By Ed Speed
Every movement worth preserving is carried forward by the women and men who do not simply occupy positions, but embody principles. In the world of credit unions, two stand out in my own life and, I believe, in the moral architecture of cooperative finance: Jeff Farver and Chip Filson.
This really is not meant to be my story. I was only a placeholder around whom larger truths unfolded: how vision and virtue, when joined and shared by example, can shape not just institutions but the people who serve them; people who believed that institutions endure only when their stewards do the inner work of conscience.
Jeff Farver: The Builder Who Believed in Discipline and Decades
When Jeff Farver took the helm of San Antonio Federal Credit Union (now Credit Human) in 1990, the organization was battered by recession and uncertainty, still feeling the aftershocks of the Texas oil bust and a perfectly ill-timed and ill-fated foray into commercial lending that the Texas state regulators had allowed to run amok from 1980 to 1986; $300 million in commercial loans on $500 million in total member deposits, with 80% of those commercial loans ending up classified as substandard, doubtful or loss.
Being a Texas state charter, the CU had been able to keep exams only with the state commission. Thus, it remained, until there were front page local headlines that the credit union had foreclosed on and sued some of San Antonio’s most prominent cardiac surgeons for loans on a multi-million dollar condo development project in Hawaii. The NCUA stormed in and found a massive commercial loan portfolio, but had to use rented FDIC examiners as hired guns because the NCUA had no such expertise.
As a result of the first real exam in a decade, net worth dropped to a negative $15 million, resulting in the NCUA placing the then GECU Of San Antonio under a Letter of Understanding and Agreement (LUA). NCUA terminated the board and most of management. Net worth dropped to negative $12 million. SACU was on life support. Jeff was later hired to save it. For almost three years there was an NCUA regulator with a full-time office on site. I was present as the first NCUA member business regs were being drafted.
By the time Jeff retired 21vyears later, SACU had grown to nearly $3 billion in assets, was well-capitalized, had 18 branches in San Antonio and one in Houston—a was model of stability and service.
That transformation wasn’t about flash or financial wizardry. It came from steady, strategic patience, the kind only a former U.S. Army Combat Engineer Captain like Jeff could master. Jeff was methodical and unromantic about leadership.
For my part I had been a project manager for a large Texas real estate development firm, but had never worked for a credit union or bank. I was interviewed and approved for hire by then NCUA Region V Director Len Skiles to be part of an NCUA-directed team to manage and work out failed commercial loans.
As we were able to bleed off the commercial loans, Jeff moved me into various senior lending positions, primarily real estate, which helped keep me in the movement. As I learned more about the cooperative world, I knew I had a home that would be compatible with my BBA in Finance and my recently earned Masters in Theology with a focus on Catholic social justice.
Jeff was a true believer in in-depth performance reviews, which he used as moments for teaching and mentoring. One year I made it clear that I wanted to move up in the organization. That is when he provided me with a powerful insight that I often used with young executives. Jeff looked at me across his desk and said, “I can’t promote you until your peers do.”
That line changed everything. Titles mean nothing if the people around you don’t respect your ability. Respect precedes authority. I still use that line when I am invited to speak to business classes.
Four Conditions to Become a CEO
When I later told him I wanted to become a credit union CEO sometime, he responded that he planned to be the CEO for at least 10 more years right where he was, but that he would help me become a CEO somewhere else, with four conditions:
- Agree to be intentionally mentored and trained by him and others
- Tell him when I started looking. Honesty beats secrecy every time
- Train my own replacement. Leave strength behind.
- Don’t poach. Integrity matters more than advantage.
Jeff had warned me not to reach for a CEO chair until I had mastered asset–liability management, strategic planning and board relations. He created a new position for me, senior vice president for strategic planning, enabling me to work with and across every department and regularly in front of the board.
In military terms, he moved me from line authority (SVP-lending) to staff influence. I would no longer have any direct reports. I had to trade unilateral command for relational persuasion and learn how every part of the credit union functioned. Jeff kept his promise. When the opportunity did come, he personally spoke to the hiring board on my behalf.
Decade-Long Arcs
Jeff’s mentorship was never sentimental. He believed in decade-long arcs, not quarterly victories. He built systems designed to outlive him and people who could outgrow him. In time, at least five professionals he developed would go on to lead billion-dollar credit unions. He said, “I may lose you once I’ve trained you, but while you’re here you’re going to be damned effective.”
Jeff intentionally expanded my cooperative world. He sent me to meetings where I met, conversed with, and learned from our movement’s giants: Chip Filson, John Tippets, Harriet May, Jim Blaine, Bucky Sebastian, Randy Karnes, Greg Smith and Kyle Markland.
Jeff personally mentored me in ALM theory and I got to watch him work the board. He took the additional step to enroll me in Jim Cardwell’s 306/2 Leadership Training. – open only to those whose CEOs see them as future CEO material (hence the “/2” designation). Not too many CEOs are secure enough to invest in a potential rival or in someone who will leave to take over elsewhere and be a possible competitor. Jim’s program has produced more than 117 credit-union CEOs since 2001.
Chip Filson: The Prophet
If our movement had quasi-religious sensibilities, Jim Cardwell ran the seminary but Chip Filson was our senior theologian.
Jeff Farver built the launchpad for my career. Chip Filson lit the rocket.
Through those same conferences and meetings, Jeff ensured I crossed paths and spent time often with Chip. As co-founder of Callahan & Associates and an early innovator at NCUA, Chip was already the conscience of the credit-union world—the man who could turn data into theology. Jeff had me start attending the Callahan Partners meetings with him and have table top and meal conversations with him and Chip.
For Chip, cooperative finance has never meant to mimic banking, and that member outcomes mattered more than balance-sheet scale. Chip believes that transparency is a moral act. He saw financial reporting not as compliance but as stewardship—a way of honoring the members who owned the enterprise. He insisted that data should serve discernment, not dominance.
The Opposite of Opposites
From Chip I learned that conscience and competence are not opposites. The best leadership blends both: passion with principle, daring with discipline. Chip’s real gift was moral imagination, the ability to see a financial statement as a spiritual document, a story of trust between ordinary people and the institutions they built together.
When I became a CEO, my board asked me to select someone to lead my first strategic-planning retreat. Anyone in the movement knows the risk: those consultants who charm the board and eclipse the CEO to lock in future fees. I thought Chip would be a safe bet.
However, early in the retreat, a well-meaning board member lobbed him a question: “What do you think of our new CEO?” Without warning, Chip said, “I don’t know if Ed Speed can ever become a great credit-union CEO.”
My head nearly exploded. My direct reports were in the room, too. He continued: “But I will tell you this: Ed Speed is probably the best change agent in our movement today. He has the training, experience, courage and intelligence. If you want a ‘weed-and-feed’ or a ‘wine-and-dine’ CEO, he’s not your guy. But if you want to go somewhere, he’ll take you there. Hold on for the ride. When he gets you there, he’ll get bored.”
Spot on. I did, and had the good sense to retire 10 years after that retreat.
In that instant, the planning weekend shifted from maintenance to momentum. The conversation changed from How do we preserve what we have? to Where can we go next? Chip gave the board and me permission to swing for the fences.
And swing we did. Over the next nine years, we grew from $700 million in deposits to $2 billion, and from $400 million in loans to $2.1 billion, staying over 100% loaned-out for years using Federal Home Loan Bank lines for liquidity. Less than 10% of that growth came from two small mergers. Every decision was anchored in member service, cooperative integrity, and the very values Chip had championed for decades
The Builder and the Prophet
Chip and Jeff could not have been more different. Jeff was pure substance over style—thick glasses, a ten-dollar haircut, rumpled suits, and a mind that saw systems everywhere. He was a man of spreadsheets, not spotlights.
Chip, by contrast, looked like he had stepped off the Senate floor—tall, silver-haired, Washington-urbane, with the cadence of the Rhodes Scholar he is and the confidence of someone accustomed to shaping rooms with ideas. Jeff communicated through PowerPoint; Chip through prophecy. Yet both carried the same fire: a belief that integrity mattered more than image, that what you built was always more important than how you looked doing it.
At their peak, one was deliberate and pragmatic, the other visionary and provocative, yet both revealed the same truth from different angles: leadership is stewardship.
Jeff built capacity; Chip built conviction. Jeff insisted on the craft of management; Chip insisted on the conscience of mission. Jeff showed how to build strong institutions; Chip reminded us why they must stay faithful to their founding purpose.
Their mentorships intersected at a single point, the conviction that cooperative finance is not an industry but a vocation. It demands both technical mastery and moral maturity.
When many credit unions struggle to balance growth, technology, and identity, I often return to what these two embodied. Jeff would have said: Plan carefully, think long, and never bluff your balance sheet.
Chip would have added: And remember whom you serve—you’re just a member, too.
Keeping the Faith—and What Comes Next
These days, when executive compensation and merger payouts the size of lottery wins threaten to suck the soul from our movement, the examples of Jeff Farver and Chip Filson remind us that what lasts is not the size of an organization, but the quality of its leaders.
They formed leaders not by giving answers but by asking better questions. They shaped institutions not by control but by conviction. Their influence endures in every credit-union professional who still believes that finance can be a form of faithfulness.
Concrete Steps to Take
But faith must take form. Here are concrete steps today’s credit-union leaders can take to reclaim that spirit:
- Re-center on purpose. Ask, would our founders recognize their mission in us today? If not, begin again.
- Invest in formation, not flattery. Develop people who can replace you or move on to lead another cooperative, and be proud when they do.
- Measure what matters. Move beyond growth metrics to member outcomes, transparency, and community trust.
- Honor conscience as much as competence. Every product and partnership should answer the question: Is this good for the member?
- Model humility. Remember that the most powerful title in our movement is still member.
Movement Owes a Debt
I owe Jeff and Chip more than gratitude; I owe them a life lived well. Our movement owes them, and women and men like them, a debt as well. Jeff, the patient builder, taught me how to drive the future. Chip, the prophet, showed me where to aim. Between them, they proved that the surest path to greatness is still the oldest one—to serve well, think deeply, and keep the faith.
May the future leaders of our movement be as blessed as I was to walk among such giants. I hope I can find ways to pass on what they taught me.
Edward Speed is the retired CEO of a multi-billion-dollar credit union and holds a master’s degree in theology. These days, he spends his time serving food, washing dishes, and sweeping floors at a Catholic Worker House, helping homeless senior citizens. [email protected]
