Hannah Dickinson explained that she oversees the front end of the collections process at Marine Credit Union (MCU) as the Collections Department Manager. “Collections has a bad rap,” she explained. “At MCU,” she said, “We take the compassionate approach knowing that everybody is coming from a different place.”
Hannah explained that people don’t have the intention of falling behind in their payments. “We are meeting them at a place they didn’t want to be,” she said and added that it is about compassion. “It’s a relationship you are building with a member.”
Hannah grew up in the West Salem and Onalaska areas and graduated from Onalaska High School. Although she attended Western Technical College for business management, she explained that she was a single mom at the time and left school to start her career to provide for her daughter.
Starting as a collection representative in a third-party agency, Hannah explained that she grew into leadership. “I had leaders who believed in me,” she shared. “I clung to those people who believed in me.” After a while she said she reached a plateau as a leader, felt she needed to explore other opportunities and moved to MCU in 2018.
She explained she was always a leader on her sports teams in high school. She said she was competitive and believed in “doing things the right way.” She added, “I had coaches who believed in me growing up. It was a huge part of my life. I want to do that for other people.”
Hannah also experienced unfortunate personal things that helped her grow into her passion to help others. When she was still in middle school, her father remarried and brought two stepbrothers into her life. She spoke lovingly of her brother Mitch and explained that he was diagnosed with brain cancer in the eighth grade. Although he did go into remission after his surgery, Hannah shared it was a difficult time for him and her family. “He went through one and a half years of treatments and had to relearn how to walk and talk again,” she explained through tears.
Hannah was there for Mitch the entire time. “I learned at a young age what it is like to face many different things and how to support others,” she said. Her brother Mitch passed away the spring after her high school graduation.
“I had to be the mediator between family and friends,” Hannah explained. “I had to be the calm. It helped me to learn how to communicate.” Having gone through losing her brother at such a young age she said, “it molded me into a communicator and a leader.”
Just as she was “the rock” for her family going through such difficult times, she aims to be so for her team at work as well. “I’m always checking in to make sure everyone feels taken care of,” Hannah shared. “I preach to them a lot to be the calm in people’s storm.”
She explained that when her team connects with members, they are connecting to them after losing their job or on the verge of losing their home or their vehicle being repossessed. “The world doesn’t end when you lose your job as long as you take the next step,” Hannah added. “We have to be that person to help guide them through that.”
Hannah and her family, husband Brandon, daughters Hadley (9) and Havana (7) and son Boston (2) live in the Holmen, Wisconsin area.
