Passing on a cooperative legacy

Garth Warner, CCD, has spent his entire 40-year credit union career working for $17.2 billion Servus Credit Union and its predecessor organizations in Alberta. In the 12 years since he became president/CEO, he has led the CU through its greatest challenge—a tumultuous merger that threatened the future of the organization—emerging on the other side to achieve a period of impressive growth and expansion.

Warner has been named CUES 2020 Outstanding Chief Executive, an honor that puts the capstone on his career just prior to his planned retirement on April 30, 2021. Throughout his time at Servus CU, Warner has held fast to the cooperative principles of the credit union movement, building upon the successes of those who came before and paving the way for a new generation of leadership.

“I believe that a credit union is not like other businesses; it’s an intergenerational trust,” says Warner. “As credit union leaders, we have the privilege of being the stewards of these great organizations for just a short period of time. The people who came before us hired us, trained us and shared their knowledge and wisdom with us. As they retired, they passed the torch on to us. Now it’s incumbent upon us to prepare the younger generation to take the torch from us when it’s our turn to retire.”

 

continue reading »