GOVERNANCE
The people running Summit, and the members who oversee them
A paid executive team runs the credit union day to day. An unpaid board elected by members decides what the credit union is for.
Executive team
Who runs the credit union
Three officers carry the operating responsibility for 412,000 members and $14.2 billion in assets.
Adaora Whitfield, President and Chief Executive Officer
Adaora joined Summit in 2009 as a branch manager and became CEO in 2021. She spent her first nine months in the role visiting every one of the 42 branches and sitting on the teller line for a shift at each. She holds a finance degree from a state university and serves on the state credit union league's advocacy committee. Her stated priority is keeping loan decisions with people who can see the whole file, not only a score.
Marcus Delaney, Chief Financial Officer
Marcus is responsible for the balance sheet, liquidity, and the pricing model that sets deposit yields and loan rates. He is a certified public accountant and came to Summit in 2016 after eleven years auditing financial institutions. He publishes a plain-language rate memo to staff every quarter explaining why rates moved, so branch employees can answer the question honestly. He is the person who argues for paying more on savings when the numbers allow it.
Priya Raghunathan, Chief Lending Officer
Priya oversees mortgage, consumer, and business lending. She started as a mortgage processor in 2004 and has closed or supervised more than 20,000 home loans. She rebuilt Summit's underwriting guidelines in 2022 to add a manual review step for applications that a scorecard declines, which now recovers roughly one in seven of those files. She teaches the free first-time homebuyer workshop most months.
Board of directors
Volunteers, elected by members, paid nothing
Directors are members like you. They receive no salary, no stock, and no director fees.
Hollis Trombley, Board Chair
Hollis is a retired high school principal and has been a Summit member since 1979. He was first elected to the board in 2011 and has chaired it since 2019. He runs the annual meeting, sets the board agenda with the CEO, and is usually the director asking what a policy change will mean for a member with a thin credit file. He volunteers roughly 15 hours a month and is paid nothing for any of it.
Yvonne Castellanos, Vice Chair
Yvonne owns a commercial print shop with nine employees and has banked with Summit since she opened it in 2002. She was elected in 2016 and brings the small business perspective to lending policy. She pushed for the business banking team to publish decision timelines rather than leave owners guessing. She chairs the governance committee that reviews director nominations before each election.
Dean Okonkwo, Board Treasurer
Dean spent 24 years as a municipal budget director before retiring in 2018, and was elected to the board in 2020. He reviews the monthly financial package before it reaches the full board and works with the supervisory committee on the independent audit. He is the director who insists the annual report be readable by someone who has never seen a balance sheet. He also sits on the Summit Foundation grant panel.
Directors serve three-year staggered terms and are elected by member vote at the annual meeting. Federal credit union directors serve as volunteers and are not compensated for board service. This is a demonstration website; names, biographies, and figures shown are illustrative only.
How elections work
Any member in good standing can run
You do not need a finance background. You need to be a member and willing to do the reading.
Submit a nomination
The governance committee opens nominations each January and posts the form at every branch. Members may also be nominated by petition with 500 member signatures.
Members vote
Ballots go out ahead of the annual meeting in April. Every member gets exactly one vote regardless of how much money they have on deposit.
Serve a three-year term
New directors complete NCUA financial literacy training in their first six months. Expect one board meeting a month plus committee work.
Common questions about governance
Do board members really get paid nothing?
Correct. Federal credit union directors serve as volunteers. Summit reimburses documented travel to conferences and required training, and that is the extent of it. There are no director fees, no retainers, and no equity because there is no equity to grant.
What is the supervisory committee?
It is a separate group of member volunteers that hires the independent auditor and can investigate member complaints on its own authority. It reports to the membership, not to the CEO. If you believe something has been handled wrongly, you can write to it directly.
Can I see how the executives are compensated?
Aggregate compensation and benefit expense appears in the annual report and in the financial reports Summit files with the NCUA, which are public. The board's compensation committee sets executive pay against a peer group of similarly sized credit unions.
How do I raise something with the board?
Write to the board through the contact page and mark it for the board of directors. The chair reviews member correspondence before every monthly meeting. You can also speak during the open portion of the annual meeting.
Owners get a say. Customers get a statement.
Join with $5 and you get a vote at the next annual meeting.