More than two decades ago, early in my career as a new credit union employee, I’ll admit something that still makes me uncomfortable: I didn’t really know what a credit union was.
I knew banking.
I knew transactions.
I knew how to balance a drawer.
But I didn’t yet understand a movement.
Somewhere along the way, I encountered a quote attributed to Horace Mann, one Louise Herring didn’t just repeat, but lived:
Be ashamed to die until you have won a victory for humanity.
That sentence didn’t feel like a slogan. It felt spiritual. Like a compass. Like a calling.
I decided then that if I could be even half the leader Louise Herring was to this movement, my career would matter.
Fast forward to today.
The pace is faster.
Regulations are heavier.
Expectations are louder.
Technology evolves before we finish implementing the last update.
And in quiet moments, usually after the meetings end and the dashboards are closed, I wonder:
If our founders, Louise Herring among them, walked into one of our boardrooms today, would they recognize us?
Would they be proud?
Would they see institutions still fiercely committed to the underserved?
Or would they see organizations that, in some ways, look and operate a little too much like the banks we once promised to be different from?
That’s not an accusation.
It’s a reckoning.
Because stewardship matters. I take seriously the responsibility of protecting my members’ money. Safety and soundness are not optional. But they were never meant to be the destination.
If we only protect and no longer pursue, if we manage risk but stop taking it on behalf of people who need us most, we miss something sacred.
My passion has never been margins.
It has always been lives.
Lives changed because someone was given a second chance.
A first loan.
Financial education that didn’t come with judgment.
A place to belong when every other door felt closed.
When I evaluate my credit union, I don’t just ask, ‘Are we compliant?’
I ask, ‘Are we courageous?’
Are we lifting the underserved in ways that allow them to someday lift someone else? Because that was the vision.
Not comfort.
Not convenience.
Not scale that forgets who paid the price for it.
The vision was human dignity.
At the end of my journey, I don’t want it written that I managed well. I want it written that I served well, that I helped build a world where all people matter, and where those who were overlooked finally found their place in the sun and then paid it forward.
So the question remains:
Would Louise Herring recognize the movement she helped build?
I don’t know the full answer.
I believe she would still see goodness. I believe she would see thousands of leaders who care deeply and work tirelessly. But I also believe she would challenge us.
She might ask:
When did growth become more exciting than impact?
When did compliance start crowding out compassion?
When did people helping people become something we print instead of something we fight for, especially when it’s inconvenient?
If the honest answer is that we’ve drifted, even slightly, then the better question isn’t whether she would be proud.
The better question is this:
What will we do, starting now, to make her proud?
Movements don’t sustain themselves on history. They survive on conviction. And perhaps the greatest way to honor those who came before us is not to admire their courage, but to risk being just as uncomfortable as they were.
