In early October, Miriam De Dios Woodward moved a few doors down the hall in a West Des Moines office building where the Iowa Credit Union League and its range of affiliated companies are located. In the office she left, Woodward was the CEO of Coopera, a company that helps credit unions and other industries market their services to Hispanics. She joined Coopera in 2007 and in 2012 became its chief executive. At Coopera, Woodward demonstrated that she is not fond of standing in place. The firm expanded its marketing efforts to 30 states and moved beyond credit unions into other industries. During an interview just into her first week on the job as CEO of PolicyWorks LLC, it was clear that expansion was in the air. And why not? She is a child of parents who immigrated from Mexico and worked in the United States as laborers to make sure their children would have a better life. Woodward and her three brothers all are graduates of Iowa State University and have professional careers. As a sixth-grade student, she was chosen as the person most likely to succeed in business. 

Why change careers?

Well, it’s an exciting time. I was with Coopera since the company started, which was almost 12 years ago. And, you know, this opportunity came up with an organization that’s affiliated with our family of companies (under the umbrella of Affiliates Management Co. and its parent, the Iowa Credit Union League). It’s an organization that I actually had the opportunity to work with while at Coopera because with some of the Hispanic outreach work that we did at Coopera, I ended up touching the compliance realm every now and again. And in fact, we were just working on an industry collaboration recently. So I know the team and different areas of its business. However, the organization is at a really exciting time in its journey, which was probably the intriguing thing to me about this position.

The organization has a great foundation; it’s been around about the same amount of time as Coopera. Essentially the leadership has said, “Let’s build upon this great foundation and let’s grow exponentially.” And to do that, it’s really looking at transforming the organization from a largely consulting firm to a new possibility, looking at how we can scale the business, how we can expand beyond the credit unions.

How do you do that?

You look at some of the kind of periphery areas around compliance, and that world is becoming more and more complicated. You think about areas like cybersecurity, you think about things like enterprise risk management and governance risk and compliance in a much broader fashion. There are more players in that space, especially when it comes to technology, leveraging technology to help organizations with more of that risk decision-making. And so that’s how we start to look at areas beyond compliance. So it’s really looking at building on the foundation that we have, and we have great experts from a compliance standpoint, and how can we start to step outside of that and provide more services to credit unions in that broader space. And there might be other fields or other industries that might be interested.

You will look beyond credit unions?

To give you just an idea of that possibility, at Coopera, one of the things that we did within the last couple of years was expand to other industries, such as insurance, higher education, we did a little bit of work in the health care arena. So, you know, there’s a little bit of precedent with that. So it’s part of our DNA as a family of companies. PolicyWorks is at the brink of that. And that’s where I come in, to lead the organization into that future. 
If you look at any organization that wants to grow and reach consumers, well, in the U.S., a large percentage of consumers is Hispanic. It’s a large and growing population; it’s a young market, and their purchasing power continues to grow exponentially. So whether you’re a college looking to attract more students and maybe bring more inclusive and diverse practices, even to your staffing and to your faculty, you should be looking at the Hispanic market.
With PolicyWorks, it’s a little bit different. Any large organization needs compliance work, but beyond that, if you think about risk management, every organization has critical issues that they have to think about every day to manage the sustainability of that business. We could offer that to, let’s say, insurance firms and other firms and other types of industries down the road.

What are some of the big issues facing credit unions?

What I’ve noticed is that compliance has gotten even more complex and it’s very draining on credit unions. It requires a lot of their time and resources to do this, which is why they need partners like PolicyWorks. I’m still learning what some of the more critical areas of compliance are, but some that come to mind are remnants of the home mortgage act. There’s some reform in that arena and lots of compliance rules around that that I think credit unions are still wrapping their arms around, especially the smaller ones that may not have a lot of those resources internally. Cybersecurity is another arena that’s still being defined. The Bank Secrecy Act, which is about preventing money laundering, that is complex, especially for credit unions that go beyond consumer lending to commercial; marketing, advertising, privacy, all of those things are still top of mind for many credit unions.
People might call you a quick learner.

Well, you know, it’s neat to be a part of the family of companies, because I also sit on our executive management team. And so I get to hear from the executives of the other organizations, in terms of what their top priorities are, and what some of the challenges that they’re dealing with. And believe me, I still have a lot to learn, but being in the same building as the team and a lot of the leadership helps with that.

Is consolidation a big issue for credit unions?

It certainly is an issue. I mean, in Iowa I want to say we had 140 credit unions when I first started; now, we have less than 100. 

It is an issue. 

Dealing with compliance issues must be a financial burden for smaller credit unions. Do you do their compliance work for them, or do you just try to teach them how to do it?

We do it all. While we do have a shared compliance model here, a couple of the folks from the PolicyWorks team will actually go into the credit union shop for a few days a week, and they’ll do audits for them. We also do consulting, so we’re going to work with them again on whatever their top priorities are, and kind of guide them through what needs to be done. We’re constantly feeding them all these regulation changes so that they don’t have to be on the lookout of all of these things. We’re pulling in national information as well as state-specific information. What’s unique about Iowa is that the majority of credit unions in the state are state chartered versus federally chartered, and also what’s unique about PolicyWorks is that part of the business offers services to Iowa credit unions as part of the Iowa Credit Union League.

So in essence, the Iowa Credit Union League contracts with PolicyWorks to offer a certain set of services to all Iowa credit unions as part of the membership fee of the Iowa Credit Union League. That’s part of our dues-based service model. But then we also have our fee-based service model where we’re just contracting individually with credit unions to do auditing or compliance consulting, for example.

When you were the young child of immigrant parents, how did you see your future?

What I could have predicted when I was younger was that I’d be doing something in the business world. From when I was younger, when I probably couldn’t even tell you what business was, there was something intriguing about seeing people in business suits on TV, just knowing there was something important that they were doing. In sixth grade I was voted the most likely student in our class to become a businesswoman. Their prediction came true.

Are your parents businesspeople?

They were not. Here in the U.S. they’ve been largely laborers. My dad only finished sixth grade in Mexico. He kind of came from a farming background. In his family it came down to either his brother or him being able to continue on to school, and, you know, that was kind of the extent of his education. My mother did finish high school in Mexico. And she worked a little bit in kind of secretarial roles and things like that. But when they came to the U.S. they both worked very labor-intensive jobs. Now they’re both retired, essentially. But they came here because they wanted a better life for their children. For me and my three younger siblings, education was the first place to start. I’m happy to say that all my siblings have also graduated from Iowa State University, they’re all professionals and in the business world here in Des Moines and the surrounding area.

Could your family have come to the United States given the current atmosphere surrounding immigration?

The fact that they’re willing to leave everything behind and start from scratch, these are pretty resilient and brave people. My family benefited from President Ronald Reagan’s immigration reform. My father was working in the grape picking industry. And, you know, his employer helped him obtain his green card. So, thanks to that, we’re here and we’re able to continue to progress and do what we do. It’s tough, but gosh, I’m hopeful.