Business View Magazine | February 2021

212 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2021 Zeal’s culture is all about collaboration – about teamwork and coming together to help others, and they always have their members’ best interest at heart. “There’s a true passion for making a difference,” says Wallace. “You can feel it when you walk in the door and with every conversation you have. Everyone operates with a sense of empathy and understanding. We’re built on character and that instills trust.” Zeal has done a great job maintaining the important ‘people’ connection across technology platforms with virtual team meetings and leadership meetings. And Kreinbring holds a CEO townhall meeting on a regular basis with all the staff as a virtual conference. So in spite of being located in different places, they still very much feel like a community and a family. Kreinbring shares, “I worked at CO-OP about 12 years ago and then left, and when I came back about three years ago, we talked about shaping our culture and where it needed to go and how we wanted to get there. So two years ago we started the journey of what that looks like at Zeal. We constantly have conversations about where we want to be, who we want on our team, and it’s been amazing. We’ve continued to evolve and we want our employees to enjoy working here and be part of shaping the culture of Zeal.” Looking ahead, Zeal leadership is considering what the next few years will look like – what the future needs of members are going to be. And how to formulate a seamless experience where a member can do transactions at any time, anywhere, but still experience the credit union culture and personal connection, whether a member is doing that from a device or at a branch location. And they’re also considering how delivery strategies will change in the future. “We’ve talked about how we can become a trusted household name in Michigan,” says Kreinbring, “and we’ve built all our strategies around that. We talk about innovation and whether that is simply changing a process or new technology. Our board has always said, “We don’t want to be on the bleeding edge Chief Experience Officer, Coretta Wallace