New leadership in place at Coopera, PolicyWorks

There’s new leadership in place at Coopera, an advocacy group that helps Hispanic and immigrant markets.

Victor Miguel Corro, formerly client relations director at Coopera, has been tapped to succeed Miriam De Dios Woodward, who led the Des Moines, Iowa-based company since 2012. In that time, Coopera worked with more than 200 credit unions, league and industry partners to serve more than 1 million Hispanic consumers across 30 states.

De Dios Woodward has been named the new CEO of PolicyWorks, a sister company to Coopera owned in part by the Iowa Credit Union League.

Both took the helm at their respective organizations earlier this month.

Corro joined Coopera just 10 months ago, after 20 years at the World Council of Credit Unions. In a recent blog post on Coopera’s website, Corro notes that the Hispanic market in the U.S. has never been larger and the need for affordable financial services has never been greater.

“Our industry really can’t ignore a group that in just a couple of decades will comprise one-third of the U.S. population,” Corro wrote. “At Coopera, we’d like to help more credit unions meet their own goals, and successfully serving Hispanic members is an important part of that equation.”

Representatives from Coopera, Inclusiv and elsewhere told CU Journal in recent months that while the national tone surrounding immigration has turned decidedly nastier in the last two years, the market for serving Spanish-speaking consumers continues to grow rapidly and credit unions have responded in kind, such as the continued expansion of Inclusiv’s Juntos Avanzamos program and an increased client base at Coopera.

As for De Dios Woodward, her new post will focus on helping credit unions better manage an evolving regulatory landscape. Owned by a consortium of credit union leagues, PolicyWorks serves more than 1,200 credit unions nationwide. She succeeds Brian Godwin, who has taken on a new leadership role within the company.

“Miriam’s background, diverse professional expertise and entrepreneurial drive make her the perfect choice to lead PolicyWorks,” Murray Williams, CEO of the Iowa Credit Union League and Afiliates Management, the parent organization to both PolicyWorks and Coopera, said in a statement earlier this month. “She is a rising star in the credit union movement and we are fortunate to have Miriam lead this vital company. PolicyWorks is primed for exponential grow and we have great confidence in Miriam’s abilities to lead our talented staff toward future exploration and product differentiation.”