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Welcome to our third/fourth FCCU Team Spotlight blog! This week I met with Whitney, our Southside Branch Manager and mortgage loan officer. Let’s jump right in!

Hello! Can you introduce yourself and tell us how long you’ve been at FCCU?

Hello! I’m Whitney Townsend, and I’ve been at FCCU since January 2. I operate as a mortgage loan officer and a branch manager at the Southside location here in Fort Atkinson.

What does an average day at FCCU look like for you?

We have a team huddle in the morning where we check-in on who’s staffed at our branch that day and any goals or alerts that we need to pay special attention to from Meghan (Director of Operations), Danielle (VP of Lending), or Bryan (VP of Member Experience).

From there, as much as I would love an agenda, I just work on things as they come in: people call in, leads come through online, and I respond to any member questions sent my way. As the branch manager, sometimes there are questions that aren’t in the realm of being a loan officer, like debit card issues or other oddball questions, but I try to help as much as I can when the tellers are especially busy.

My job is very member-focused, and that’s what I love about it. I have great conversations with members and team members every day that make each day new and different.

Outside of work, what are some of your favorite things to do?

I’m a very active person, and I think that’s where I draw my energy from. “An object in motion likes to stay in motion.” I love kayaking, snowshoeing, running, and anything else that keeps me active with the kids. My youngest one is now able to ride a bike by herself so now we can go on family bike rides whereas before we [my husband and I] had to try and run alongside, which was so hard!

I also LOVE movies, although I usually fall asleep and can’t get through a whole movie. We have family movie nights where we rent a movie and make popcorn-- It’s the best. We rent from Family Video in Fort Atkinson. I like the novelty of the kids picking out a movie as opposed to the endless browsing on Netflix.

What’s the last good movie you watched? We watched Wonder and it was so good. It’s a really touching movie so of course I was crying, and the kids were staring at me like, “why are you crying?”

What’s your favorite volunteering opportunity you’ve done with FCCU and why?

I think financial literacy is so important, especially in a small community like this where people are likely to stay and do their banking at an institution with which they are familiar. If you can capture that young audience in school through a financial literacy presentation or a community event, they will start to recognize us and how we can help them.

I don’t think there are as many conversations happening at home because money has become such a taboo topic. We want to help students have those conversations and feel more confident about their finances.

So far, I’ve had the opportunity to go to Barrie Elementary School with Jenn (Training Coordinator) for a career fair and speak at both the middle and high schools. I think the middle school is a fun age group to work with because they have so much energy and are eager to answer questions.

What’s your favorite 80s or 90s jam?

In the 90s, I would have to say *NSYNC’s “Bye, Bye, Bye.” At the time, I was in Main Street Dance Studio and we got to do the music video dance routine. Also, every time I hear it I’m brought back to Friday night dances in 8th grade dancing to it with my friends.

Growing up, my dad drove us to school every day, and we listened to his music in the car. He helped form my eclectic taste with music like Blue Oyster Cult, Mannheim Steamroller, and Jethro Tull. Being a musician myself (playing the flute and violin), I have an appreciation for a lot of different types of music.

If you could be any animal in the world, which animal would you be and why?

I think I would be a bird of some sort because flying dreams are some of my favorite dreams.

Our favorite place to hike is Devil’s Lake, and there’s this really high peak you reach by climbing up the north face. I just absolutely love the feeling of being out in nature, hearing the wind through the trees. It’s one of my favorite things.

As a bird, I would really enjoy being high in the sky and having a 30,000 ft view of the world.

What is one FCCU service that you wish more people knew about?

FCCU’s financial counseling and money management services.

Again, since money is such a taboo topic, people hear “financial counseling” and think that there is something is wrong with them or that they’re in trouble. That’s definitely not the case. These services are useful for any member at any stage in their life, in any financial situation—there’s always more to learn about your finances. I have worked in finance for years and continue to learn the intricacy of financial instruments every day.

The one thing about money management is that there’s no one financial solution for every person. There’s no template or blueprint you can hand to everyone—every person’s scenario is different because each person’s goal are different.

People tend to handle their finances in the same way as their parents or a person they admire, and that might not be an appropriate solution for that person. I once worked with a dental hygienist who allocated her 401K the same as the 20-year-older dentist at work because she looked up to him. But that meant that her allocations were too conservative, so we worked together to make allocations appropriate to where she was at in her life.

I think that there’s no shame in seeking financial counseling. When you want to know an answer, you go to a professional, right? Especially at a place like FCCU where these tools are free to use. There’s no reason a person shouldn’t take advantage of these opportunities to put themselves in a better financial position.

If you won the lottery, what would you do?

I would do several things with my winnings: Although we’ve done a substantial amount of saving for it already, I would make sure that all four of my kids can go to college if they choose to.

I would also love to start a garbage company down in the Dominican Republic. There is no waste management in the city where my husband’s parents live, which is both a sanitary and health issue (never in my life have I appreciated our garbage collection more than when we visited them). The infrastructure in the Dominican is not yet ready to sustain citywide collection, but I think it would be great to provide that service for my husband’s parents and their immediate community.

Our other dream is to build a sports complex here in the Jefferson County area. My husband and I envision it as a place where families would go to be active in the winter months with things like batting cages, indoor tennis courts, basketball courts, and more.

What does the “credit union difference” mean to you?

I think it shows up in the individual interactions between our members and our team members. Each team member has the opportunity to make a difference—whether it’s a simple suggestion or personal connection they make that changes a person’s life. The member is always top-of-mind in every interaction.

I saw this firsthand when I shadowed the other branches in the way that loan officers deal with difficult requests and how the credit committee painstakingly makes each difficult loan decision. They are not easy decisions to make, and no one makes light of the difficulty and seriousness of the task at hand because we hold our members in such high regard.

There’s also a degree of creativity in credit committee. For example, let’s say a member wants a loan and their debt ratios or credit are not adequate for us to be able to extend credit to them. We put our heads together and brainstorm ways to try to make it work like: “What if we did?” or “What if we refinanced their car?” or “What if we have cosign?” We really try to make a solution for them, instead of denying their application upon first glance.