’s definitely something that I feel like credit unions can really do well to focus on. And so what was I mean, you mentioned the one story from your one of your board members as an inspiration. But what I mean, what made you take it forward and actually make it happen.
Alex Gekas
Oh, I also, we have a partnership with Gallup, and it’s a member engagement of financial wellbeing consortium. And a lot of Gallup’s research is on creating this emotional engagement and how that, you know, turns to turns to growth. And you know, we’ve seen data over the time that shows that credit unions really have to focus on creating those emotional relationships with their members. And so I think that narrative kind of, with our gala program, the need for just some good news, right? So much going on some need for just some good news, those stories that we’ve been hearing from executives. And then we also, I’m not sure if you read John Jeffrey’s, our CEO’s book, The Strategic Growth framework. He launched it last year. I’ll send you a copy. Okay? Thank you. Short read. It’s a quick read. It takes me forever to read a book, but I can actually say that this is a, this is a quick read. Executives have read it on a flight cross country, so you know. And within that, it’s all about kind of the cycle that starts with a really well defined and embedded purpose, and how that empowers employees and engage members and kind of gets that stakeholder impact and sustainable growth going. And it’s, it’s really kind of like a flywheel, and we really believe that stories are kind of the grease in the wheels, so that storytelling is, really, is what’s going to kind of amplify the work that you’re doing in all the areas. And it really needs to be part of your, part of your strategy. And so we’ve been having this story, these storytelling conversations, so that’s kind of how all the all the pieces came together.
Sarah Cooke
Oh yeah, that really makes sense. So what do you want to leave our credit union audience with? What would you like to leave them? If that’s your final thoughts?
Alex Gekas
I said it a couple times, but I do think it’s really important. I think part of the reason why writing and don’t tell these stories more is what I mentioned in terms of this, this fear that the story is not the right story, that it’s not a big enough story, that the impact isn’t big enough, that it’s not told in the way, that the exact way it should be, or it needs to be a video, or, yeah, all these things where it’s just not, it’s not audience ready. Maybe that’s a way to put it. And I really want credit unions to kind of let that go. Just tell it, yeah. You know, we can help refine it. We’re happy to create. You know, you could say, put, put in headline. We’ll make a headline. We can do all that. It’s really no pressure. It’s really just about capturing, capturing the good and amazing impact that credit is have every single day. So it’s a bit of story.
Sarah Cooke
Yeah, awesome. So much. Appreciate it. Appreciate your time and your effort, that you’re that you’re this initiative that you’re doing. Thank you.
Alex Gekas
Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.
1 thought on “The Stories Credit Unions Tell Themselves But Rarely Tell Anyone Else”
Everyone loves a good story told well. The universal emotions, struggles, and triumphs that relationships (even banking ones) guide us through. I love telling and listening to stories.