Woman of Impact: Shaundra Warren

As the head of the Project Management Office, Loss Mitigation, Risk Management, and Marketing, Shaundra Warren plays a pivotal role in ensuring the effective and efficient governance of our strategic formation and enterprise risk. Her responsibilities also extend to strategic business
planning across the organization, a task she handles with exceptional skill and foresight. 

Shaundra’s career at Sharonview has been marked by a series of significant promotions. She started as Assistant Vice President of Loss Mitigation in December 2016, and within two years, she was elevated to the role of Vice President.

Her exceptional performance led to her appointment as Senior Vice President of Risk Mitigation in December 2020. Then, in November 2021, she was further promoted to the Executive Leadership Team, assuming the role of Senior Vice President of Enterprise Risk and Organizational Change Management. She has made great strides in our loan collections, asset recovery, and financial wellness programs. Under her leadership, our asset quality has improved vastly, earning 100% of our VPP goal for multiple years running.

• Earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Liberal Studies from Wingate University
• Spent 20 years leading third-party debt recovery and call center
• operations and being a consultant to small businesses and call center startups
• Active board member for the Credit Union Collection Professionals (CUCP)
• Is an avid sneaker collector

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is the iHeartMedia Charlotte Women of Impact celebrating women
in our community, presented by the Carolina Ascent and New
Hope Treatment Centers.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, it's Chelsea here and I'm with Schandra Warren from
Sharon View Federal Credit Union. Thanks for coming in, Chandra,
thank you for having me. So we are celebrating women
for International Women's Month and Day, which is so cool.
Tell us about your background at Sharon View Federal Credit.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Union, Gotcha, I started out maybe eight or nine years
ago as the AVP of loss Mitigation. My background was
in loss mitigation, so I joined the organization back then
looking for a home that I could work and have
work life balance, and that was the opportunities that I
worked my way from AVP to VP, to SVP and
now a Chief Strategy and Risk officer.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Wow, congratulations, thank you so much. Thinking of empowering the
next generation of women, which character traits do you think
have been the most instrumental to your success?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Gotcha? I'd like to lean into my introvert It's something
that I talk about a ton and I think my
introversion is a superpower, but it's not always seen that way.
So I would encourage young ladies and women to lean
into what you're really good at. And I think introversion
is not always seen as something that you should be
proud of, but for me, it's I'm a deep thinker,

(01:18):
an internal thinker, and I also like to utilize that
because it helps me from an emotional intelligence perspective, reading
the room, understanding the gaps that exists, and solving for those.
So coming to the table full of thoughts and information,
sometimes I have to encourage myself to speak and spit
it out, But for the most part, I think that's

(01:38):
a huge part of my personality and it's just been
huge and beneficial in my career.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Young people often struggle with what they want to do
in their careers, so much pressure to figure it all
out when you're young. What are your thoughts on trying
to figure it all out in the beginning?

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Gotcha? I think one of my learnings is that your
career path is rarely linear, right, and you don't have
to always have it figured out, and just learning and
being flexible and taking things from each opportunity and taking
it into the next is huge and important for me.
So along my journey from just even in sharing you

(02:16):
the role that I originally came over with, and the
role that I have today looks huge and different, right,
But what I've been able to do is take little
pieces along the way and apply it to the next step.
So I would just say, be adaptive, lean in, be
a career learner, and then lean into the things that
you feel comfortable leaning into.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Based on the lessons you've learned from your experience. What
would you say if you could go back in time
and speak to your twenty year old self, would you
do anything differently?

Speaker 3 (02:46):
It's a great question. I believe I would probably have
a very similar conversation that I would have today with
my sixteen year old daughter, and I think about when
she's getting ready to go out in the basketball court
she plays basketball in high school. Today, I tell her,
I'm like, do your thing right, you know what you
want to go out there to do. You know what

(03:06):
you came to do today. You're prepared, right, you know
who supplies your needs. We have that conversation a ton,
and just lean into that. So I would just say,
be confident, lean in, and trust your gut.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Are there any moments within your career trajectory that really
stick out for you as turning points either towards something
positive or maybe a learning experience when something didn't go
the way you wanted to.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, I think it's the timeframe when I knew that
I had something to say and I didn't and the
disappointment that follows. And it's interesting when you talk about
those moments that were pivotal. A leader in the past
had given me a book by Terry Pearce, and this
book encouraged me to embrace the quiet leadership that I

(03:54):
had and really be encouraged to figure out ways to
get your voice in the room. And it was just
the encouragement that my voice matter, and to hear somebody
who I looked up to actually say that out loud
encouraged me to do that more often. And then seeing
what that looked like in the future, right, So starting
to see that people wanted to hear what I had

(04:14):
to say, and people realized when I did speak, it
was really powerful information that they could take away from.
So it just encouraged me to continue to do it more.
But it did take for somebody in the organization to
see me and see my qualities and then speak those
out loud for me to feel encouraged to continue to share.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Have you experienced barriers in your career and how have
you broken those down?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yeah? I think we all have those scenarios where we
feel like we may have hit a rough patch. Right.
It may be that you're an environment that doesn't feel
familiar to you, or you have a difference of opinion
and you have to figure out how to get that
across without fighting. Right. So, for me, the challenge sometimes
is being heard when the consensus in the room doesn't

(04:59):
agree and how to navigate that situation. And sometimes it's
really having relationships around the room to be able to
guide the conversation. You know what people are looking for,
you know what motivates them, and when you know enough
about people, it's that emotional intelligence. Right. When you know
enough about the people that you interact with it on
a daily basis and other decision makers, it's much easier

(05:21):
to get to getting your point across and helping people
see where you want to go in your thought process.
When you don't have that scope of the room, sometimes
it comes out as a challenge. So avoiding the challenge
and trying to navigate and get people on the same
page by understanding each individual motivation It's been something that
I feel like has been extremely helpful for me.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
If you had the ears of young women in Charlotte,
which you do, what advice would you give them as
they set out on their careers.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Definitely going back to be flexible, right, being a career learner.
And that doesn't mean, you know, you have to go
to every university and get every degree. It's just paying
attention in the rooms that you're in, thinking about the
things that you want to do and say, and continue
in too. Lean in. Like I said, I think for
me it's trust your gut. I always felt that I
would advance in my career and things of that nature,

(06:13):
but I think it took for me to have courage
to do so. So I would also encourage women to
lean in and feel courageous and put yourself out there.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
iHeartMedia. Charlotte Women of Impact celebrating women in our community,
presented by the Carolina Ascent and New Hope Treatment Centers,