I design banking products so that a member can see the consequence of an action before the institution charges for it, shares it or blocks it.
I am executive vice president and chief product officer of Lanternfield Cooperative Technology, a credit union service organisation in Madison, Wisconsin, owned by 58 credit unions. Lanternfield runs the digital banking platform that 74 credit unions in six Midwestern states use for their mobile app, online banking and small-business banking. Their 2.6 million members include about 1.5 million who sign in each month. I lead 148 product managers, designers, researchers, accessibility specialists and content writers, with a product and design budget of US$39 million this year. I report to our chief executive, Dorothea Kimbrough, and take our roadmap and its risks to the product and risk committee of Lanternfield's board, whose directors run the credit unions that own us.
I began in 1999 at the counter of Skaarland Community Credit Union in Duluth, Minnesota, and spent the next eighteen years at a card issuer and a regional bank learning what a payment looks like when a customer disputes it. At Quillmore Card Services in Omaha I moved from resolving disputes to designing the online process for them, and then to running a rewards programme with 3.2 million active accounts. At Corriston Bank in Louisville I led consumer digital and deposit products, including the 2020 redesign of our overdraft fees. Lanternfield brought me back to credit unions, this time as the person who decides what 74 of them can and cannot change about one shared app.
Three questions run through my work. What should a member be able to see before the institution charges her, shares her data or holds her money? How should a product shared by dozens of independent credit unions weigh their wish to look different against a member's need for it to work with a screen reader? And what does a small business actually need from its credit union's app, as distinct from what a fintech partner would like to sell it? I have answered each of them at a cost that somebody else had to accept, and I try to state that cost before the decision rather than after it.
Fees customers could see coming
At Corriston Bank in 2020 we removed returned-item fees, stopped charging for overdrafts of US$50 or less and gave customers until the end of the next business day to put an account right. Overdraft-related fee income fell from US$96 million in 2019 to US$41 million in 2021, and fee complaints fell 64%.
One app that works with a screen reader
At Lanternfield we replaced 74 separately themed apps with one design system and limited what each credit union could change. In testing with members who use assistive technology, task completion by screen-reader users rose from 58% to 91%. One client credit union left over the restriction.
Connections a member can see and end
We moved third-party data access off members' stored passwords and onto revocable connections listed in the app. By June 2026, 94% of that traffic used token connections, and members had ended 186,000 connections they no longer used or did not recognise.
A cash-flow view instead of an invoicing tool
For 31 credit unions we built a thirteen-week cash-flow view for small businesses rather than the invoicing product our sales team wanted. Forty-one per cent of active business members now use it each month, and they overdraw 27% less often than comparable non-users.
Current focus
Two pieces of work occupy me for 2027. The first is a redesign of how the shared app presents small-dollar credit, so that a member weighing an earned-wage app or a pay-later plan elsewhere can see her own credit union's short-term loan, its total cost and its repayment dates on one screen. The second is the evidence our client credit unions need to show their examiners how the app handles disputes, accessibility and third-party access to member data.
Conversations I welcome
I have no plans to change executive roles and decline search approaches. I would consider one non-executive seat on the board of a mutual insurer, a healthcare organisation or a consumer services company with millions of digital customers and no commercial relationship with Lanternfield or its credit unions, subject to our chief executive's agreement and a conflict review. I accept a small number of advisory and speaking requests each year on accessibility, data access and fee design.
