Gail DeBoer

Business Hall of Fame Honoree: Gail L. DeBoer, President & CEO, Cobalt Credit Union

Gail DeBoer has been eyeing and achieving lofty goals her entire life. When she took over as president and CEO of what’s now Cobalt Credit Union (formerly SAC Federal Credit Union), her first big aim was to hit $500 million in assets.

“I thought, I’ll retire before that happens based on our growth,” she says. “Then we did, and our employees immediately wanted to know our next goal. I said, ‘We’re going to be a billion.’”

Last June, under DeBoer’s leadership, it was mission accomplished for Nebraska’s largest credit union.

“That’s probably the advice I give most to people – if you have a vision and a goal, you can attain it.”

…even if the route you take is, like Deboer’s, a bit non-traditional. Instead of immediately shifting from high school to college, she took a clerical job with the Omaha Royals. After quickly determining it wasn’t a career, she began pursuing an accounting degree at University of Nebraska-Omaha and working for a now-defunct energy company.

“While I was going to school, I got married, had a couple of kids and worked at Enron – so definitely not traditional. It took me 11 years to get my degree in accounting. But when InterNorth merged with HNG and Ken Lay came to town, I listened to him speak and felt, in my gut, it wasn’t a place I wanted to work. I didn’t trust him, so I started looking for another job.”

DeBoer left Enron in 1988 and took a job as an internal auditor with then-SAC Federal Credit Union. She says the position allowed her to learn every part of the credit union. After seven years, she was promoted to Senior Vice President of Operations.

“I went from one part-time employee to about 100 employees overnight. That was exciting,” she says.

During her 12 years as Senior VP of Operations, SAC Federal Credit Union grew from five branches to 12. When DeBoer learned the president and CEO was planning to retire in five years, she set a new goal – the head office – and began preparing to achieve it. Over the course of three years, she earned her Master of Business Administration degree at Bellevue University, all the while juggling work and three kids in high school and junior high.

“You have to be ready when that opportunity presents itself,” DeBoer says.

After becoming president and CEO of SAC Federal Credit Union in 2007, DeBoer implemented its first formal training program and launched a re-branding effort to raise the credit union’s profile in the community. Additional branches were also a priority. Cobalt now has a total of 25 branches in Greater Omaha and Council Bluffs, Lincoln and Denison, Iowa – up from 12 in 2007.

“People want convenience,” DeBoer says. “They want to be able to reach you anyway they want to reach you, if it’s mobile or branches or whatever, you need to provide that because we’re all busy.”

In August of 2018, just two months after reaching the $1 billion mark, the credit union notched another major milestone: a second name change in its 73-year history – from SAC Federal Credit Union to Cobalt.

“Cobalt is an element that makes other elements or minerals stronger. We felt like that really was a reflection of what the credit union does – we help people make financial decisions that make them stronger,” DeBoer says.

With the credit union for 31 years now, DeBoer says most rewarding for her is watching people grow: “I’ve been there long enough now to see a lot of people really do great things.”

She has done the same. DeBoer is a Leadership Omaha grad and a member of the Greater Omaha Chamber Board. She sits on the Board of Trustees for the Omaha Ethics Alliance and the Children’s Hospital Foundation.  In 2016, she was the inaugural recipient of the ICAN Leadership Award. Community involvement is a priority for her and for the credit union.

“The credit union philosophy, in general, is “People Helping People,” and we’ve always embraced that philosophy.”