When he was 12 years old, Todd Clark remembers opening his firstshare account at the former Public Service Employees Credit Unionwhere his dad worked. Over the years, his family depended upon whatis now the $111 million Access Credit Union in Amarillo, Texas, forfinancial products and services. Today, at 49, Clark is the newpresident/CEO of CO-OP Financial Services in Rancho Cucamonga,Calif., and its 3,500 credit union members and their 60 millionmembers are depending on him to lead one of the nation's largestCUSOs into a future fraught with opportunities, challenges anduncertainties.

With 25 years of experience spanning payments technology, clientrelations, client services, fraud and networks, Clark brings anentrepreneurial mindset to CO-OP. He co-founded a start-up company,Core Data. When it was sold to Concord EFS, which later merged withFirst Data, it grew to a $20 million organization and became thesecond largest ATM processor in the country. Clark spent 22 yearsat First Data, where he served small banks, credit unions andindependent service organizations. Most recently, he was SVP/headof STAR Network and debit processing, where he was responsible forthe business unit's profits and losses, and led a team of more than600 product, strategy, communications, strategic sales, technology,operations and support employees. He also led the financialinstitution group at the company, including managing itsrelationship with Bank of America. What's more, Clark is a coderand technologist – he learned to write computer code as a hobbywhile studying math and economics at The University of Texas atAustin. Throughout his career, he has specialized in identifyingtechnology gaps in the market and determining how emergingtechnology will fill those gaps, all with a goal of uncoveringefficiencies for smaller financial institutions.

Clark recently talked to CU Times about his plans atCO-OP and the future of credit unions.