We Thank Our Board of Directors

At any Dakota West branch you may visit with your loan officer, complete a transaction with one of our Member Service Representatives, or even speak by phone with a member of our Loan Processing team, yet the names and faces who are the guiding force behind Dakota West Credit Union are not the people with whom you meet or speak – they are our Board of Directors and their voices develop the long-term direction of our organization.

With five voting members, three of whom serve as Board officers, the Board of Directors’ leadership responsibilities comprise an important part of Dakota West’s governance. As members, they have a vested interest in the success of the organization, yet they lead with an absence of self-dealing and with open-mindedness for the success and strength of the credit union on behalf of the entire membership.

Joy Brew, our current Chairperson joined the board in 2009, but we are also proud to count her as one of our members for nearly thirty years. Jim Svihovec, who likewise has belonged to Dakota West for several decades joined the Board of Directors in 2005 – our longest serving board member – and is currently serving as our Vice Chairman. Lynn Oberg currently serves as our Secretary, beginning as a member more than a decade and a half ago, having joined our Board in 2018.

Erin Forbes, who joined as a Director in 2019, having also served our members as an employee, and Karla Quale, a member for more than a dozen years, recently completed the full Board as a voting member. We are thankful for both the insight and the oversight these outstanding individuals offer to our leadership team, but also we value their membership, as we do all our members.

To understand more about the contributions and commitment of these five Board members, we encourage you to review the Board Philosophy and Expectations, as well as the Committees on which they serve. If you would like to offer your voice and be a part of the strategic direction of Dakota West, please reach out to us at dwcu@dakotawestcu.org and become an Associate Board Member.

How Do You Measure The Value Of A Loan?

We’ve started asking this question throughout North Dakota. Value implies more than just dollars and cents. Value means an addition that makes one choice preferable over the other, like amenities at a hotel. We have the ability to compare savings when shopping online for airfare or car insurance.

At Dakota West, we also want to start a conversation about our values – what we believe and what we practice when we service a loan, when we help a new member open an account, or when we complete a transaction at our drive-through windows. We value the trust that our borrowers place in us. We value the commitment made by our team and our members when we enter this partnership. And, above all else, we value the relationship that grows while working with our members.

We find value in doing more for our members, not just in our branches, but in our communities. This past week we sponsored the Fusion Conference in Bowman. This autumn we’ve driven in homecoming parades in several communities (when the weather didn’t rain on our parade). We are in the midst of our campaign to support the Children’s Miracle Network Hospital in Fargo. We support local rodeos, fairs, school sporting and booster events, and regional tournaments. We volunteer as emergency responders, in our state parks, with community organizations, and at our churches.

Our values and the way we serve our members, put simply, come down to this:

We are ready to listen.

We succeed together.

We can do this together.

We value your trust.

That’s how we measure our values.

Dakota West offers a wide range of loan offerings, including Personal, Home, Vehicles, Ag, or Business Loans. Click on the kind of loan you're considering to discover more, or call 800.411.7590 to speak to a loan officer today.

We are an equal housing lender.