Q&A with Everwise Credit Union VP Anne Feferman
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Anne Feferman is a South Bend native and has more than 35 years in the financial services industry. She joined Everwise Credit Union in 1988, and her career has been marked by changes in management across several roles. She currently serves as vice president, guiding operation and strategic direction for the company’s business services.
Feferman attended Indiana University South Bend. She serves as secretary for the board of directors of the South Bend Education Foundation and is on the board of Leadership SBM.
Perspective, tenacity and surrounding one’s self with people who ignite rather than douse your fire have been some prevailing themes in Feferman’s career. This Q&A has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What’s your background and how did you get to where you are now?
I was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, and if you would have asked me when I was growing up, would I still be in South Bend Indiana? I emphatically would tell you no, and here I am. Not only am I living here, but I’m thriving and watching our community grow. I feel like I have such a blessed life being here that I really can’t think of any other place to be right now. I grew up in a family-owned business, we owned a car dealership. My father died when I was 14, so I had to figure out what I was going to do since I wasn’t running a car dealership.
I was actually a pre-med student who somehow became a banker. I realized I was going into it for the wrong reasons and so I went into the school of public affairs. I got an internship with the city of Mishawaka, working with those in between housing and low income housing. I did that for about a period of six years total. Then, an opportunity came along to work at Teachers Credit Union, which is now Everwise Credit Union. I thought I would be there for five years. I was getting married, and the plan was to move to Seattle with my husband. My “five years” has become 35 years, but I have been in about eight different careers in one organization, and I feel very lucky to have grown within this organization.
Let’s talk about the eight different careers. Has there been a central theme?
The theme over the years has really been change management. Thirty-five years ago, I was recruited to be in what was considered a cutting-edge department: taking loan applications over the phone. The tagline was, “no phone, no loan.” It was a brand new undertaking for an organization to take a loan application over the phone. So I think that the important thing is always looking for an opportunity within the organization as to what is the next step the organization needs to take and how you can assist that organization in taking it. Whenever there is something new, at one time or another I would have been called in to do it.
The department I’m in did not exist seven years ago. I came in historically as a lender. Now I’m on the deposit side, which was brand new to me. But I still have the same skill set, being able to determine what we did well, where we needed to improve and what the path would be to get where we need to be for success.
Aside from change management, there has been active coaching and people management. I think a lot of people nowadays want there to be some computer program or formula to manage people. There’s something to be said about the day-to-day interactions that you have with coaches and with managers and the feedback that you get, which allows you to grow within the organization. That’s become very important to me. So managing, coaching, leadership have been the underlying themes of those different careers that I’ve had organizationally.
What’s the most important thing you’ve learned from a manager?
I was very fortunate to have a coach along my career who told me to ensure that I had time for myself. I think when you are in a growth mindset, especially as a woman, you feel you’re unable to step away from what you’re doing. You’re going to skip lunch, you’re going to skip the coffee, you’re going to skip going out to dinner or drinks. By skipping those opportunities, you skip out on the opportunities to actually thrive with the people who you work with.
I’m a huge Adam Grant fan, and he talks about people who inspire and who ignite the fire. I thought it was very silly when I had a coach who would say to me, “How many times did you go out to lunch with friends this week?’ I did not understand the importance of that until many years later. So you can either burn out or you can get fired up. You get fired up from the people who you are with and from the missions that you’re on. So skipping those events doesn’t get you to where you need to be because you no longer have the fire within you. So it was probably one of the most important lessons that I’ve learned in self care that I’ve been able to also pass on to others.
How has being a woman played into your career experience and progress?
I think it’s important to note that I’m 61 years old, and so retirement is not that far away from me. So much has happened in the world and the amount of time I have been in the workforce, that it’s important for us to take a look at it historically. At the time I started, especially in banking, it was exceedingly difficult to see any women in the board room at all. Suddenly we had women in the board room but just because we had women in the board room did not mean they were necessarily being heard.
I’m so happy to be able to look back and see how the entire world has evolved. We’re hearing not just female voices, but everyone’s voices. I am a firm believer in collaboration and partnership, and that the sum of our product is better than what we could do individually. I think being a woman has provided me with more empathy to understand individuals who are not in the position of majority. It has allowed me to focus on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging, which is a huge passion of mine because I know what it’s like not to be represented. So I understand the importance as a woman of lifting people up as you go throughout your career and that has been exceedingly rewarding for me to be able to do that.
What’s one challenge you’ve faced in your career solely because of your gender and how did you navigate it?
The worst scenario I was ever in was before I started my career at Everwise. I did not get a job because a man who applied for the job, and who eventually got the job, indicated we had a relationship and nothing could have been further from the truth. Again, you have to look at this historically. In this day and age it sounds ludicrous that something like that would happen.
I remember in 1974 when women in the United States were able to have credit for the first time. I remember my mother being so excited that she had a credit card in her name.
Let me give you the very best example that I can share with you. I was a lender, and I had a gentleman come in, who wanted to purchase a vehicle, and the vehicle was not worth the amount of money that he wanted to have on the vehicle. So I indicated what I could give him on the loan. The man became very irate with me and started yelling that he no longer wanted to talk to me. He wanted to talk to a man. I am a car dealer’s daughter. I knew everything there was about vehicles and about auto lending, but he insisted on speaking to a man. The only man available was not a lender and knew absolutely nothing about cars. So without any hesitation, I brought him over to speak with the individual and give him the same information, but because he heard it from a man, he took it differently than he did when he heard it from a woman.
What’s the biggest change in today’s world of work that you’re most impressed about and most excited about?
So 15 years ago, I was asked to co-chair our diversity group, to kick it off. Fifteen years later, I’ve been asked to again co-chair that group. For me this is coming full circle. Fifteen years ago, I kept saying we needed employee resource groups. So all I ever wanted in the last 20-30 years of my career has been for workplaces where people can come in and just be who they are and be accepted.
These employee resource groups help us celebrate all of our differences and realize we have more in common than our differences. I’m a strong believer that when people are able to be who they are in the workplace, they will develop a much better product, provide better services and the organization benefits from an eclectic group of people. I think it’s probably the best thing that I have seen in the workplace right now, an inclusive workplace. Nothing warms my heart more than having a workplace that embraces diversity and is inclusive.
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “work-life balance?”
I was just asked this in a panel discussion about what my work-life balance looked like when I started my career. The question was, ‘How did I keep my cup full?’ I laughed and said, “I don’t have a cup. I have an embellished chalice, and when you look in it, there’s absolutely nothing in it, but a bunch of dust and dead spiders.” And it’s because I never knew what work-life balance was.
I made the decision to be a single woman with a professional life and I was all in. So there was very little balance. Being told that I needed to balance and that I needed to surround myself with people who ignited my passions really made all the difference in the world. So I literally have a life that is filled with nonprofit work and with professional development of others, and it is such a fulfilling life. It’s a busy life. But as long as you’re doing what inspires you, it’s not like working.
Women need to know that there’s a season for their passions; it will ebb and flow over time. I mean, you may have one passion when you’re younger, another passion when you’re middle aged, and another one when you’re older. And that’s totally fine as long as it’s a fulfilling mix.
What would you say is one trait that has helped you the most in your work?
It definitely is tenacity, one of my favorite words. It is not taking no for an answer and continuing to develop and improve as you are in the workforce. I’m gonna go back over 40 years ago, when I was in college. There’s really nothing I could have learned 40 years ago to prepare me for the world today. When I was in school, we had a computer lab and back in the 80s, women had big hair and big puffy sweaters. Well, women couldn’t come into the computer lab with those big puffy sweaters because they would get static electricity and the static would short out the computers.
So I think the most important thing is being able to adapt and grow. Being tenacious means that you’re still going to stick with it but if you have to develop yourself and learn new skills along the way, you do it. So tenacious also means adaptability to me, that we’re going to keep hitting it and improving until we get it right.
What’s one word of advice you have for young women in the workplace today?
I think the most important thing is to have perspective. Just because you’re working on a particular project, it seems in your mind to be absolutely everything. And if the project doesn’t go the way you want or if maybe you make a mistake, one mistake, everything else is fine. You make one mistake and you feel devastated. What you need is perspective. You need to be able to step back and realize this is just one small aspect of your life. This isn’t your entire life and this doesn’t define who you are. So being able to take a step back and see it from a much higher altitude gives you perspective.
So many times I think as young women, we will have a failure, a failed relationship, a failed project, a failed mission, and we’re devastated. But in reality it’s just a very small blip in your life that 20 years from now really is not going to make any difference. You might not even remember it. So having that perspective, I think, is key. Otherwise, you’re going to spend a lot of time beating yourself up, feeling as if you’re not worth any achievement that you have and you end up truly with impostor syndrome before you know it.
We don’t succeed unless we fail. The best lessons we’ve ever learned or that I’ve ever learned have been when I have failed. As devastating as it might have been when I had those failures, it led me to the next step and to what I needed to do better the next time around.