Jean Giard, president and CEO of Vermont Federal Credit Union. Photo: Baldwin Photography
by Joyce Marcel, Vermont Business Magazine
It is remarkable that during her 18 years on the senior management team of the Vermont Federal Credit Union, Jean Giard, now its president and CEO, helped grow the institution from $160 million to its current size of more than $900 million in assets. And it is still growing.
How did she do it? It’s all about company culture, Giard said.
“Our staff are the reason we’re growing,” Giard said. “They are the front line. They’re the ones who interact with our membership. They have the relationships, and they do a fantastic job of serving our members and helping them with their financial needs. My team and I have really worked hard to improve our culture.”
Giard recited management consultant Peter Drucker’s famous phrase, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
“It’s absolutely true,” she said. “If you don’t have a good culture, then you’re not going to grow. If your employees are not supported in a meaningful way, then you’re not going to grow. And you’re not going to be successful. When I took over, we had a challenging culture, and we slowly built it to a more collaborative, supportive, staff-focused environment. And that’s how we grew.”
Credit unions may look like banks and act like banks, and even have drive-up windows like banks, but they are, in reality, nonprofit membership-driven financial cooperatives. A membership fee entitles members to all the benefits offered by banks, but with a difference — in banks, part of the money goes to stockholders, so it leaves the institution. And sometimes that is a large portion of the money.
“Credit unions have the same products and services that banks do,” Giard explained. “We like to think we do it with a heart. The member has a share and has a vote on anything that goes on in the credit union. All of our revenues go back to our membership, like a cooperative would. The revenues are used to reduce fees, to reduce loan costs and loan interests, and to have higher increase deposit rates as opposed to banks.
Giard, a certified public accountant, came to the credit union as chief financial officer after a long career as an auditor and as the audit partner at Williston’s R.F. Lavigne & Co.
Giard is uncomfortable in the spotlight — she was even uncomfortable doing the interview for this profile — but her influence is widespread and, in one respect, crucial. Vermont has very few female presidents of banks and credit unions; Giard is considered an inspiration.
“There are still far more men than women in leadership roles, and I think if you looked at the financial sector in particular, you would see that discrepancy is even wider,” said Megan Manahan Bliss, a shareholder in the law firm Cahill, Gawne, Miller & Manahan and chair of the Vermont Federal Credit Union board.
“Anecdotally, at a national conference Jean and I recently attended together,“ Bliss recalled, “we were invited to a roundtable for female CEO and board chairs, and the group numbered approximately 40 in a conference of about 450 overall. I am certain not all females in those categories were present, but it’s indicative of the breakdown.
Jean Giard, president and CEO of Vermont Federal Credit Union. Photo: Baldwin Photography
“Having been fortunate enough to work with and learn from Jean myself, my hope would be that all young women — or all women for that matter — would have the opportunity to learn from and be mentored by a leader like Jean.”
Women do head some financial institutions in Vermont, including Brattleboro Savings & Loan, Bank of Burlington, Members 1st Federal Credit Union in Brattleboro and the National Bank of Middlebury. Kathryn Austin, president and CEO of Derby-based Community National Bank, plans to retire at the end of 2024.
“I’m not sure there’s an advantage to being a female boss, because there may still be this feeling that it’s a man’s job,” Giard said. “But I think that boards are looking at women differently now and watching them and seeing them perform.”
Still, the numbers are not in their favor, and being mentored by a woman as skilled as Giard is not a path open to every woman, Bliss said.
“Jean leads by example, with integrity, and puts in the hard work,” Bliss said. “She is a listener and a thinker. She proves you can rise to the top based on your aptitude, while staying true to your values, being kind and at times even quiet. She confidently relied on her years of financial experience and expertise while embracing the challenge of growing as a leader to build the right team around her and to lead our organization through unprecedented growth — and with a pandemic thrown in.”
Giard, 74, grew up as the oldest of eight children; from an early age, she was told by her father that she could do anything she wanted to.
“He didn’t treat his female children any differently than his male children, so I was kind of clueless, to be honest,” Giard said. “I never knew I wasn’t supposed to be doing those things. I blew all the rules out of the water.”
In addition, her father also taught his daughters that they needed to have a profession, “Because you never know when you might have to support yourself,” she said.
Giard has always been a trailblazer; she was one of the few women in her accounting classes at the University of Vermont.
“I was the first group of females that (the large national accounting firm) Arthur Andersen hired,” she said. “And I was, I believe, the first female CPA to be a partner in an accounting firm in Vermont. Then I was in a book put out by the state of Vermont about women with nontraditional roles. It talked about all the women that were doing things that no one would expect, like medicine, construction and accounting.”
This has led her to a natural interest in women in the workforce.
“I’ve been able to work really hard to promote the women we have,” Giard said. “We have, I think, 10 women in leadership roles, which is unusual. We support them through training and through promotions, not necessarily above men, but we pay attention to women. Because sometimes women don’t put themselves forward. They head back, and we want to make sure that they are treated equally and are looked after equally well.”
In earlier days, credit unions were formed around occupations; Vermont Federal was established as the Burlington Postal Employees Credit Union in 1953. It then went through a series of mergers and name changes until 1991, when it became Vermont Federal.
Today there are 15 credit unions in Vermont, plus some out-of-state institutions with branches here. This is quite a reduced number from, say, 45 years ago, when there were 72 credit unions in Vermont, each a small local one attached to one or two businesses, like book binderies or bakeries.
“Think about when you’re baking cupcakes,” said Joe Bergeron, president of the Association of Vermont Credit Unions, an advocacy organization. “Each little cupcake compartment had a separate cupcake. That’s kind of how it was. And the only way that people found out about each other’s credit unions, way back in the day, was if your spouse, for example, was a teacher in the school district, and they had a credit union. Or you’re an employee of some factory, and that factory had a credit union. You might become members of both, but otherwise, they’re rather compartmentalized.”
Today, most credit unions have a geographical footprint rather than an occupational one.
“All the credit unions that we have today are many,, many times larger,” Bergeron said. “And many times more people are members in Vermont than there were 45 years ago. Today, about 65% to 68% of Vermonters are a member of a credit union.”
Vermont Federal had 53,866 members as of Jan. 31. It has branches in Burlington, Milton, St. Albans, Middlebury, Essex and Vergennes, with a branch in Barre that will be opening soon.
Its bread and butter are member loans.
“We are very strong in mortgage loans,” Giard said. ”We’re strong in home equity loans, especially in this environment. Individuals can’t sell their houses because they can’t buy a house because so few houses are for sale. So people do a lot of renovating. We’re very strong in that as well. We have started doing solar loans, and that has been a growth area for us. Auto loans are big for us. And we’re doing a lot of business loans. In fact, business loans are a big factor in our expected growth over the coming year.”
Vermont Federal has been offering banking services to marijuana businesses since it became legal to sell cannabis in Vermont. This requires compliance with many federal rules and regulations.
“We are the largest supporter of marijuana lending in the state of Vermont right now,” Giard said. “We have been doing this since it became legal in October of 2021. We have a little over 320 members that are involved in marijuana banking. So that’s a central part for us.
“We’re very happy to support those members and help them thrive,“ she added. “They bring their deposits here. We’re following through on all the regulatory requirements that they have. We set up a department just for them, with three staff members. We’ll need a fourth soon.”
Giard has been a thoughtful leader of Vermont Federal, Bergeron said.
“She’s very sensitive to the people that she’s working with,” he said. “She’s a very considerate person. She’s a great leader. She listens to people. She is very cognizant of what’s going on around her. She’s on my board of directors. I have a seven-member board composed of individuals from around the state from different credit unions, and Jean and her credit union and her leadership are very well respected and very well regarded in the credit union industry, both inside and outside of Vermont.
“I think she is one of those leaders who believe that the mark of a good leader is having great people working for you and letting them do what you hire them to do. I believe that’s her approach to her management team, and they do a great job under her leadership.”
“Thoughtful” is the word most people use to describe Giard. For example, she serves on the board of the Converse Home, an assisted living and memory care facility in Burlington established in 1886. The former executive director of the home, Joyce Touchette, who is now the office manager of HomeShare Vermont, serves on that board with Giard.
“Jean is such a knowledgeable person, not only about finances, which is one of the reasons we were interested in having her serve on our board, but just her thoughtful processing,” Touchette said. “The way she thinks very clearly about things — she’s able to get right through to the heart of the matter. Jean always can be counted on to do the right thing. And one of the reasons she’s been such a tremendous help to us on the board is that we can always rely on her wisdom, along with her excellent skill set.”
At the credit union, Giard focuses on long-term growth, Bliss said.
Photo: Jean Giard speaks at VFCU's annual meeting. Photo courtesy VFCU.
“She’s expanding our field of membership to reach more Vermonters,” Bliss said. “But it’s not just that alone. You have to have a strong organization. She really cultivated a strong senior management team, developing those positions and reorganizing the organization so that it was running efficiently and had the best people leading the particular areas.”
Expanding what is called the “field of membership” was critical to the institution’s growth.
“Our field of membership was limited to only a certain number of counties in Vermont,” Bliss said. “We could only serve Vermonters who were working, living or worshiping in those counties. That has expanded under her leadership, and we can now serve all Vermonters.”
How was that done?
“It’s a process by which you have to apply to the federal oversight authority that we’re governed by, the National Credit Union Administration” Bliss said. “There are different methods you can use. In combination with her senior management team and the board, she made the application to expand that field as membership, and we were able to do so.””
Vermont Federal’s goal is to be Vermont’s credit union, Bliss said. With its wider field of membership, the credit union can now offer a wider range of financial products to a wider range of people.
“When things like a housing boom happen, you can make a lot of loans to Vermonters looking to get into new homes,” Bliss said. “That’s good for financial organizations. That’s how you grow.”
Giard has taken a multitier approach as president, Bliss said.
“I think she was uniquely situated because of her experience in the credit union previously as CFO, plus her financial expertise, and then her ability to really lead the organization,” Bliss said. “She’s intelligent and compassionate. And I would say she’s shrewd, in the sense that she can make tough decisions when she needs to. I don’t mean that in a disparaging way. You know, as a leader, sometimes you have to make tough decisions when you know that it’s in the best interest of the organization in the long term. She’s really developed the ability to do that. When she started, that was difficult for her to do; she’s really grown. She’s also humble. She’s too quick to deny her own role. But her humility in that respect is what makes her a good leader.”
Vermont Federal’s chief financial officer, Douglas Fisher, who works closely with Giard, praised her ability to lead with compassion.
“As a leader, she’s genius,” Fisher said. “Obviously, she’s a very smart and astute businesswoman. But she’s also very thoughtful and considerate. She’s a very empathetic leader. And that resonates well with our employees, for sure. When they know that she cares about them, which she shows every day, they don’t mind rolling up their sleeves and doing the tough work when necessary.”
Fisher praised Giard’s empathy by way of anecdote.
“I don’t know if this is appropriate for your story, but we had an issue in one of our buildings,” Fisher said. “It looked like we had a mouse problem. She made the folks in the facilities department promise that we would trap them and relocate the mice. We would not harm them. It’s her natural approach to a lot of things. Let’s do no harm.”
Early Life
Giard grew up in Bridport, Vermont, the oldest in a large family. In 1955, her father and mother purchased Blue Slate Farm from his parents, and Giard grew up on the farm.
Her father also had an early-morning postal route.
“My father was a very successful farmer,” Giard said. “He did well. He put all of his children through school.”
Giard’s mother, a homemaker, at age 64 went back to the University of Vermont and completed a degree in history; she graduated alongside her youngest daughter.
“She traveled extensively after my last sister left the nest,” Giard said. “She was in Palestine and Turkey, Jerusalem and Greece, and Italy, France and England. When my three sisters and I went with my mother to England, we ended up giving her the nickname ’Walking History Book,’ because she had so much knowledge of the kings and queens and what happened in England. My mother always told us the story behind everything.
“My father’s side of the family didn’t like to travel,” Giard added. “He worked hard — from 5 in the morning until 8 o’clock at night. And he taught us all his work ethic. We learned what work was.”
The Giard children worked on the farm.
“I can remember many summers picking up rocks and throwing bales of hay,” she said. “We had horses when I was young, and we would use the horses to go get the cattle and bring them back into the barn. Back then the animals were always outside, feeding on the grass. It was a great childhood. We have a camp on the lake. So on the one afternoon a week that we had off, which was Sunday afternoon, we always went skiing and waterskiing and swimming and had fun.”
Giard’s father was extremely careful with money.
“My father never had a loan,” she said. “Except when he bought the farm, and he paid it off quickly. He didn’t believe in borrowing; we learned that pretty quickly. He believed in paying cash for everything. I think I learned from him the worth of the dollar.”
The future found Giard early. She landed her first job, as an accountant, when she was just 16.
“I did accounting for a small company,” she said. “It sold supplies to farmers, and they needed somebody to help out. So I learned pretty quickly about balancing books and keeping books.”
The job was at Broughton’s Farm Supply, and she got it because she lived in a town where everyone knew everyone else. And Frank Broughton, who owned the company, knew her.
“Bridport had about 750 people,” Giard said. “And we were related to most of them because that’s what it was like in a small town in Vermont back then. My best friends were a cousin on my father’s side and a cousin on my mother’s side. It was a very small town, and we all knew who Frank was. He knew me because he knew my father. So he asked my father if I wanted something to do in the summertime. And so that’s what I did.”
Giard’s connection with Broughton lasted through time. He was on the board of Vermont Federal when Giard came on as CFO.
“He was the one that really got me my last job, which is CEO,” Giard said. “He made the recommendation. There was a huge connection there.”
Giard went to high school in Middlebury and then to UVM, where she began as an English major and later changed to political science.
“Every semester I seemed to be changing what I wanted to do, and changing my major,” she said. “Finally, in the beginning of my junior year, I decided I needed some time off to figure out what I really wanted to do. I ended up in Colorado at 19, where I was on my own for a couple of years.”
She worked at a place that sold Jeeps and tractor parts.
“I got to drive around and deliver parts to the different facilities there and to the other dealers,” she said. “I did that for two years and saved enough money for a semester at UVM.”
When she returned to the university, Giard shifted to a business major. The shift was revelatory.
“Once I started business, it was like I was coming home,” she said. “It just all made sense to me. I graduated and then started one semester of my master’s degree and then just dove into business.”
Auditing
When one of the largest accounting firms in the country at the time, Arthur Anderson, came scouting for talent at UVM, Giard was ready.
“Arthur Andersen visited UVM along with others of the Big Eight (accounting firms) at the time,” Giard said. “I got offers from two different firms. So I left UVM to work for Arthur Andersen down in Boston. I got some great training and great experience auditing all different kinds of financial institutions, including The Boston Globe. I was there for two years, and then I decided that I wanted to come back up to Vermont. I worked for P.F. Jurgs. Then we started our public accounting firm, R.F. Lavigne & Co. I was the audit partner there for about 25 years.”
Giard audited state government, electric utilities, banks and credit unions.
“Some businesses are required to have an audit by regulation, but most of them aren’t,” Giard explained. “Most of the towns and cities in Vermont aren’t audited. But we did some of the larger ones, like the town and village of Woodstock, for example. We did local electric utilities. One that I spent a lot of time in was Morrisville Electric. We issued statements that said we have audited the clients, and we agree that their financial statements are fairly stated.”
Auditing inadvertently led Giard to become involved in Vermont Federal.
“Beyond auditing, we had taxes every year,” Giard said. “I did lots and lots of taxes. One of those people whose taxes we did was Joe Finnegan, the CEO of Vermont Federal from 1978 to 2009. Then we did Joe Finnegan’s mother for a long time. Then he heard I had decided to get out of public accounting. I was done with travel and the number of hours that we put in during tax season, easily 50 to 60 hours a week during that period. It’s all-encompassing.
“I was traveling a lot to do auditing. I wanted to settle down a little bit," she added. “Joe Finnegan heard that I was retiring from public accounting and wondered if I was interested in being the CFO of Vermont Federal. I said yes. I started right after tax season, and I’ve been here ever since — 18 years so far.”
Vermont Federal
Giard became CFO of Vermont Federal in 2006, interim CEO in 2016, and president and CEO in 2018.
Vermont Federal has approximately 175 employees. It is the third-largest credit union in the state and No. 53 in VermontBiz’s annual Top 100 list. It had assets of $900 million and revenue of approximately $48 million last year.
“If you take the revenue minus your expenses, it comes down to your net income,” Giard said. “That net income goes into the retained earnings, which is part of your assets.”
Vermont Federal treasures its members, Giard said.
“Our members are really important to us,” she said. “They own us, and we care about them. So in times of hardship, we make sure that we have special loans with low rates to help our members. We get rid of fees. We defer loans.”
For example, credit unions provided flood relief loans to any Vermonter affected by the 2023 floods.
“This is not unique to us,” Giard said. “This is what credit unions do for their membership.”
Business is currently strong, Giard said.
“Last year, we had the fastest-growing membership among Vermont credit unions,” Giard said. “We grew almost 7%. We have more than doubled in size since I became interim CEO. We almost tripled our loan portfolio during that time. Things are going very well.”
However, liquidity issues are challenging all financial institutions right now, and Vermont Federal is no exception.
“A lot of the money that came in during COVID — money that was given by the government, etc. — has been slowly running back out,” Giard said. “Again, we knew that would happen. But it’s causing liquidity issues throughout the state of Vermont and across the U.S.”
This means the institution does not have as much cash on hand to loan out.
“Of course, if we stayed flat and did nothing, we’d be just fine,” Giard said. “But we want to grow our loan portfolio. Usually, when you want to borrow, members bring in their deposits, you pay them for their deposits and you turn around and lend that out to the membership. In this case, our deposits are slowly declining. And we still want to give loans to our members.”
So now Vermont Federal has to borrow in order to lend.
“This is very unusual for credit unions,” Giard said. “I don’t think we’ve gone through a time where credit unions actually got smaller rather than larger. We didn’t lose much; we were just about the same place. I think we lost around 1% of deposits last year. But we have a very strong loan pipeline, and that is putting pressure on liquidity.”
Photo: Employee appreciation. Photos courtesy VFCU.
Workplace Culture
When a credit union grows from $160 million to over $900 million in less than two decades, an explanation about corporate culture seems to be called for.
“When we were in public accounting, we drove our staff hard because that was the business and we didn’t know any better back in the 1980s,” Giard said. “But as I grew in knowledge, I learned that how you treat your staff has a big impact on how well you do in the market or anywhere else.”
When Giard took over the credit union, it was still a top-down, machismo style of management. Changing it was challenging, and Giard admits she made many mistakes along the way.
“When I became CEO, I failed to take into consideration how people were feeling about that,” Giard said. “But that was the start of learning how to manage differently. Our culture was in a bad place. I think that people would have resented anybody who came in. At first, I didn’t really listen to what they had to say. Some of them became very upset with that lack of attention and about what they were going through.”
Giard had to learn how to be a CEO.
“That went on longer than it probably should have,” she said. “I had to learn to listen. I had to learn to value what was coming from the staff. I had to learn how important culture was, because I sort of took it all for granted. I just learned to pay attention to the things that were wrong.
“We had a staff survey, and it was obvious that people were not happy at all. So we had to turn that around. I had to start leading differently. And we changed from a top-down organization to a more collaborative environment. It made all the difference in the world.”
Learning to take care of her staff was a game-changer for Giard.
“We started doing a better job of taking care of our staff,” she said. “We made sure that our staff knew the importance of their jobs and knew what our purpose was. We made sure they knew that their job is to help support members. Finances started to improve; we added a million dollars a year to our income for the first seven years. I attribute that to the improvement in how we’re doing with our staff.”
Photo: VFCU staff volunteer in many causes including the Vermont Special Olympics Penguin Plunge and Habitat for Humanity. Photos courtesy VFCU.
Future
Credit unions in Vermont have been merging at a rapid rate, but Vermont Federal is not interested. In fact, Giard was reluctant to give her age for this profile because she thought “all of our competitors looking at a 74-year-old sitting here are going to be thinking I’m going to retire soon and will want to merge with us.”
Not being a fan of mergers, Vermont Federal is interested in opening more branches across the state. This is possible because the credit union has expanded its membership area.
“We’re highly regulated by the NCUA (National Credit Union Administration),” Giard said. “They give us permission to increase our field of membership. Up until two years ago, our field a membership was six counties in the northwestern part of the state. We recently were given permission for the whole state of Vermont. We’re looking forward to supporting more of the state of Vermont. We’re slowly moving our branches out into counties where we haven’t been before.”
Vermont Federal now has members in every county of the state. In areas where it does not have brick-and-mortar branches, members can bank with them online. Registering for online banking takes less than five minutes, Giard said.
“We have been voted — which I was just thrilled about — the best credit union in Addison, Franklin and Grand Isle,” Giard said. “We have had that distinction for a long time. But this past time, we added Windsor and Windham to that. We’re very excited about it.”
Business lending will continue to be strong, Giard said. Right now, the housing industry is picking up speed.
“We call it family real estate lending — one- to four-family homes,” Giard said. “People are building rental places. We are very involved in housing and in support for housing. There’s a lot of construction of housing going on right now, in the Burlington area anyway. We’ve been quite successful with that.”
A new online banking system is coming soon.
“It will give the business members what they need online,” Giard said. “They will be able to send their own ACH (automated clearing house) transfers and electronic fund transfers.”
Giard keeps a weathered eye on the Federal Reserve Board, which raises and lowers interest rates.
“I think they’re in the process of getting ready to lower rates,” Giard said.“
The latest that I saw was that they will be dropping rates, possibly in the middle of the year, and will continue to drop them going forward. It doesn’t mean the economy is out of inflation. It means that inflation is being reduced significantly, and they expect it will continue to reduce. This is very tough on our membership. They’ve enjoyed high interest rates for a long time. I hope we that we never go back to 2%, because people can’t live on that.”
Going forward, Vermont Federal will remain community-focused. It partners with the Vermont Food Bank, the Vermont Housing Finance Agency and the Boys and Girls Clubs, among other organizations. The credit union recently collected more than 100 winter coats for distribution by the state Department for Children and Families.
“Our staff volunteered more than 2,300 hours this year for various causes within the communities” Giard said. “We believe in giving back. The staff live and work in these communities. Our members live and work in these communities. So we feel that it is our responsibility to support and give back to these communities and make sure that they are strong.”
The bank also supports the Vermont Special Olympics Penguin Plunge. Giard has actually taken the plunge herself into the icy waters of wintry Lake Champlain.
“I wanted to see what it was like,” she said. “You get very cold. Blood goes from your extremities to your body. And it’s very hard to get back up again. I can understand now why people drown. It’s just hard.”
The credit union recently created a charitable foundation called the Vermont Federal Foundation. Money will initially came from the credit union, but fundraising will play a big part going forward.
“My hope for the future is that we’re able to fund charitable donations throughout the communities that we serve,” Giard said. “We’re really excited about that.”
On a personal note, Giard lives an independent life.
“I do well on my own,” she said. “I think I learned to take care of myself financially from my father. Being married wasn’t really necessary.”
But she has never lost her strong connections with her siblings; they keep in touch via daily texts.
Giard said she has no immediate plans to retire.
“I think I’m here for a while,” she said. “There are things that I’m so interested in doing. We can move forward with some new products. I’m really excited about our new online banking platform. I’m excited about expansion. So, OK, I’m here for a while.”
Joyce Marcel is a journalist in southern Vermont. In 2017, she was named the best business magazine profile writer in the country by the Alliance of Area Business Publishers. She is married to Randy Holhut, the news editor/acting operations manager of The Commons, a weekly newspaper in Brattleboro.
