The military-credit union connection

Bryan Fox and Nate Rupe see a lot of similarities between their time in the U.S. military and credit unions.

The former brigadier general and flight paramedic, respectively, join the CUNA News Podcast to discuss those similarities while sharing stories of their service and how credit unions assist veterans.

Rupe, an eight-year Army veteran who is now Advia Credit Union’s talent acquisition partner, describes the credit union as a “financial hospital.” He says the focus on helping people made his 2022 transition to the civilian workforce smooth.

Rupe and Advia Manager of Talent Acquisition Kilee Gardner share how the $3 billion asset credit union in Kalamazoo, Mich., has made a concerted effort to smooth this transition for other servicemembers.

Chapters

• 0:22 Episode introduction
• 2:08 Bryan Fox intro
• 2:56 How Fox's career started
• 4:35 Why Fox joined the military and why he stayed
• 5:38 How Fox's credit union and military skills worked together
• 8:26 Fox's civilian transition
• 9:23 How Fox keeps in touch with his military colleagues
• 11:02 How Advia became a silver level employer
• 14:50 How Advia helps military members transition into civilian life
• 16:39 Why supporting the military community is important to Rupe and Gardner
• 17:24 How Advia helped Rupe transition
• 20:14 Rupe's start at Advia
• 21:48 How Rupe's military skills transferred to Advia

Transcript

From the credit union national association, this is the CUNA News Podcast. Credit union people. Credit union ideas. 

Brock Fritz: Welcome to the CUNA News Podcast. I'm Associate Editor Brock Fritz, and I'm joined on today's Veterans Day episode by a pair of military veterans who will share their stories. Our annual Salute to Veterans campaign sponsored by the Federal Home Loan Banks, highlights credit unions going above and beyond to serve the military community, as well as veterans and active service members who are also part of the credit union movement.

Bryan Fox hops on the podcast first. The retired U. S. Air Force Brigadier General's life has been defined in large part by service and credit unions. A board member of 106 million dollar asset Russell Country Federal Credit Union in Great Falls, Montana, Fox says his 40 plus years of service have kept him happy for a lifetime.

He joined the podcast during an early Montana snowstorm to discuss his military service, his deployments, what drew him to the credit union movement, and how the skills and experience transferred between the volunteer efforts. Then I'll be joined by Advia Credit Union Manager of Talent Acquisition, Kilee Gardner, and Talent Acquisition Partner, Nate Rupe, an Army veteran and former paramedic.

They'll discuss the effort the 3 billion asset credit union in Kalamazoo, Michigan has put into becoming a veteran friendly organization. Those efforts have been recognized by the Michigan Veterans Affairs Agency, which certified Advia as a silver level employer for veterans due to their efforts to employ veterans and provide a supportive, inclusive work environment.

They'll discuss why the transition from service to civilian life can be difficult, resources that exist to help that transition, and Rupe's first hand experience of leaving the Army for the civilian workforce last year. Alright, let's bring Brian in and learn more about his lifelong passion for service, the military, and credit unions.

 Why don't you kind of start with explaining what you're up to now and how you're involved in the credit union space and kind of what else is going on in your 

Bryan Fox: life. Okay, so I actually retired from the military five years ago after 42 years of, service and ironically, I've been also been on our board of directors for 42 or 40 years also, but over the past 5 years, up until the pandemic, my spouse and I, we lived half the year in Europe.

and We lived the other half in Montana. Obviously the best time in Montana is the summer. So we spent the summers there. And the other time we spent in Europe and it was a great way to decompress. And we were there up until the pandemic. And then we came back and since then we've just been traveling around the United States.

We have grandchildren on the East coast and do a lot of hiking in Glacier and Yellowstone 

Brock Fritz: National Park. So yeah, we're talking to you as part of our Veterans Day coverage. I know you said you have 42 years, I believe of experience. so. I'm Sure, a lot happened in that time, but how'd you get started? 

Bryan Fox: I was born and raised in Great Falls, Montana, and upon graduation from high school in 1976, I enlisted in the Montana Air National Guard as an aircraft mechanic slash crew chief on F 106.

And F 16 fighters at the same time I work full time and I went to college full time and I got a B. S. degree in economics in 1985 in 1989. I was a commissioned an officer and I held several assignments to include. Logistics plans, nuclear biological chemical officer, personnel HR officer, comm squadron commander, comm patroller. and from December of 05 to May of 06, I performed a combat tour in Iraq where I was the aircraft maintenance squadron.

Commander. I then came back and was assigned at our state headquarters in Helena, Montana, or our joint force headquarters, both Army and Air, where I was the Vice Chief of Staff, then the Chief of Staff, and then ultimately, the last four years, I was the Commanding General of the Montana Air National Guard.

So like I mentioned earlier, retired with just shy of 42 years of military service, and I can't remember how many times I deployed. But I know it was to at least 13 different countries and I was activated at least six times on state active duty for like wildfires, floods, those types of things. 

Brock Fritz: So obviously you were passionate about it.

Why do you think it struck you to join out of high school? And then why do you think you stayed with it for so long? 

Bryan Fox: Well, I think it kind of is very similar for credit unions, you know, when we look for new board members, it's very similar to what we recruit for the military. You know, they're both volunteer organizations.

Our nation has an all volunteer military force, and board of directors are all volunteer positions. And we essentially look for 3 things. The 1st is desire to serve. 2nd is the passion to learn. And then 3rd, do they understand the credit union model of, you know, not for profit, not for charity, but for service.

And, you know, very similar, the military model is support or defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic. So I think my passion

for both those was, I just Must have had, been born with the seed to serve. 

Brock Fritz: Where are the crossovers, or how do you transfer your credit union skills to the military and vice versa? 

Bryan Fox: Well, first, let me just address the skills. You know, some of the skills the military taught me were, number one, to be engaged.

Two, discipline. Obviously, act professional, dependable. Obviously, there's leadership training. You learn real quick to be flexible. And team building, those types of things. But specifically the lessons that I learned that I applied really early on in my credit union career. The 1st thing I learned was how to run a meeting effectively.

You know, I learned some skills or attributes on how to keep it on track. How to give everyone a voice and make sure that you were basically developing or creating a consensus for decision making. The next 1 was, and this is probably mid career. I learned how to mechanize diversity of thought. In the decision making process, and the way I went about that was to create an environment of trust and respect and then also create an environment in which the board of directors were excited to come to.

And then it all basically came down to Brock just. Open and honest communication and trying to make people understand that as a board of director, you have to speak as 1 voice and a couple other things. I think we're really important as we got later into the career, and we were doing CEO selections and those types of things was to take responsibilities for your actions.

And, in yourself, and I constantly had to remind the board that, you know, at the end of the day, we're accountable for the final decisions, us and the CEO, uh, and they, we own either the success or the failure of those decisions. Real quick, in Iraq, I would have to say the two lessons I learned most there were innovation and decision making.

In that environment, in a combat environment, things happen a lot faster. So, you. And you don't have the resources and equipment you'd normally have, so you have to be very innovative. And decisions get made fast, and you just got to make them and move on. You can't, you can't dwell on them. As the comptroller, the credit union really helped me.

You know, I was pretty familiar with balance sheets and income statements. and, So I was actually able to apply a lot of the credit union stuff to the, to the comptroller position. And then lastly, the one thing the military taught me is how to get things done, you know, after witnessing numerous situations and scenarios, obviously you always have goals and you're measuring them and you're trying to achieve things, but boy, the military really taught me, you know, how to get over roadblocks sometimes, and some pushback, and how you can work around things.

Brock Fritz: So what was your last role in the military and what was kind of transitioning out like for you? 

Bryan Fox: Oh, the last role as a commanding general of the Montana National Guard, which was about a little bit over a thousand person organization. Three units scattered across the state of Montana. Uh, one was a flying wing, one was a heavy engineering unit, and the other was a small cadre at state headquarters.

When it was time to go, you know, I felt we had a really strong bench behind me, and that I had no qualms. I believe everybody should have their chance. I was given my chance. As one four star general told me one time is, Hey, congratulations. You're a senior leader, flag officer. We're going to welcome you on the bus, but there's going to be a day that comes and we're going to ask you to get off the bus.

Sure. And when that day came for me. I didn't have any heartburn at all about stepping off 

Brock Fritz: the bus. So now are you able to scratch that itch it all? I know there's credit union groups and people that talk to each other. Do you have that for service buddies or people you catch up with? 

Bryan Fox: Yeah, sure do. So twice a year, a group of us get together every year.

And then we're also Given some high level briefings, they're all unclassified, obviously, but nevertheless, you can get a sense of what's really still happening out there. Plus I still read military periodicals and so try to at least keep aware of what's happening. out there 

Sure.

 there 

Brock Fritz: anything else that you just want to mention over the course of your either career, anything that 

Bryan Fox: sticks out?

 Sure. The last, the last thing I'd leave you with Brock is one of my favorite quotes that I always shared with new board members that we were onboarding Or new troops or airmen that we were bringing into the military is a proverb that's I'm really fond of and it kind of goes like this, it says, if you want to be happy for an hour, take a nap. If you want to be happy for a day, go fishing. If you want to be happy for a month, get married. That's kind of a joke.

If you want to be happy for a year, win the lottery, But if you want to be happy for a lifetime, volunteer for something that adds value to America. And that's what, when you volunteer for a not for profit, or if you volunteer for our country's military, you are adding value to America. And to me, that's one of the most highest callings there is.

Brock Fritz: And now for our interview with Advia Credit Union's Kilee Gardner and Nate Rupe.

Kilee: What happened was, we started working with the MVAA to increase our certification with them to a silver level employer and in order to do that we had to meet some criteria so that's obviously the the how many veterans we hire our willingness to essentially promote ourselves as a veteran Nate would that be the right way of saying it Promote ourselves as a veteran market it as a veteran employer have resources available for employees that are veterans So we have what's called a it's called a Veterans packet and it's essentially resources for somebody who Specific to veterans that if they came to our human resources team with some sort of challenge that they're working through, we have an entire toolbox packet of information that is resources we can provide to them that the MVAA has put together to allow them to get the help in which they need.

So it's a certification, it's a deliberate intentional thing for us to be inclusive to veterans and veteran families. that we're, we're currently taking part 

Brock Fritz: in. What differentiated the bronze and the silver? Were there specific 

Nate: things? that? The biggest piece, The biggest change was really the addition of that, the, the middleman piece that we have between our veteran population and the different resources that they have, right?

The packets that MVAA has for us to be able to provide. Now, because we do have some branches in Wisconsin and Illinois, we don't have State specific stuff for those locations, but we can at least provide, Hey, these are the resources we have for Michigan, you know, so there should be some, at least some similar stuff in the area for you guys.

Sure. That's, that's really been the biggest integration. I think that's really helped us step into that. Cause we already had the rest of everything already in place. We were just missing that one piece for that silver. Okay. 

Brock Fritz: Who's that the connector? Yeah. 

Nate: Yeah. Special connector. Thank you. 

Brock Fritz: Yep. And what kind of resources are crucial for this 

Nate: community?

Oh, a lot. I mean, so when it comes to the migration and kind of the change, just because it's a different culture for a lot of the veterans, right? Just the work environment's different. They've lost a lot of like their healthcare and stuff like that, you know, that they've been dependent on in the past.

They have the resources that you can reach out to for like different volunteer groups, different kind of consultation groups, like that you can get together and kind of talk things out with as far as like bonding with like other veterans in the community, it's very in in depth, right? They've got education benefits that people can qualify for.

They've got stuff, mental health resources. They've got, you know. All sorts of stuff. So definitely a lot of like suicide awareness kits that they have inside of it too just cause that does tend to be an issue when veterans kind of get out that they've seen. It's got a lot of good stuff. Feels 

Brock Fritz: like there's a lot of things out there for veterans or a lot of people who want to help but.

Yeah. compiling all those and getting them to people 

Nate: is kind of a different, it's a lot. Yeah. It's, it's a lot. And making sure that everybody's aware of it, you know? 'cause the army is good. They've, they've done a lot. At least I can speak for the Army 'cause that's what I was in. Right. But they've done a lot as far as that reintegration back into like, you know, civilian society.

Like they've improved a lot on the system. 'cause it used to be like a day that they do for that training and now it's a week long process. But obviously there's still room for improvement on that. Like if we could do like a state by state one. you know, for people like, Hey, these are the resources that your state specifically has.

That'd be incredible, but they just, they're not there yet, you know? So Michigan Veteran Affairs Agency, they're really good at. Bridging that gap for our veteran population, which is awesome. 

Kilee: We've also identified, you know, being part of the talent acquisition team, something that we've participated in in the past is trainings that they offered to support employers on how to help veterans articulate their skillset from that military background into.

For lack of better term, relevant work experience skills. Yeah. So we, we attended a few years back and entire training on that, you know, in, in it's something that the MVAA offers veterans too, is to be able to sit down with them and help them build a resume that takes their skills from the service and makes it into transferable skill sets on the resume that would allow companies to understand what it is that they did.

In everyday terms that you would look at under normal resume, cause that's a, one of the areas of the biggest areas of struggle, you know, is, is trying to make sure that your skillset is shows transferable to those reading 

Nate: the resume. Yeah, like, for example, like an infantry guy, right? Like their, their job description in the military is going to look totally different than what they want to put on their resume, you know, as the skills that they have.

So, and it's. It's a, it's very hard. I didn't know how hard it was because I always, at least in my career, I had more of a focus on my transition back into, cause to be a lifer in the military, but I had more of a focus on building my resume for when I got out. But in that week long course, it was fascinating to see the variety of comfort levels, you know, because not everybody wants to get out of the military and sometimes they're getting told they need to, you know, so.

There's just, there's different preparation that they have for it. So that's a big piece. The, the learning how to communicate effectively to, you know, show, Hey, I've got some relatable skills that I've, I've learned and developed. You know, there's definitely some teaching pieces that some people need in order to be able to integrate back into society.

why 

Brock Fritz: is supporting that community something that is important to You two and the credit union as a whole. 

Kilee: I think it's just so often that there's a gap you know, our, our service servicemen and women, like they struggle in that transition sometime to move to civilian life. And oftentimes it's by way of finding a job, you know, that They can support their family.

You know, there's a, there's a wage that you have to be able to make to support those that you care about. And sometimes there's a gap there. And sometimes the skill set, it's hard, it's hard to transfer it into civilian life. So for us, it's really just making sure that veterans know that there are companies out there that want to support them.

So Nate, I know that you don't always talk about your transition. You know, how about you? Cause obviously, you know, we talk about your history and what you did in the service in comparison to what you do now, but how, how did that transition feel for you? And how do you think that ADVIA made that transition better?

Nate: Wow, that's a good question. There, there were a lot of like hesitancies, right? Because it's a different obviously military, different environment. You know, and so coming out, don't really know what to expect. my background was medical, so, and I was kind of trying to get away from the medical background, so I was looking for a new industry, and I had no idea what to expect, to be honest.

So, yeah. just really, I struggled when it came to not having that surrounding of people to talk to. I was going to do like a stay at home dad thing while I used my, benefits that the army gave me. On my way out the door for education, I went crazy, just kind of sitting at home. Like I need to talk to people.

And so I, I had to start jumping back into the workforce, if nothing else, just for the social needs. and Advia is the perfect fit. I started at the front desk part time and, you know, just kind of to get my foot in the door, see what the culture was like. And it was very, I mean, it is very inclusive, not was, it's a very inclusive organization.

They, they have a sincere passion for helping people, which was my favorite thing. That's why I was in the medical field. Right. I'm all about helping people. So. Uh, it's just, it's a good organization. At no point once I got into Advia did I feel like I was alone. So that's why when I talk to some of my buddies, you know, and they, they let me know, Hey, you know, like being a civilian stinks, you know, it's like, well, just got to find the right home, you know?

So being able to help people get to that spot, that's, that's a good feeling. 

Kilee: We always say that Nate, Nate went big. He used to be a critical care flight paramedic, and then he he came into banking. So drastic, 

Nate: drastic, drastic change. But it was good because, you know, there's that work life balance that it's really important.

And Advia definitely can provide that. So, yeah, that was, that was a family decision. We we sat back and we're like, you know, You're definitely taking work home with you at this point, you know, so it's a good time to get out. So, but not everybody, and I had a very cozy military career, like, I was in Germany, basically just on vacation for three years, you know, and then I was in Texas in school, and then in Alabama for three, three years and some change, but not everybody gets that.

A lot of my buddies in that time, you know, multiple deployments, stuff like that, so. You know, those guys who've really, really, really had an active military career, they'll, they'll have an even more difficult transition, you know, into civilian population. So it's, I think, um, agencies like this, organizations like this, specifically the MVAA, right?

And they're, they're very important when it comes to that reintegration back into society. 

Brock Fritz: So you served about 10 years? Eight years. Eight years. Okay. And then what was your, your gap and this is your first job. It 

Nate: sounds like. This is my first job outside of the military. Yeah. So really not that long of a gap.

I got out. So I got out technically April of 2022. And I started working with Advia in July, right? So, and I didn't start my school again until, because my wife and I, we tried vacation a little bit after I got out. I didn't start my school until April, May, probably May of 2022 again. So, really. Started school realized I need people and then really started applying and getting into the workforce again Okay, 

Brock Fritz: when you are talking to your buddies and stuff um, do a lot of them use these types of 

Nate: organizations.

you know, I've got some buddies in Ohio. I've got buddies in Florida, but a lot of them Don't know exactly how much they can benefit from. So I think that's the biggest challenge and really the biggest hurdle at this point is getting, getting that information out to the veteran population of, Hey, you know, you have these resources prior to them finding themselves in a, in a time crunch to get a job, you know, and unfortunately ending up on the streets sometimes, you know, so really trying to beat them before they get.

in a time crunch, you know, so if we could get stuff like this to them when they're getting out in the middle, oh my gosh, it would be life changing in some of their cases. 

Yeah. 

Brock Fritz: Nate, what do you think transferred about your, I know you said you kind of had your eye on the future the whole time, 

Nate: but. Yeah, I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a forward, I like to be a forward thinker, but really, I, I'm not going to lie, I never once thought about a credit union when it came to like getting out.

It's just that my wife has always worked in financial institutions throughout my military career, because she's a. Military spouse, right? So at each of the branches there were credit unions, and she, she would go from credit union to credit union to credit union, right? So she's always loved them. So when we moved to Michigan, that's how she jumped in with Advia.

But, I'm very, like my whole life, I love helping people. I'm service focused, right? That's what really drew me to the medical field. And when it came time to find an industry that I could step away from the medical, like I still have a huge passion for helping people, right? So, I had time, because we weren't in a time crunch for employment, I had time to kind of sit back and look at missions and values of the It's just the different companies and Advia, like, oh my gosh, there it's basic. I always describe it as a financial hospital rather than a financial institution, you know, just because we're really there to Provide that extra service to people.

And so because this company has that service, it, was a smooth integration. Like, I still feel like I'm helping people, you know, but not in a medical way. Just more of a, you know, a longevity like financial way.