Newport Beach, Calif. (Feb. 23, 2007) – The National Association of Credit Union Service
Organizations (NACUSO) announced today that NACUSO chairman of the board Thomas C. Davis has accepted the position as NACUSO’s new president/CEO. Vic Pantea, president/COO of Member Gateways, LLC in South Bend, Indiana, served as NACUSO interim president while the NACUSO board searched for the best candidate to lead the organization’s new vision. Pantea will continue his responsibilities on the NACUSO board of directors, where he has served since 2003.
The transition for Davis, from NACUSO chairman to president and accepting the reins from Pantea, will be seamless and expedient as Davis has been a member of the board for twenty years, starting in that role two years after NACUSO was founded in 1985. A highly rated speaker at credit union and CUSO conferences, Davis spent seven years as a credit union and CUSO executive working with Bellco Credit Union. Over the last eighteen years he devoted his career to the industry as a management consultant and CEO of Davis & Company, while using his unique combination of educational achievements and applied expertise as a business strategist (MBA), industrial psychologist (PhD), and process consultant.
“The industry needs trade organizations committed to solving its major problems, and that requires industry expertise and commitment from the leadership. Tom has an in-depth understanding of NACUSO’s role in helping credit unions survive and succeed,” explained Dennis Pierce, CEO of CommunityAmerica Credit Union, Lenexa, Kansas, and NACUSO board vice chairman and CEO Search Committee Chairman for the new president. “He has been the primary architect of NACUSO’s new National Center for Collaboration and Innovation, a subject he is passionate about, and he’s done an incredible job of leading the board to his vision for the industry’s long-term success, thwarting tough industry issues, and NACUSO’s role in that vision.”
“I am honored by the Board’s selection and their confidence in me to lead NACUSO into the future, and to help the industry at a time when it is at a mature phase in its life cycle and facing significant challenges,” Davis stated. “NACUSO’s role in helping the credit union industry to transform itself is to focus not only on innovation, but to incorporate the unique qualities and advantages of collaboration and the cooperative business model. This approach will require the addition of critical thinking, a precursor to innovation, on the front end – and implementation, a requirement for transforming these activities into meaningful results and outcomes on the back end of the model .The mechanism by which the industry can embrace critical thinking, collaboration, innovation and implementation involves the establishment of a unifying structure that will help credit unions and CUSO to address the critical issues they are facing, create a sense of urgency to collaborate, and reinforce the belief that CUSOs are essential our survival. This mechanism is embodied in the National Center for Collaboration and Innovation.
“The National Center for Collaboration and Innovation is designed as an open system and is explicitly intended to be inclusive rather than exclusive. We want to establish relationships with organizations, groups, individuals and partners, both inside and outside of the industry, who can help the credit union industry to grow and survive.”
“I am excited about the opportunity to lead NACUSO, to establishing relationships with like-minded organizations, and to helping credit unions collaborate and re-define themselves in the marketplace,” Davis concluded.
“Tom Davis is very articulate in discussing the industry issues and NACUSO’s vision,” Dave Serlo, president of PSCU Financial Services, St. Petersburg, Florida, and NACUSO board treasurer and CEO Search Committee member said recently. “He has a special knowledge and ability to look outside our industry for new ideas, and superimpose them onto industry issues and challenges. Tom is simply an exemplary, innovative leader and advocate for the industry.”
Davis will assume his duties as NACUSO’s president/CEO by April 1, and will be officially introduced to the NACUSO membership at NACUSO’s 2007 Annual Conference, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The annual conference will be conducted April 30 through May 3, at the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel. At that time, NACUSO will also unveil details of its new National Center for Collaboration and Innovation at the annual conference. The National Center, spearheaded by Tom Davis in his role as NACUSO chairman, was created to strategically solve critical industry issues and assist credit unions and CUSOs to successfully evolve together, by turning innovative ideas into reality. Dave Serlo, under the auspices of PSCU Financial Services, recently donated $50,000 to NACUSO’s National Center for Collaboration and Innovation representing PSCU’s efforts to provide a portion of the start up “seed capital” exclusively for NACUSO’s National Center.
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