Kezeor appointed president at Archer Credit Union

In a folder, Mike Kezeor keeps a stack of his “trading cards,” business cards upon which are inscribed a series of titles revealing the numerous hats he’s worn—often simultaneously— since joining Archer Credit Union just over ten years ago: assistant vice president (AVP) of finance, assistant vice president of finance and compliance, vice president of finance and compliance, information technology administrator, chief financial officer (CFO), and, now, president and chief executive officer (CEO).

“I came on as an AVP in finance—so, a lot of the accounting duties, reporting, and so forth—and expanded that role a little bit,” noted the new president in an interview last Wednesday. “When you’re at fifteen [employees], you wear a lot of hats; when you’re at twenty, you wear a lot; but as you grow, you get to specialize a bit more.”

Back in October 2023, Kezeor had been named interim president of the credit union, a role he took on while retaining many of his duties as CFO. On January 17th, following an open interview process, he was officially appointed the credit union’s new president and CEO by the union’s board.

“The board, and I completely welcomed this, went out and did an open interview process. It wasn’t just, ‘You’re the interim; we’ll wait to see if you crash and burn and go from there,’” he noted with a laugh. “They posted the position, and I interviewed, no different from anyone else.

“Right at two weeks [ago] now is when the board asked me, at their January board meeting.”

When he was offered the opportunity to take the word “interim” off his title, he said, he had been “more than happy” to take on the role.

The six preceding months he had spent as Archer’s interim president, Kezeor said, had made for “a nice, easy transition…[ But] it is going to be in transition phase for a little while yet.”

A graduate of St. Paul High School, Kezeor had attended the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, from which he attained Bachelor of Science degrees in accounting and finance in 2005.

After graduating from college, Kezeor had returned to St. Paul. After attaining his certified public accountant (CPA) license, he had worked at Shonsey & Associates in Grand Island for a time, before taking a position at Chief Automotive.

“[Public accounting] is a great profession, but I just kind of wanted to go out into the private side,” he said. “I went to Chief and then, within eighteen months, they got consolidated into one of their sister companies in Indiana.”

The consolidation happened in around 2009, at the heart of the financial crisis.

“You had folks who’d worked there for thirty-yearsplus. I had been there for all of a year, and I had to sit in a room with people that they told, ‘I’m sorry, you don’t have a job anymore,” Kezeor recalled. “That, that just sticks with you…It kind of resets some of your thinking.” In an aim to “keep a professional track,” Kezeor and his family then moved to Omaha for a time, where he worked “for a small [accounting] office that was tied to banking.”

Upon returning to St. Paul in around 2012, he spent “about six months” working as an accountant for the City of Grand Island, before applying to work at Archer Credit Union.

“I knew that government work was not for me, but at the same time, we wanted to get back here,” he said.

At Archer Credit, Kezeor began at the Archer office, before moving to Central City after “about six months.”

The CEO said that part of what had inspired him to apply for Archer was a family legacy at the credit union. His grandmother, Janet Fortson, worked at the Dannebrog location for more than twenty-four years.

Of his return to St. Paul in 2013, Kezeor said simply: “It’s home to me. [My wife, Jami, and I] had both our kids here, and we think St. Paul is great… It has a lot going for it.”

Asked if his move up to CEO and president had created any vacancies in the credit union’s administration, Kezeor said it had not.

“It’s not a bunch of moving parts right now,” he said. “I’m going to retain some of the duties [of CFO], but one of my big pushes here right off the bat is finding staff who can take on some of that load. We’ve got a lot of good, talented staff already in place who I think can handle that workload, and then we may be looking at hiring somebody in an accounting function to fill any gaps. But…I need to identify what needs we’ll have.”

Kezeor’s background as a certified public accountant (CPA)—which he called “a big part of who I am and how I operate”—sets him apart from many presidents at financial institutions, whose backgrounds tend more often to be centered in lending than accounting.

“What’s different about me is that, in the past, [Archer Credit Union has] always had a lender in the role, somebody who has come up in lending,” he said. “But we’re a quite a bit different animal now.”

Archer Credit Union—which began as Citizens State Bank of Archer in 1906, before rechartering as a credit association in 1934, and as a credit union in 1984—has changed a great deal over the years. One of the primary ways the institution has changed in the last four decades, said Kezeor, is in its size.

“Even from when I started just over ten years ago,” said Kezeor, “we’ve about doubled our employees.”

Membership is also something that has been on “a good track, the right track” at Archer.

“We just hit 5,000 members last year, which was a big event for us,” he noted. “We really have a good thing going, and [our focus] is really about maintaining that momentum.”

People who make use of Archer Credit Union are referred to as “members,” not “clients.” The reason for this, Kezeor stressed, is central to what sets credit unions apart.

“From the outside, a lot of people don’t see the difference between a credit union and a bank,” he said. “And for the most part, they’re right. They hold money, they give loans.

“But there’s a big difference that’s under the radar, and that’s the board makeup.”

As a credit union, Archer has an “all-volunteer” board made up of representatives who have been voted in by fellow credit union members and who do not take a salary.

“There’s no compensation, no healthcare; there’s nothing, except that they want to see the success of the credit union,” he said. “It’s a process that you don’t get at other places, getting to have a hand in who is managing [them]. That’s my boss, the board. So, [members] really do have a say in how we operate…and it affects our day-to-day thinking. Our first motive is to support the members and ensure they succeed.”

Although Kezeor primarily works from the Central City office, as he has been for most of his career, he said he spends a good deal of time at all of Archer’s locations—including St. Paul, Dannebrog, and Archer.

“Central City is still my home office,” he said, “but I like to get around to the different places.

“I live in St. Paul, where we have this beautiful office that we’ll have had for four years in March… and I’ll probably be in Archer quite a bit. That doesn’t get a lot of member traffic, but our [vice president] of operations, Heather Paulsen, is there, and I will be working with her quite a bit to identify some of that CFO duty stuff we talked about earlier.”

One of his key objectives, said Kezeor, last week, was to make himself available both to staff and to members.

“I used to do bank audits. And there was still a lot of the traditional thinking, where you would walk in and the top person would be behind multiple doors and secret handshakes, with eighteen assistants,” laughed the new president. “That’s just not how I operate.”