Maureen “Mo” Wilkinson
Title: Vice President, Community Education and CRA Officer, HarborOne
Age: 47
Experience: 30 years
Maureen “Mo” Wilkinson
Maureen Wilkinson, known to her colleagues as simply Mo, started working in the credit union industry at the tender age of 17. After college, she worked in various capacities for credit unions across the country. She even passed up a job offer with the Central Intelligence Agency because she loved the credit union industry too much to leave. Wilkinson joined HarborOne in 2009, when she led NationsHeritage Federal Credit Union through a merger with HarborOne. Since then, she’s found her niche running its newest community education initiative, HarborOne U. After HarborOne’s conversion to a bank charter, she set her sights on expanding her focus – and building an army to achieve it.
Q: How did you go from being a three-time credit union CEO to running the community education function of the bank?
A: As part of that merger, [HarborOne President and CEO] Jim Blake asked me to develop an idea that, at the time, we were looking to expand on what we were doing with the Multicultural Banking Center in Brockton. Most of that was focused on reaching out to minorities and immigrants. … Jim brainstormed that we could probably do something similar in another area within our footprint, to look at small businesses and women-owned businesses. He didn’t already have somebody on staff to do that, and he already had the CEO job, so I wasn’t going to get it.
I took that as a great opportunity at the time. It sounded interesting, I got to step away from wearing a whole lot of hats, and focus on being an individual contributor, and I enjoyed it. Honestly, I was exhausted from being a credit union CEO … so I welcomed the time to do something and develop something different. He had the idea, I got the vision of what he meant and we developed HarborOne U as a result.
I found I got a lot of psychic income helping people realize their own dreams about starting their own business or getting their credit back on track or just learning a new skill that maybe didn’t have anything to do with money, but rather, something to do with their house or their office. That’s stuck with me, and I can’t imagine doing anything else.
Q: Now that HarborOne is a bank and can expand its geographic footprint, how is your role expanding?
A: With us becoming a bank and having more opportunities, we are already reaching out to communities that we hadn’t already and we’re doing programs in their school. We are essentially training an army of people within HarborOne who can deliver the types of programs that I do.
We actually just hired somebody … [who is at the] Mansfield office, buried in every program that I have ever created for HarborOne. This is the best time of the season for him to do that because he can travel with me to all of these programs.
He’s naturally somebody who works well with kids of all ages, and I’m looking forward to him being able to take what I’ve already done, make it better, make more and then teach other people within our staff. … We have a kit for each branch, every department could have ambassadors and this army could go out and meet and greet other communities and schools.
Q: I understand that small business assistance is also part of HarborOne U’s mission.
A: We partnered with the Massachusetts Small Business Development Center and that’s what launched what we would call “actionable skills.” Small business owners can come in and learn something within two hours, and as soon as they leave they’re able to execute on that skills they’ve learned. Sometimes it has to do with networking, sometimes it’s some sort of marketing tip or technique. More recently, social media for use in small business has been really our biggest contribution to a lot of the area’s small businesses.
Small business owners might have a great expertise in some sort of consulting or building a product, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a good bookkeeper or they know how to use some of these other programs or even know how to set up their business in terms of what’s legally required within the state. So we have all kinds of programs designed to help people navigate through the issues and matters they’ve got to take care of as a business owner.
We’ve got several people who started with us right from the beginning. We helped them learn each of the elements necessary for a healthy business and then they’ve come back for refreshers, and we have a lot of success stories.
HarborOne U’s Most Popular Small Business Classes:
- QuickBooks
- Build a WordPress Website
- Social Media Trends
- LinkedIn & Facebook for Business
- Marketing Strategies Using Social Media
