Corporate One Federal Credit Union’s Charles Harkness has been promoted to SVP, Strategic Operations Officer, a new role within Corporate One established to build a long-term enterprise strategy and governance structure for Corporate One’s diverse portfolio of payment services. Prior to his promotion, Charles was Corporate One’s VP, Office of Portfolio Project Management, beginning in 2013.
“Charles’ promotion to this new position along with his recent election to the Governance Framework Formation Team (GFFT), which is facilitated by the Federal Reserve, aligns perfectly with Corporate One’s vision of taking a leadership role in developing and helping deliver world-class faster payments solutions not only to our own member credit unions but also to credit unions nationwide,” said Lee Butke, CEO/President of Corporate One. “I’m excited for Charles’ strategic oversight and input as we aim to exceed member expectations and focus our efforts in the most effective way possible for credit unions in the rapidly changing financial marketplace.”
Charles joined Corporate One in December of 2002, bringing his extensive knowledge and experience from the Federal Reserve Bank where his position as financial services director included management of check processing, adjustments, and payor bank operations. During his time at the Federal Reserve, Charles served as office technology director, providing district support for the bank’s automated check processing systems, including hardware and software upgrades, and oversight of the sort pattern function. Former positions within Corporate One include vice president of operations project management within the IT group, and director of item processing technology manager. Charles also served on the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force from 2015-2017.
Corporate One’s overall faster-payments vision includes deepening its understanding of and bringing real-time payments use cases to market for credit unions quickly so they can remain competitive and relevant financial providers. In addition to Charles’ service on the GFFT, Corporate One’s Keith Riddle, EVP of Enterprise Solutions Development, was recently appointed to The Clearing House’s (TCH) Real-Time Payments (RTP) Advisory Committee. Having credit-union representation on both committees creates tremendous opportunities for Corporate One to participate in formative payments discussions and offer guidance on the real-time payments solutions credit unions will need to succeed in the future.