What’s In A Name: Chief Community And Public Affairs Officer

Creighton Blackwell’s experience in community banking is deep and broad, and during the past 26 years, he’s polished a passion for leadership that focuses on pulling together the resources to advance both policy and pocketbooks in a fast-evolving financial services landscape.

For the past dozen years, he’s been with Coastal Federal Credit Union ($4.6B, Raleigh, NC), where he’s moved from business development to corporate affairs to his latest role as chief community and public affairs officer.

His blended responsibilities coalesce around thought leadership that prompts engagement across the enterprise and beyond, all with the overarching strategy of understanding the changing needs of members and their communities. Here, he explains.

Your title changed from vice president of corporate affairs to senior vice president/chief culture and impact officer in August 2020 and then to chief community and public affairs officer in January 2022. What’s the story?

Creighton Blackwell: These changes speak to the change from a focus on a department to a focus on the whole enterprise, and they go directly into our strategic planning, vision, and values. We wanted to be intentional about going back to the original definition and purpose of credit unions. From the highest level of our enterprise, we’re focused on serving our community — whether through loans or from a government affairs standpoint. All those things have an impact on what we do and help define who we are. I lead more than a community relations department; our mission is broader and stronger than that, and we wanted to emphasize that at an executive level.

Did the latest change mean “culture” and “impact” are no longer part of the emphasis?

CB: Let me expand on my previous answer. Indeed, I was “culture and impact,” but we began looking at what culture is and who we are doing it for. We realized culture addresses internal and external issues and opportunities, but in many cases, it can be boxed in. For example, by being defined as an internal tool that might include just looking at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

We’re not leaving the idea of culture or impact behind. We’re addressing the reality now that we have internal and external communities, and that everyone in our company, regardless of title, is part of our culture and part of the impact we have on our community. That’s how broad it is. Although I have teams I lead, everyone is involved in all that we’re supposed to be at Coastal Federal Credit Union.

Community affairs and public affairs are generally two different disciplines. How do you describe them, combine them, and distinguish between them?

CB: I would argue they’re not that different. They’re both about how we impact people, just from different angles. Their connection is also about how we can identify issues that people face and how our credit union and our community can address them.

Just one example: food insecurity. We can help people who are having trouble finding enough food to eat. But we also should look at the connection between those families and how their children are doing at school. There’s clearly a connection between food insecurity and concentrating and making good grades.

So we need to think in terms of how we can help the whole person, and for Coastal’s part, how we can bring the financial piece to bear on it, whether in working with government, non-profits, or directly with our members and other community members.

Job titles say as much about the organization as they do the person. The “What’s In A Name” series on CreditUnions.com dives into notable, important, interesting, or just plain fun roles to find out what’s happening at the ground level and across the industry. Browse the whole series only on CreditUnions.com.

How do these title changes reflect and drive changes in your daily activities?

CB: I work to help shape our overarching strategies and vision. My daily routine is a mixture of internal and external meetings with centers of influence. That might mean a call from the governor, a city council person, leaders of non-profits, or a CEO of one of our high-tech firms here in the Research Triangle.

I also do coaching sessions with non-profits and for-profit businesses, including our SEGs and other partners as we work to match our vision and strategies with our internal growth areas. I also participate in national conferences such as NAFCU’s. My staff and I do a mixture of all those things all the time, to serve as the voice for Coastal and for our industry in that wide range of settings.

To whom do you report? Who reports to you?

CB: I report to the CEO. I have vice presidents, managers, and teams under me focused on community impact and Coastal’s foundation. There are a lot of pieces here: public relations, political advocacy, our foundation, peer community development, and our work with affordable housing. The overarching theme is that we work to position ourselves as differentiated leaders in our community, not just participants.

What made you a great fit for these evolving roles?

CB: I’ve been with Coastal for 12 years and before that was with a bank for 14 years, giving me both broad and deep experience in sales leadership, marketing leadership, working with government on all levels, and, most importantly, using my experience to help me be more effective as a true people person who can help my organization have a positive impact on our membership and our community.

How do you track success in your job?

CB: Growth in engagement and brand recognition are examples of ways we can measure our impact, but we’re not just talking about dollars, say, in our foundation or that add to the bottom line of the credit union. We’re also looking at the number of people we touch and are building on ways we can discover how successful we are in having the kind of impact we envision for our cooperative.

How do you stay current with topics that fall under your role?

CB: I’m an avid reader. I also spend a lot of time with groups both inside and outside our industry. I’m on a lot of boards that provide me with insight from many perspectives. I spend a lot of time studying, listening, hearing, and presenting, which itself is a learning process. If you don’t continue to push and learn, you’re in trouble.

You have a long list of organizations in which you hold leadership roles. What are a few you would like to point to and how do they bring value to your work at Coastal?

CB: I’m on the National Credit Union Foundation and the Carolinas Credit Union Foundation boards and I chair our credit union’s foundation. I also chair the North Carolina Council on Economic Education and North Carolina Business Committee for Education and am on the board of the Triangle Martin Luther King Committee as well as active with our local Chambers of Commerce. These are examples of Coastal’s leadership in building better financial consumers among our members and in our greater community.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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