Mar. 2—Michelle Dearholt was well on her way to achieving new goals before a cancer diagnosis stopped her in her tracks.
“All of a sudden, you find out that you have something that just changes the trajectory of how you think about life in general and how you think about work,” said Dearholt, 44, of her stage three cancer. “At that time, I wasn’t quite sure, one, if I was going to live, and two, if I was going to be able to come back to work.”
But Dearholt is back — and better than ever. She started in her role this month as the new CEO and president of Nusenda Credit Union, leading the state’s largest locally owned financial institution, which comprises more than a quarter-million members and close to 1,000 employees statewide.
Dearholt replaces former chief executive Joe Christian, who had been with the company in various roles for 39 years before his retirement.
Dearholt, like Christian, has a longstanding history with the company. She started as a teller at the credit union’s Lomas location 27 years ago, right out of high school. She’s served in other roles, too, including in human resources and most recently as the executive vice president of operations.
She said one of her goals is to lead the credit union with empathy and vulnerability.
“For me, it’s trying to understand where that person is at in their journey,” Dearholt said.
How do you see the role of Nusenda in New Mexico?
Our role has been to support economic development — really trying to ensure that we can maybe fill some gaps that some… communities need. For example, we have a micro-lending program, and that helps support starting entrepreneurs who maybe can’t get loans from traditional banking means. If there’s wildfire destruction across the state, we’ve always supported emergency funding. Recently, and every year, we have what is called Community Rewards, and we give back to our community nonprofits. This year, we just celebrated 72 organizations receiving, as a whole, $700,000. It makes a difference. Our community needs it.
How do you plan to lead Nusenda as chief executive?
I’ve been here a long time, so I’ve been part of — I’ll call it the magic of Nusenda. Our service experience with our members, innovative products and services, and our top workplace status. Those, to me, will continue. We’ll make investments where we need to.
Any expansion plans?
We made a big investment in the El Paso market, and so that was kind of a natural progression following what we call the Rio Grande corridor. We’ve been in (Las) Cruces Since ’21. … We saw a lot of similarities between New Mexico and El Paso, specifically around member needs, and we feel like we can make a difference there, in terms of financial capability support, in terms of banking services, in terms of community support — it’s been a great learning opportunity for us. We’ve got some branches planned to expand in that market as well.
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