Careers in the credit union industry can take unexpected turns, as Kendall Boyle proves in this episode of Credit Union Conversations. From wedding-planning chaos to underwriting spreadsheets, Kendall’s career path is anything but ordinary. Host Mark Ritter chats with the MBFS portfolio analyst about surviving hospitality burnout, thriving in remote work, and finding calm through animal fostering. Kendall opens up about the emotional side of fostering kittens, the perks and pitfalls of working from home, and why Michigan summers on the lake make the long winters worth it. It's a warm, funny, and honest conversation about building a career that actually fits your life, on your own terms.

What You Will Learn in This Episode:

✅ How Kendall moved from event planning and hospitality burnout into mortgage underwriting

✅ Why remote work at a credit union CUSO can support real work-life balance

✅ What it takes to become a foster home for kittens through your local humane society

✅ How credit union careers can lead to meaningful work in business lending nationwide

Subscribe to Credit Union Conversations for the latest credit union trends and insights on loan volume and business lending! Connect with MBFS to boost your credit union’s growth today.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Mark welcomes Kendall Boyle, portfolio analyst at MBFS, who shares her origin story

06:24 Kendall describes her career change into mortgage underwriting during the 2020 pandemic

08:52 Kendall discusses the pros and cons of remote work and finding true work-life balance

12:35 Kendall talks about fostering kittens and volunteering with the Capital Area Humane Society

16:44 Mark and Kendall close out discussing Michigan summers, snow belt winters, and MBFS

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

💎 Career changes can lead somewhere unexpected, as Kendall Boyle's move from event planning to mortgage underwriting shows.

💎 Remote work isn't just convenient; it can boost productivity and support a healthier work-life balance.

💎 Giving back through animal fostering, such as volunteering with a local humane society, brings meaning beyond the office.

ABOUT THE GUEST:

Kendall Boyle - LinkedIn

RESOURCES MENTIONED:

Mark Ritter - Website

Mark Ritter - LinkedIn

KEYWORDS:

Credit Union Conversations, Mark Ritter, MBFS, Credit Unions, CUSO, Credit Union Careers. Business Lending, Remote Work, Underwriting, Mortgage Industry, Foster Kittens, Humane Society, Work Life Balance

[00:00:28] So joining me today is Kendall Boyle of MBFS. Kendall, how are you doing today?

[00:00:37] Mark Ritter: Good, good. I hope I'm not screwing up your day by dragging you onto an interview.

[00:00:43] Mark Ritter: So these are some of my favorite episodes because I love to, to get people out talking to where our credit unions get to know our people a little bit more, what they're up to, who they are.

[00:00:56] Kendall Boyle: I'm ready.

[00:01:11] Kendall Boyle: Well, going back into my life story, long life Michigan resident, still, still in Michigan.

[00:01:32] Mark Ritter: you didn't grow up thinking you were gonna work for a credit union CUSO?

[00:01:41] Th- this is actually, you might find this funny, I dreamed of being a lawyer. I wanted to be a lawyer as a young child. Did I pursue law when I went to college? No, I did not. I ended up going down a completely different path and ended up in the hospitality field. So, [00:02:00] I was an event planner for a close to a decade before making the switch over, but during that time I spent the majority of that portion of my career working in private golf country clubs and business clubs.

[00:02:46] Mark Ritter: Weren't, weren't too many golf, large golf events going on.

[00:03:15] I feel that there needs to be, there needed to be a stronger work-life balance for me, and it became very clear that in hospitality, that was my life. And that's, I feel, not sustainable for most of us.

[00:03:41] Kendall Boyle: Yes.

[00:03:45] And also you're w- like, a lot of the people that you're dependent on, it's just will they show up? Won't they show up? Hopefully, like, it, can, can we execute on this? It just, I would imagine the stress [00:04:00] level and the hours are just brutal.

[00:04:12] My email was constantly going off. I would get emails from clients in the middle of the night, and I sometimes would be waking up at 6:30 in the morning to get ready for work, and I'm responding to emails while I'm, you know, brushing my teeth, basically. Y-

[00:04:34] Kendall Boyle: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

[00:04:38] Kendall Boyle: So as far as best stories go, I mean, through the time working in hospitality, I got to work with some really great organizations. I would say probably the highlight of my career in events was working with the Detroit Lions.

[00:04:56] Kendall Boyle: So we

[00:05:01] Kendall Boyle: You know, not the current ones. It was, this would've been back in, I believe 27- the 2017- Okay ... 2018 years. They-

[00:05:11] Kendall Boyle: quite

[00:05:13] Kendall Boyle: not quite ready for the playoffs, but did get a chance to host one of their charity outings for, at the country club I was working at, and got to meet some of the players, got to meet some of the behind-the-scenes people.

[00:05:51] tables, even though every contract says no glitter whatsoever, because you can never get rid of it.

[00:05:58] Kendall Boyle: It's there, and then three [00:06:00] weeks later you're still finding pieces of glitter attached to you.

[00:06:08] Kendall Boyle: I know. I'm sorry.

[00:06:18] Kendall Boyle: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:24] Kendall Boyle: So the pivot I made was I had a friend at the time who was working for a mortgage company in the Detroit area, and she recommended that I apply for an underwriting position.

[00:07:05] Went through some pretty intense training with that company I was working with, and ended up being an underwriter for them for two, two and a half years before I was then recruited into another mortgage company that I went and worked for them for a little bit until there was a little bit of a downturn in the industry.

[00:07:32] Mark Ritter: Before MBFS- Mm-hmm ... what was your impression of a credit union or just general knowledge of what the heck this industry was?

[00:07:58] But as far as the [00:08:00] business side of things, I did not have much knowledge of the business side of lending through credit unions.

[00:08:14] Kendall Boyle: Oh, definitely.

[00:08:19] You know, during w- before COVID, we were about two-thirds, maybe even a little more remote company. Mm-hmm. And, you know, since COVID, you know, we, we still have an office in name only, and we're, we're, we're remote. So when you talk with your friends and family, what do you... And, and I'm sure it comes up, "Oh, you work remote?"

[00:08:53] Kendall Boyle: As far as being a remote employee, I absolutely love it. I will say that being a remote employee was [00:09:00] a big reason that I ended up leaving that first mortgage company. I was remote with them for a good portion of time, and then when they had us return to office, the environment was just too much for me.

[00:09:43] You are your only in-person coworker, you know?

[00:10:16] A- a- and you gotta get up and stay active. But I, and I think the people who can do that thrive. And what I always said was, "If you go to work to sell Girl Scout cookies, this isn't for you." You know, like my, like my mother, and my mother lived to talk to the ladies in the office. Mm. And, and always have the, like, the community and da, da, da, da, da.

[00:10:50] Kendall Boyle: Yeah. And I mean, I would say that even being a remote employee, you can still build really good connections with your [00:11:00] other remote coworkers, and there's a lot of opportunity, I think, to be able to do that with technology, especially utilizing platforms like Microsoft Teams to stay in touch through the day.

[00:11:22] Mark Ritter: I always laugh 'cause people talk about productivity, and, oh, what if somebody, you know, has the cable guy come and, you know, do something like that? And I always say, you know, I worked in an office for decades and could name plenty of people who were absolutely worthless in an office.

[00:12:06] Kendall Boyle: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think me personally, I know I am way more productive working in a remote setting than I ever was working in the office. It was so distracting for me to be in the office 'cause there's, there's people walking around, there's doors opening, there's all these things that pull your attention one way or another, and suddenly you've been talking to the person to the right of you for 30 minutes without realizing it.

[00:12:47] Kendall Boyle: Yes.

[00:12:52] Kendall Boyle: So I am a foster home for mainly cats and kittens with our local humane society, which is the Capital [00:13:00] Area Humane Society.

[00:13:31] Mark Ritter: Now, how did you get started in this?

[00:13:50] Mark Ritter: How long do you normally have a animal for before it transitions out?

[00:14:24] I would say the shortest foster situation I've had was probably about a week. My longest was about three months.

[00:14:55] So, so what is that emotionally like with the- And- ... bringing them [00:15:00] in and then moving them out?

[00:15:23] He is with a wonderful, wonderful family. He is thriving. But it can be very hard to say goodbye to them, especially when you've raised them from such a young age. But the biggest thing that we try to keep in mind is these animals are going to complete somebody's family. They are that missing piece that they've been looking for, and they are going to bring so much joy and happiness to that family that it is worth our small heartache when we have to say goodbye to them.[00:16:00]

[00:16:15] Kendall Boyle: Absolutely. There's, there are so many communities that have an overabundance of animals in the shelter that need A safe place to land before they can go up for adoption.

[00:16:44] Mark Ritter: Okay. You're a lifelong, I, I think the term is, is it Michigander? Michigander? What, what is the per- Michigander,

[00:16:51] Mark Ritter: Michigander, yes. I got that. So I, I'm always fascinated with Michigan.

[00:17:12] Kendall Boyle: Right. I, summers in Michigan is unbeatable in my mind. Especially where I grew up, we had a lot of lakes around.

[00:17:37] Mark Ritter: What, what's a typical summer climate day?

[00:18:02] Mark Ritter: Yeah. We, we- when we were remodeling our house, we found that a l- a lot of the contractors just assumed we didn't want air conditioning. And there's really only about two to three weeks a year we'll run it, but it is well deserved and well received during that time when you need it, so.

[00:18:26] Mark Ritter: Now, what I'm most fascinated in is the wintertime. Mm-hmm. Like, are, are you a, a snow, outdoors, dead a- winter person, I have to get out, or just hunker down for six months?

[00:18:54] Like, we have had to shovel our driveway multiple times in one night [00:19:00] to keep up with the accumulation.

[00:19:11] Kendall Boyle: Mm-hmm ...

[00:19:21] Uh- Yes. Yeah ... 'cause, 'cause if you go, I, I was in the Deep South for a while, and if it's, you know, freezing ice or, you know, a dusting of snow, it just shuts down everybody, and, you know, we, we work with Erie Federal Credit Union, where- Mm-hmm ... like, like you, they're in the snow belt, and get two feet of snow, and m- just move on with life as if nothing happened.

[00:19:56] Mark Ritter: Kendall, thank you so much for joining me. I, I... [00:20:00] It was great to be able to catch up with you and get, have our audience get to know you a little bit more.

[00:20:10] Kendall Boyle: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:20:36] So this is Mark Ritter, CEO of MBFS and your host. Thank you for joining us. Have a great day, and hope to see you soon.