As the President and CEO of Wright-Patt Credit Union (WPCU), Tim Mislansky has dedicated his career to the credit union philosophy of “people helping people.”
In this episode, we discuss servant leadership, what it means to think creatively in the financial services industry, and how WPCU is building hope and improving the well-being of more than 500,000 members in Central and Southwest Ohio.
Learn more about Wright-Patt Credit Union and follow Tim on LinkedIn.
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Episode Transcript:
David Bowman: Hello and welcome to creating the future. I’m David Bowman,
Evelyn Ritzi: and I’m Evelyn Ritzi.
David: And today we are joined by Tim Mislansky, President and CEO of Wright-Patt Credit Union. Founded in 1932, Wright-Patt Credit Union is a member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperative serving Central and Southwest Ohio. In fact, it is the largest credit union in Ohio, with over 500,000 members strong. Myself being one of them —
Evelyn: Me too.
Tim Mislansky: Me three.
David: So look at that! We’re excited to have Tim on the podcast today hear about how he’s using curiosity and creative thinking to lead Wright-Patt Credit Union in its mission to help people through life. So Tim, let’s dig right in.
Tim: Thanks for having me.
David: Thank you for being here. This podcast is really all about highlighting how people use creativity to think differently, to solve problems in unique ways. And at first, you know, a lot of people might not think of financial services as creative, or might not want financial services to be creative at first instinct, but we know Wright-Patt Credit Union is is very creative and has always done things a little differently than a traditional financial institution or a bank. So tell us a little bit about Wright-Patt Credit Union’s philosophy as a credit union.
Tim: So I think a good place to start really goes back to the origin, so you mentioned 1932, and you know, a lot of people love a good origin story, and I love to tell our origin story. So if you go back in history, in 1932 before there was a Wright Patterson Air Force Base, there was this area called Wright Field, which became part of the Air Force Base. And a little bit of the story might, there might be a little bit of inaccuracy, because it’s a 92 year old story, and it’s been passed down over generations, but the story goes that there was an individual who worked at the field, worked in the machine shop, because they worked on planes there. And we don’t know if he got hurt or he got injured, but he wasn’t able to work. So if you go back and you think about high school American history, 1932 peak of the Depression, there was no such thing as disability insurance. There was no such thing as unemployment. If you didn’t work, you didn’t get paid. And if you didn’t get paid, you had a hard time putting the food, putting food on the table for your family. So this gentleman wasn’t able to work for a period of time, and his co workers came together and they decided that they were going to make them, you know, give them some money. So they when they got paid one day, they all took a quarter, and 22 of them came together and gave him, do the math, $5.50 and that helped stabilize him and his family and feed his family until he was able to come back to work. And when he came back to work, he said, You know, I want to pay you guys back. And so every week, he paid back a quarter, and at the end, they took that money and they put it in the shoe box, and what they did from there is every week, every employee put a quarter in, and then when somebody in their workforce or in their plant had a hardship and needed help, they voted and made a loan out of that. And that’s how Wright-Patt Credit Union came to be 90 years ago. And when you think about that, and you think about it from a creativity standpoint, you know, back in those days, if you didn’t have money, it was tough to borrow money. You needed to have money to borrow, sure, and so it was a very different and unique solution to solve that individual’s problem, and that’s really what Wright-Patt Credit union still does today. We do with a lot more than 22 members, over 500,000 we do it with a lot more than $5.50 but that purpose, that core of who we are about helping people, and you mentioned our our mission statement is still the same and carries forward into what we do today.
David: I just love I love that story and how it shaped…
Tim: It’s a great story to tell.
Evelyn: Since we have you on the podcast today, and you and I got to know each other pretty well through the Chamber’s Leadership Dayton Program, which was great, and we work with you on the client side, but also get to know you better from that standpoint. But for those that don’t know you as well, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to be in the credit union world?
Tim: So my story is often a story of being in the right place at the right time and having mentors and leaders who gave me opportunities. So I’m originally from Cleveland, went to school at Miami University, just down the road from here, and when I was at school at Miami we had something rather unique. There were only about 20 of them or so in the country, but we had a student-run credit union, so it was a fully regulated, federally insured, federally chartered financial institution that served the students of Miami University. And I got involved with that and started volunteering there. There were about 70 of us at that point in time who were volunteers. Nobody got paid. It was a great resume builder, and people generally got good internships and good jobs because of the experience. But we ran a financial institution. We were also kids, and that’s pretty wild. Didn’t know a lot of things, so it was kind of this grand, goofy experiment that sometimes had not so good results, because we would do something that we didn’t know was a regulatory violation, because, again, we were college kids, but it was a tremendous learning experience. And through that, we had a group of advisors that were credit union professionals, people had full time careers. And that’s how I met a number of leaders in the Butler County area, Hamilton County area, and one of those was a gentleman named Doug Fecher, who was my predecessor at Wright-Patt Credit Union. So I’ve known Doug since I was about 20 years old, and when I graduated, and I love to tell this story, and I love to make Doug blush a little bit when I tell the story is that when I graduated, I applied for a job at the credit union he was at to work for him, and he didn’t hire me, so that was back in like 1993 but one of his peers hired me in the management trainee program. So I worked for that credit union for about eight years, and worked with Doug for a few of those. And then when he came up to Wright-Patt and made the transition, and then he became CEO, he called me and we had this three hour lunch and Olive Garden in Middletown, and a few weeks later, I was working for him up up at Wright-Patt, and that was 23 years ago. So the credit union was very different back then, significantly smaller in terms of the number of members we served. I think we served 150,000 members. I think we were a half billion dollars in assets, and we’re getting close to being 9 billion today. So it was, it was really different. And I’ve had roles such as running our subsidiary, running our financial planning area, being the Chief Lending Officer. My last role before I had the fortune of becoming president and CEO, as Chief Strategy Officer. So I’ve, I’ve gotten to see the credit union from a lot of different vantage points, and it’s just been a great, great career for me.
David: and that brings us to today, where you know in your role as CEO and president. So how would you describe your leadership style, and how has that shaped the culture of that credit union.
Tim: So a couple things I always talk about when people ask me what type of leader I am. So one of the things that I always start with, and I think it’s core to who Wright-Patt Credit Union is, and why my personal values have aligned with the credit union’s values, and that’s what’s made it such a great place to work and a fulfilling career, is this idea of helping others and helping people, and being a servant leader and trying to find ways to give people opportunities to develop, to grow, to do new things. And so that’s a big part of it. And so it’s that servant leadership aspect, from a leadership perspective, and also just being a servant and taking care of others. And so again, that aligns and ties directly back to the mission statement of the credit union that we help people through life. The other aspect they always like to talk about is my favorite business book is a book called “Start with Why” by a guy named Simon Sinek, and you guys smile and nod your heads, because I assume you’ve read it. It’s a fantastic book. And when I first saw the TED Talk video, and I’m like, this is, this is really cool. This is he enunciated things that I felt in terms of the way I led and wanted to lead. And so the whole premise behind it is, if I paraphrase, is that consumers and people don’t work for you or do business with you because of what you do. They do it because of why you do it. And so that’s been really profound as I think about the credit union and think about what do we want? To be, where do we want to go? Who do we want to serve? We start with that. Why of what’s our purpose? Why are we here? And we’re really here to build hope for people. That’s a big part of our purpose statement. And so those things have just really aligned well. And I think the other thing, and this relates to the creativity topic, is I like to be a big thinker. I like to think about, where could we go, what could we do, and kind of push the boundaries. And, you know, in reality, it’s, it’s tough to get to those boundaries. But if you start way out here, or if you aim for way out here, and you’re starting from this standpoint, if you get to here, you’ve made a lot more than just incremental progress, yeah. And so those are really three aspects of how I think about leadership.
David: I think, something else that, knowing you a little bit, that jumps out at me, and I’ve heard you talk about it before, but is the role of empathy. And again, when you think of a financial institution, a multi billion dollar financial institution. People wouldn’t typically think of like empathic, caring, like but that’s a core part of you know when you’re when I’ve heard you articulate your why, it often starts with because members need this, or, you know, and talk about, you know, the importance of empathy in as you’re creating this future of the credit union, this culture like, what role does empathy play?
Tim: Well, I appreciate you recognizing that, because we we talk a lot about taking care of people at the credit union, I actually have a construct that I use our marketing team is Take Better Care circle, and we start with our job, whether you are someone who works in one of our member centers or the call center or has direct contact with members, is to take care of the members. They’re the reason the credit union exists as a financial cooperative. The only reason we exist is because a half a million people trust us to take care of their money these days. If you’re in a job that isn’t in the front office that you’re a support role, say you work in it or human resources. Your job is to take care of the people who take care of members. And so at the core, and I like to try to simplify messages, is your job is to take care of people. When you walk in the door, that’s what I ask you to do. Take care of people better than anybody else does. Because what we know is that when we take better care of the members, and empathy is a big part of that. The members will take better care of their credit union. They’ll tell their friends and family about us. They’ll tell their co workers about us. They’ll tell they’ll bring their kids in to open accounts. I can’t tell you how many stories I hear from people in the community about I’ve been a member since I was eight years old. When my dad brought me, he used to work on the base, and that’s when I became a member. I mean, those are just cool stories here, and they show the impact we make. But when we take better care of the members, they take better care of the credit union, and then that gives us more resources to take care of more members and to take better care of our partner employees. And so it becomes this circle that continues to, I’ll say, roll downhill and gain steam, so to speak,
David: Fantastic,
Evelyn: And as someone that’s been in your role for since 2021 I believe
Tim: 2022, so it’s been almost two and a half years.
Evelyn: During that time, what have been some of the highlights, or some of the milestones that have really made your time special?
Tim: I could talk for a lot longer than because in my role, I get to see people do amazing things every day for our members, the things I’m most proud of are the individual stories I’ll hear for the impact that one of our employees made out of member and sometimes there are things you could never write in a job description for someone about how they’ve gone out of their Way to go above and beyond. Stories where you know, a member traveled to the credit union on a Greyhound bus once to sign papers, and the member the employee, tried to drive them home. The member wouldn’t let them do it. But to think that an employee in Dayton, Ohio would drive a member back to Cleveland because they didn’t want him to take Greyhound bus, that’s pretty incredible. So I’m most proud of the impact we make on people, because at the end of the day, it’s cool to say We’re the largest credit union in Ohio. It’s cool to say we’ve got nearly $9 billion under management of our members. But what’s really important to me, and what I want our legacy to be is the fact that we impact a half million people’s lives, and we do that with financial services. And so one of the things I love, and we’ve talked about, how can we track this? Because I just think this is really cool, as we talk about crying moments. So when I go out to a branch, or what we call member centers, I’ll ask the people, how many of you have made a member cry recently? And that sounds really odd, and they know I’m asking you not from a bad way. It’s not like we said, David, you’re denied for a loan and you cried. It’s because either we did something for the member, we said yes to something they wanted or needed, or we helped the member do something that they didn’t think was possible. We helped them buy that first house. We helped them buy that new car they wanted to we helped them recover from some bad financial decisions they made in the past. We helped them send a kid to college. That’s what I’m most proud of. And then I could go on and talk about some of the specific programs, but so I’ll maybe mention two of them that again, I think relate back to this creativity theme is that about a year ago, we launched a small business lending initiative that was specifically targeted at trying to help women, minority and veteran owned businesses overcome of the I’ll call them, systematic hurdles in financial services, to start a small business, or to take that small business and maybe take it up a notch. And so when we started that, we realized, well, none of us are small business owners. We should probably talk to some and so we met with a lot of members. We met with a lot of non-members, and we heard their stories about how they got started, what their challenges were, from gaining access to capital or getting a loan or growing and then we also met with community leaders and nonprofit leaders who provided some of these services. And through that, what we built was this program we call soar, and what we did is we allocated a specific amount of dollars towards it for small dollar loans, $25,000, $50,000, $100,000 loans to help a business either get started or move to the next level. And we’ve helped over 300 businesses. About $7 million have been loaned out through it. And then the other aspect that I think is really cool to it is that in the way we evaluate the credit request, there’s some traditional underwriting, but we’ve also built some different things into it, as what we see ourselves are, and we’re part of the economic engine here in Dayton and in Columbus. And so they would commit to creating a job. They got extra points in their underwriting analysis, and so we have commitments from those 300 businesses that they’ll add 400 new positions to the labor market. So again, looking at things from different lenses, thinking about it, not just from our perspective, and realizing that we come at it from a different angle, because of our backgrounds and our careers, and talking with women who were business owners, talking with veterans, talking with minorities, and understanding it from their perspective.
David: Well, I love that too, because, again, it’s very counterintuitive, but it’s, it’s built on a premise that isn’t how much capital can we extract from the people who live around us. It’s, how do we take the capital we have and reinvest it and lift people up, particularly those who really need that help, and build a stronger community under the auspices that, hey, if we’re doing that, it’s going to help us anyways, right?
Tim: Yeah, it’s going to help all of us. Yeah, because if there are more good paying jobs in the markets where we operate, people have more disposable income. People have the ability to borrow more people have the ability to pay their loans. And so while it is not a direct impact to us necessarily, there’s a huge indirect impact.
David: Yeah, and that ripple right, is just massive, yeah. So that segues perfectly into the next question I had, which is, you know, something that’s really special is your commitment to making a difference in communities, and one of the big ways that you’ve done that is through the Sunshine Community Fund. So talk a little bit about what the Sunshine Community Fund is, how it’s evolved, and how it’s you know what it’s doing today and into the future.
Tim: Yeah, so the Sunshine Community Fund is the credit union’s charitable giving arm. It’s a separate 501(c)3, foundation, so contributions to it are tax-exempt. And where it really started, it was more of an internal program where we galvanized and mobilized our employee base to raise money for clauses that were important, and the credit union would match some of that. And so what we’ve we’ve built over time, and we now call it the Inspiration Committee, and the RAY in InspiRAYtion is capitalized to tie back the Sunshine. I didn’t realize that until someone pointed out to me, I can be a little bit dense sometimes on things like that. But what this committee does is they hold a variety of fundraising activities throughout the year for our employees. Some of them are, you know, like a 50/50, raffle type event, or once, our two years in a row, I had 100 yard dash race. With another employee, and people placed bets, so to speak on who would win. I lost both years, I’ll say. And then Kyle decided to retire from it, so he was concerned that I could beat him in the future. And we do a winter wonderland drawing where people contribute gift baskets and gift cards and so forth. And we raise a lot of money, nearly a couple $100,000 through that program that comes out of employees’ pockets. And then what we do is we let the employees decide through a committee where to grant that money. So we have a grant application process nonprofits in the communities that we serve submit grant applications. They’re evaluated. We come up with a list of finalists. This InspiRAYtion committee vets those, and then we let the entire employee base vote on them, to decide where the money they gave gets to go. And all of them tie back to some element of people’s financial wellness, things around job stability or job improvement, things around youth development education. So it’s things that will uplift people financially. And again, it’s just kind of cool to sit back and say, a small group of people put this idea out there, and then this large group of employees have just run with it and built it beyond what we thought. Then on top of that, the credit union actually takes 1% of its income per year, its net income, and gives that to the foundation to use for areas that it deems to be important, and the two focus areas today are on financial education. We do a lot of work, and are looking to do even more work with the schools in our communities, and trying to get and help teachers provide financial education earlier in life to people, because up until a number of years ago, when a law was passed in the state, there wasn’t a lot of financial education done in the high schools, and so you could easily fall prey or victim or make bad financial decisions. And if your parents made bad financial decisions, odds were you were going to make bad financial decisions too. So we’ve built a program we call Money Magnifier. We have used interns to help us develop those programs, and we provide kids to school teachers to teach classes on financial education. We go out and teach classes, and a meaningful amount of the money the credit union gives to the foundation goes to that. And then the other aspect, and it’s kind of in its early stages, is really around homeownership. So a lot of my career at Wright-Patt Credit Union has been spent on the mortgage side. I’m very passionate about that. I’m a big believer that when communities have high rates of homeownership, they’re stronger communities, they’re more stable communities. They’re a great way for most Americans, and even the best way for most Americans to start to build some type of wealth, to start to build equity in their home. And so we really take a lot of pride and emphasis on homeownership. So we have a BrightStart grant, again, the BrightStart relays, back to the Sunshine, where we give grants out to first-time homebuyers. And we’re really talking about some things from a partnership perspective with some community organizations to, I’ll say, accelerate home ownership opportunities in some of Dayton’s neighborhoods.
David: And that’s critical. I mean, for a lot of folks, they may even have capital for the monthly mortgage payment, right? Or the, you know, all of the standard things, but coming up with 8% to put down up front like that’s a massive hurdle,
Tim: Yeah, the down payment hurdle and the closing cost hurdle.
David: Yeah, and helping people through that is just so powerful in terms of being creative and removing that
Tim: Right, exactly, exactly.
Evelyn: I love how perfectly that ties back to Wright-Patt Credit Union being a purpose-driven organization and we mentioned Start with Why, but I did want to bring up the purpose statement that you introduced this year, the fact that everybody deserves a caring financial partner who builds hope and improves well being. For you personally, how does this translate to your life? What builds hope for you? What inspires you?
Tim: Yeah, so I’m really that’s another thing I’m really proud of, because we spent a lot of time, and we’re very purposeful, as corny as that sounds, purposeful about creating a purpose statement. We wanted something that was unique to us, that felt like it came from the organization’s soul, so to speak. And that wasn’t something that people read who were employees and said, Well, that doesn’t sound like us, that. That sounds like we’re trying to be something different. And thanks to the incredible work of a lot of different people on our team and a lot of input from people at various levels, when we rolled it out, the response. Thoughts from employees was what you nailed it, that’s right on target, that that’s who we are, and so that that’s exciting, that when you can put those words down on paper, and you get that buy-in because of if I had walked around the credit union, so what do you think our purpose is? It would always been around those themes, that we take care of people. We build hope that goes back to when we make people cry, but that encapsulated, where we’re all kind of singing from that same sheets. And why it’s important to me, is that I’m struck by a number of things, but one of them, and whether it’s in this market or it’s in Ohio or it’s nationally, is this, I’ll call it this, growing disparity between the haves and the haves. Now more and more Americans are having trouble meeting basic financial needs. There’s statistics out there that say 40% of Americans couldn’t come up with $500 for an emergency car repair if they needed to, without going to borrow that money. That’s stressful. That’s, you know, that conversation at the dinner table between a husband and wife or two partners talking about, what bill don’t we pay so we can get the car fixed? Because if we don’t get the car fixed, we can’t drive to work, and if we can’t, you understand the dynamic of that. And so the credit union is a platform, so to speak, for, I think, trying to help people solve those problems and giving them that economic hope in the tools so that they can be better off financially. And I don’t mean that we’re going to make everybody rich. That’s not the idea. And I don’t think everybody has this goal of, I want to be rich someday. We just want to help people live a life that they want to lead and be able to do the things that they want to do in life, provide for their family, provide for their kids, take a vacation, be able to view a retirement someday that isn’t this object out there that isn’t feasible because they’ll never have enough save for it.
David: Yeah, and I almost think of it sometimes as, you know, like the long train of dominoes, right? That, you know, you’re always sort of trying to add that next step. And you guys are really wonderful at how do you make sure there’s enough space between them that if one falls over, it doesn’t go all the way back in this
Tim: Wow, right? I’m going to steal that. Yeah, so it’s the aspect of resilience. Yeah, you know, how do you weather life’s financial storms? Because there will be storms.
David: Oh, god, yeah, yeah.
Tim: The car will break down, the refrigerator will go out, the hot water heater. You’ll have things that happen in life that you need, that caring, the financial partner to help you through those, and that’s where we come in.
David: So that brings us to our to our last question, which I think that’s a perfect way to get there. But you know, the podcast is all about creating the future, and people who are working that, but what’s the future you’re hoping to create here Dayton?
Tim: I mean, it encapsulates a lot of the things I’ve talked about today, is that, that we’re on a, I don’t mean on a corporate standpoint or a business standpoint, but that from an individual standpoint, we’re more economically viable, that there’s a smaller gap between the haves and the have-nots that there are more — and when I say safety nets — I’m not necessarily talking about government safety nets, but that people have built safety nets for themselves around how they can be financially successful regardless of what’s happening in their life. Because what we know, if I tie this to some other things, is that when you’ve got money problems, you’ve got health problems, because when people worry about money, it impacts their mental health, it can impact their physical health. And so this idea that if we can help people build resiliency with savings and emergency savings, if we can help people become homeowners, that builds community and builds resiliency, if we can help small business owners grow their businesses and employ more people and do the things that are important to them, we can, almost one by one, help uplift this community, and that’s really what we’re trying to do, because at the end of the day, when we talk about impact, we talk about it from a people standpoint, yeah, and that’s what we’re here to do.
David: And I think that’s so powerful in that it’s just, I mean, what you’re talking about is just people helping people right, overcome a challenge, and how that grows and cascades and builds….
Tim: Exactly, exactly.
David: Well, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah,
Tim: Thanks for having me. This was fun. These are always a little bit intimidating, but you guys made it nice and easy [laughs]
David: Evelyn can be intimidating [laughs]
Tim: I’ve noticed that, very good. [Laughs]. Thank you.
