Hanging in Adele Glenn's office is her framed college diploma.At home hangs another degree for her two daughters to see. The twoframes serve as small, but powerful reminders of heraccomplishments that she tirelessly worked to achieve – all whileworking full-time.

After completing just a few classes, Glenn will be able to addanother frame to the wall, this time for a master's degree inbusiness administration. Since having her second daughter this pastyear, time has been even tighter, but the reward of setting apositive example for her children is well worth it for her, shesaid.

Glenn, emerging channels innovation architect at the $2.8billion San Antonio Federal Credit Union in San Antonio, said shewas determined to get her degrees before her girls graduated withtheir own.

And she completed her degrees free from student loan debt.

“Our credit union has 100% tuition assistance,” the most recentWomen to Watch honoree said. “It took me five years, but I was ableto graduate with two undergraduate degrees.”

Glenn said she wishes someone would have told her how hard itwas to go to school as a working mom.

“I’ve gone back to the 16-year-old me and felt that I shouldhave just gone to college then … however, I wouldn't trade it forthe world: How everything fell into place, and it did fall intoplace,” she emphasized.

She said the degrees didn't happen without struggle, but she nowhas a huge sense of accomplishment.

Her entry into the professional world started early. Glenngraduated high school at 16 and wasn't quite ready for college, soinstead, she opened up a catering and wedding planningbusiness.

After moving the business to California, intelligence, fate andgood timing intersected when she was making a deposit for herbusiness at her local credit union.

“The branch manager's email was down and I ended up fixing heremail,” she recalled. “She ended up offering me a job in thecomputer room.”

The thought of extra money was enticing and she loved computersand technology, so Glenn accepted a position in the credit union'sdata center, where she was given the flexibility to test anddevelop new tools.

“They let me play, and the more I played, the more I loved whatI could make the system do,” she said. “When people found out Icould do things, they were asking for a ton.”

Her then CEO provided some career-changing advice: Stop givingpeople what they ask for and give them what they actually need.

“It was a completely different spin. What if I started askingquestions back, and what if I found out what they need?” Glennemphasized. “Sometimes people are asking for something but theydon't realize the big picture; so if I use inquisitive lines ofquestioning and get down to what needs to be done, I stay in thesolution space.”

She took this piece of helpful advice and integrated it into hercurrent position at SACU.

The credit union launched a kiosk initiative that allows membersto perform self-service options that they would traditionally haveto complete with a teller at a branch location. Glenn wanted tofigure out what members needed, so the credit union identified thetop 25 transactions that were taking place in the branch andwhether they could be automated through self-service.

But when Glenn went looking for a self-service kiosk for thecredit union, she couldn't find one.

“I was looking for a solution and it didn't exist, so I wasactually able to partner up with some thought leaders in theindustry,” she recalled. “We were able to conceptualize and designa kiosk solution for credit unions – it took us 18 months fromstart to finish.”

On day one of the kiosk launch, the credit union implemented 21of its top 25 transactions. Phase two of the project will includean additional 15 functionalities.

“The kiosks enable members to do transactions in the easiestway, or the way they want to do them,” Glenn said.

The kiosks are fully automated and available to members inbranches and at off-site locations.

Thus far, member satisfaction with self-service kiosks has beenhigh, Glenn said. In 2014, the CUNA Technology Counsel honored SACUwith the Excellence in Technology Award for the kiosks.

Glenn said she is also excited about a new product she's beenworking on called Card Control. When it launches at SACU thissummer, members will be able to control their credit and debit cardpreferences from their mobile phones. Glenn said the solution willbe great for families or anyone else concerned about cardfraud.

With Card Control, members will be able to take complete controlof their cards and monitor their children's cards. Members whorarely complete online purchases can elect to turn them off, and ifthey do decide to buy something from an online retailer, they canturn it on and back off again when they’re done.

Glenn said she is always trying to stay a step ahead of securityand regulations. She partners with the credit union's governmentalaffairs team to stay in tune with what's coming next.

“We’re faced with insurmountable regulations,” she said. “If wecan be a step ahead of the CFPB and ahead of the regulators whenthose regulations come down, we don't have to spend all of our timepatching, fixing or doing those things to get caught up inregulations,” she said.

Glenn emphasized managing the complexity and enormity ofregulations is one of the biggest challenges facing smaller creditunions. Bigger credit unions have more capacity to handleregulations because of larger staff, but they’re also at higherrisk of being targeted by banks, she said.

“For credit unions that are staying true to their socialmission, the fear of being targeted by banks isn't as much of afocus,” she emphasized. “We try to stay true to our social missionand provide financial solutions to our members and … that goes along way in being viable.”

Because her focus is staying true to the social mission, the skyis the limit for the projects she gets to work on, Glenn said. It'snot just about whether something is profitable; it's about whetherit's going to help members achieve their goals.