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• 2011 Annie Vamper Award Winners
  
  • Mignhon Tourné
  • Kim Vermander
• About Annie Vamper
  
• Previous Annie Vamper Winners

2011 Annie Vamper "Helping Hands" Award Winners

Mignhon Tourné, President & CEO, ASI Federal Credit Union (Harahan, LA)

Mignhon Tourné served on ASI FCU’s board of directors for over twenty years, spending ten years as President of the Board of Directors.  While serving on ASI FCU’s Board of Directors, she was a fierce champion of diversity, encouraging the credit union to extend inclusive banking services to those segments of the population left behind by traditional financial institutions. Under her leadership as President of the Board of Directors, ASI FCU grew from $10 million-in-assets to more than $250 million.

In 2006, Tourné relinquished her position as chairperson of the board to accept the role of CEO during a time when the credit union was still reeling from the effects of Hurricane Katrina: displaced employees and members, utterly destroyed branches, and major financial losses. However, ASI FCU was determined to help its members in any way possible during this challenging time, as it had done so many times before that devastating event.

In 2009, ASI FCU opened the doors of A Shared Initiative, Inc. (ASII), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that acts as the community development arm of ASI FCU. Through its financial education programs, ranging from credit improvement, debt management, budgeting and savings, prospective homebuyer education, foreclosure prevention, and more, ASII helps residents regain control of their financial lives and livelihoods to ensure long term financial security.

During her tenure as CEO, Tourné has been instrumental in the creation and development of  many innovative programs, products, and services to benefit the credit union’s membership, including spearheading the creation two new bilingual branches, offering a welcoming multi-cultural environment and greater access of the credit union’s services by the Vietnamese-American community and the Spanish-speaking community, groups whose numbers have grown significantly in the greater New Orleans area post-Hurricane Katrina. 

Tourné is a highly visible figure representing ASI FCU in the community and she possesses a dynamic enthusiasm that encourages volunteerism in ASI FCU’s employees and board members.  According to Sarah Taylor, ASI FCU Senior Vice President, “Mignhon is a fierce champion of diversity; she is a supreme challenger of the status quo; and she is an unyielding advocate of the underserved.  Her efforts have taken ASI [FCU] to new heights, both as a CDCU and as a CDFI, and her legacy at the credit union will be one of service, innovation and lasting impact.”

Kim Vermander, Senior Vice President, Communicating Arts CU (Detroit, MI)

Kim Vermander has been involved in the credit union movement for over thirty years. While her early days in the movement were with a “mainstream” credit union, Vermander always believed in a credit union’s responsibility to give back and help those that need it most. It is this belief which set the tone for her work at Communicating Arts Credit Union (CACU), where she serves as Senior Vice President. 

In 2010 Communicating Arts received the Credit Union Times’ 2010 Trailblazer Award for Outstanding Service to the Underserved, and according to CACU CEO, Hank Hubbard, the award was largely based on Vermander’s leadership in opening a new branch in Highland Park, one of the lowest-income, most  underserved communities in all of Detroit.

“Kim was responsible for literally everything,” explained Hubbard, “From supervising the pouring of the cement floor to the selecting the shape of the counter, and from getting our name out in local churches, to becoming Treasurer of the Highland Park Business Association.  The Highland Park branch has been overwhelming successful and now serves about 2,500 members, accounts for nearly $2 million in savings and $3 million in loans. And all of this was accomplished through word of mouth based on our service to the community.  We have not done any traditional marketing, and Kim is a big reason for this success,” he added.

The experience in Highland Park provided the credit union’s Board of Directors with the courage to do it again, and CACU opened a second new branch in an equally devastated area in East Detroit in January 2011, attracting more than 50 members in the first month alone. Successfully branching into neighborhoods forsaken by other institutions has become one of Vermander’s specialties, and it is a skill that the credit union is putting to use as it refocuses its efforts to become Detroit’s premier community development credit union.

When told Vermander would receive a Vamper Award, Hubbard praised her selection, “Kim is our go-to person at the credit union. She has been responsible for driving nearly all of the changes we have gone through since becoming a CDCU,” he said.  “Whether it has required adjusting guidelines and policies to lend to higher-risk members, creating new savings or loan products designed specifically for the underbanked, or opening branches in urban areas that most other institutions have abandoned, Kim can do it all – she is our superhero!”

About Annie Vamper

When Annie Wilma Vamper passed away on May 19, 1990, the community development credit union movement lost one of its heroes — and an important part of its history. For more than 30 years, Annie Vamper served in virtually every role that the credit union movement has to offer. Born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1933, she started as a volunteer with the College City Elks Lodge FCU in 1958. By 1962, she began working with the M.C.E. FCU, where she served as manager until 1966.

During the War on Poverty in the 1960s, Annie was recruited to become the Credit Union Coordinator for Dade Economic Opportunity Program in Florida, where she organized, chartered, and trained the staff of twelve neighborhood credit unions. Her work caught the attention of the Bureau of Federal Credit Unions, and she became a Limited-Income Credit Union Specialist for the Southeast Region. She joined the team of Project Moneywise, to promote consumer education and cooperation among low-income people. In 1972, as the nation began to turn away from the problems of the poor, Annie returned to managing a credit union, Coulter Electronics Employees FCU, where she served for 8 years before being recruited again by the National Credit Union Administration.

With the passage of the Community Development Credit Union Revolving Loan Fund, NCUA moved to establish a new CDCU division, and Annie became its second in command. But by 1982, the office was dissolved, a victim of deregulation and the ebbing interest in programs to help the poor. Annie accepted a transfer to New Jersey, where she entered into training to become a field examiner for NCUA. But by this time, her unique skills and interest no longer were valued by the agency. In September 1983, she left NCUA for the last time.

It was then that she came to the National Federation of CDCUs, joining its only remaining staff member, Cliff Rosenthal, in the rebuilding the Federation. She became Associate Director — and chief financial officer, Capitalization Program staff, regulatory analyst, and “godmother” to half a dozen new CDCUs formed during the 1980s.

Until her death in 1990, she gave every ounce of her strength, her commitment, and her love to the CDCU movement.  In 1993, the "Helping Hands" Award was created to honor Annie Vamper’s memory, along with the dedication of the Federation’s training center at our New York City headquarters. 

The "Helping Hands" Award celebrates those individuals whose unselfish work for the CDCU movement carry-on Annie’s legacy.

Past Vamper Award Winners

Annie Vamper Winners (1993 – 2010)

2010
Rebecca "Becky" Anderson	Northwest Baptist FCU (Seattle, WA)
Marcus Bordelon	Appalachian FCU (Berea, KY)
2009
	No award presented in 2009.
2008
Ed Jacob	Northside Community FCU (Chicago, IL)
Daniel Morrisey	Queen of Peace Arlington FCU (Arlington, VA)
2007
William Bynum	Hope FCU (Jackson, MS)
John Dupree, Jr.	Shiloh of Alexandria FCU (Alexandria, VA)
2006
Rev. Dr. Tommy Chapelle	NRS Community Development FCU (Birmingham, AL)
John Isbister	Santa Cruz Community CU (Santa Cruz, CA)
Thad Moore	Self-Help CU (Durham, NC)
2005
Lillian M. Bent	Union Settlement FCU (New York, NY)
Daisy Q. White	1st Delta FCU (Marks, MS)
2004
William Myers	Alternatives FCU ( Ithaca, NY)
José Feliciano Vélez	Electro-Coop (San Juan, PR)
2003
Eddie Ayers	Demopolis FCU (Demopolis, AL)
Lillie Hackney	Imani FCU (Memphis, TN)
2002
Maria Berkowitz	Central Appalachian Peoples FCU (Berea, KY)
James Gilliam	St. Luke CU (Windsor, NC)
Mary Spink	Lower East Side People’s FCU (New York, NY)
2001
Audrey Cerise	ASI FCU (New Orleans, LA)
Robert L. Coleman, Jr.	Northwest Baptist FCU (Seattle, WA)
Loretta Moesta	OUR FCU (Eugene, OR)
James H. Parson	Church of the Master FCU (New York, NY)
2000
John Stovall	Zion United CU (Denver, CO)
Antonio & Elodia Elizondo	Weslaco Catholic FCU (Weslaco, TX)
Charles Green	Cory Methodist Church CU (Cleveland, OH)
Reverend Carl Brown	Quitman County CD FCU (Marks, MS)
1999
Almedia Knight & Daisy Dobbins	Brooklyn Ecumenical FCU (Brooklyn, NY)
Ruth C. Carter	New Hope Baptist Church of East Orange FCU (East Orange, NJ)
Dr. Hiram Crawford, Jr.	Israel Methcomm FCU (Chicago, IL)
Jerry Weitz	Mission Area FCU (San Francisco, CA)
Catherine Mayfield	St. Charles Borromeo Church FCU (NewYork, NY)
1998
Robert Shipe	First American CU (Window Rock, AZ)
Bette Mercia	Binghampton Housing Authority Residents FCU (Binghamton, NY)
Elizabeth Ahart	Faith Community United CU (Cleveland, OH)
Ruth Atkins	Union Settlement FCU (New York, NY)
1997
Curtis W. Monroe	D. Edward Wells FCU (Springfield, MA)
Carl E. Stewart	Water & Power FCU (Los Angeles, CA)
1996
Joy Cousminer	Bethex FCU (Bronx, NY)
Eugene Sklar	Union Settlement FCU (New York, NY)
Adolfo Alayon	Community Action of Bedford Stuyvesant  (Brooklyn, NY)
1995
Woodrow Keown	College Station CD  FCU (College Station, AR)
Clyde Johnson	South-Central People’s FCU (Los Angeles, CA)
1994
Mary Walker	Hill District FCU (Pittsburgh, PA)
James Caskey	South Baltimore Community FCU (Baltimore, MD)
Sr. Ann Kendrick &  Lois Kitsch	Community Trust FCU (Apopka, FL)
1993
Earnest Johnson	Federation of Southern Cooperatives (Epes, AL)
Clifford N. Rosenthal	National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (New York, NY)