Mountain America's Member-Centric Digital Evolution

Jim Marous (00:10):

Hey, everybody, Jim Marous from the Flsionaries Podcast and a live booth here at the Co: Lab 2025, sponsored by Alkami.

Jim Marous (00:20):

The balance of innovation, reliability, trust, and culture is hard to put in one basket. Mountain America Credit Union out of Salt Lake City, Utah does this very well. They have a legacy of an organization that is focused on the member experience. And probably unlike many of the guests, we have more branch-based than digital-based.

Jim Marous (00:49):

You'll hear how they are making a digital twin in the marketplace, so that that transformation from human to digital, if the member wants it, will be smooth. How they measure that experience and how they deploy against that measurement.

Jim Marous (01:05):

Today we have two gentlemen from Mountain America Credit Union in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah, James Hilton, and Jesse Evenson from Mountain America Credit Union. Can you talk a little bit about your background in banking and what you do at Mountain America?

James Hilton (01:23):

Sure. I joined Mountain America just about eight years ago now. Prior to that, I was in the HRIS space. Always have been in really product management. So, software development, building those things. So, while joining MACU, it's been building a little bit of that product management discipline as well as our digital banking solutions. I work close with our product managers, our UX design team, and of course, our business partners to launch our products.

Jim Marous (01:51):

How about you, Jesse?

Jesse Evenson (01:52):

Yeah, I've been at Mountain America just over 11 years. Long time. I've done a variety of different roles. Really enjoyed my time there. It's been great. Working with James has been great. Seen a lot of change. And right now I'm working with our quality engineering teams, our site reliability teams and just a little bit in the background helping manage the systems and make sure we've got the quality we want.

Jim Marous (02:22):

Well, it's interesting. As you have heard from me, I had a lot of history in Salt Lake City with working with financial institutions in a previous life. And Mountain America always stood out as being a very innovative, very product-forward, very data-centric and very secure organization. You're balancing a lot of things.

Jim Marous (02:40):

And it's interesting because it may be the first time we've had the quality aspect of a financial institution, the product aspect on the same podcast. But it's interesting because now more than ever the importance of trust as part of that whole product element, security. But trust is really going to drive where we can go as financial institutions. Because, as I said, you're a very data-centric organization, information and insight-centric. You had some of the early partnerships and the diving deeper than normal into the personalization aspects of things.

Jim Marous (03:16):

And we only can get it right once. Why do we pay so much for Amazon Prime? Because we trust them. They do a really good job with our data and make our lives easier. But it isn't for the movies, and that's not really anything else. You don't want to break that bond and say, "Well, I'm going to walk away from Amazon Prime because I may be walking away from something that's making it all work."

Jim Marous (03:38):

So, I'm going to actually start with you, Jesse. From the quality standpoint, and today more than ever, we're using more and more data, more and more insights to build better product experiences and better engagement. But once you start to get deeper and deeper and build more of an engagement rather than just an experienced platform, you run some risks. You also have to make sure that your uptime is on time.

Jim Marous (04:01):

And we're seeing more and more that organization, because of all the partnerships we have across fintechs and other organizations, downtime's a real big deal. And it's something that it doesn't have to be your fault and your members really aren't going to give a darn whether or not it was yours or not because it's their accounts. So, what do you focus on today? What has changed in the last five years with regards to how you make things work behind the scenes?

Jesse Evenson (04:33):

Yeah, it's a great question. You look at MACU specifically, and I think just credit unions in general have matured quite a bit over the last five years. I think we have to be a little bit more careful with the partners we pick who we're working with. Our members are certainly aware like you highlighted, that if we've got a problem with a system or a vendor's got a problem with the system, it doesn't matter to them who's got the problem. It's a reflection of MACU and the way we're treating our members.

Jesse Evenson (05:06):

And so, picking partners is important. I think observability is big for my team. Making sure we can understand and look at that data, see where issues may be coming up, where maybe our response times aren't as quite as good, or the downtime is more than we would expect. And really understanding that, and be able to work with either our internal teams or our partners on fixing that and making things better.

Jim Marous (05:33):

So, sticking with you for a second, with regards to the data, how much are you democratizing or how much is your goal to democratize insights across the organization so that you can get similar experiences, whether or not, if you're calling on the phone, whether if you're online, whether or not you're going into the branch, or whether you're dealing digitally.

Jim Marous (05:53):

How do you deal with the democratization across the organization? Because that's something that — I mean, I go back eons in banking, and we always held it right within IT. That's no longer the case in most financial institutions. How are you democratizing data within MACU?

Jesse Evenson (06:08):

MACU's got a good culture I think of sharing and collaborating with each other. Making that data available really to everybody, I think we can all make better decisions when we've got the data and really not being those gatekeepers.

Jesse Evenson (06:25):

But being open and honest. Even when maybe, it makes our teams look maybe not in the most positive light, but putting that data out there, understanding it, talking about it and being able to make decisions on that data across all the teams because it does affect all the teams, all the experience across whatever channel our members are using.

Jim Marous (06:50):

And James, from an innovation standpoint, from a product standpoint, as I mentioned, you're an organization that really has been pushing the limits. And on a good sense as far as what you're doing from a product standpoint, what have you seen change over the last five years since COVID from the standpoint of the products you're developing, what you're focusing on?

James Hilton (07:11):

I think as you mentioned, trust, so security, there's been a lot of innovation and a lot of things that improve our security. BioCatch is one that we leverage with some behavioral metrics that we can ramp up our security to make trust better, but also reduce the friction from members for member as they're going through our online and mobile and doing their application.

James Hilton (07:33):

People want to come in quickly to self-serve. We typically have them for about a minute, two minutes within our application. And so, we don't want to get in the way, but we want to have high security as well. So, there's that and leveraging the data not only from maybe some of that user location IP, but also some of the known data of bad actors and different things.

James Hilton (07:55):

And these different security tools and features can really pick that up in the background. Offer MFA lock and block accounts. And so, I think there's quite a bit of benefit there. With that it's leveraging data. There's AI tools, and as quantum computing picks up, the security is going to be more critical and important as we look out five years, six years and where passwords become more risky.

Jim Marous (08:18):

So, you talk about using data and insight to make it so it's a more seamless, a more frictionless experience. What have you done at MACU that really is customer facing, that the customer can feel? Because so much of what you're doing, any financial institution has to do is really back office base to make the front office work. What have you done? How has your member base benefited from what the back office has been able to provide you from a product standpoint and delivery?

James Hilton (08:48):

And it really does, it's interesting because it all starts with our branches, our member services teams and our focus on our membership. We invest heavily there. And the ability for us to serve our members there is why we are who we are. It's why we have the growth that we have. It's why we have the membership that we have.

James Hilton (09:05):

And that's why Jesse and I have jobs is to … and provide the tools to our frontline team members so that they can easily access dollar center, so they can do their jobs and understand that, but also understand data, be able to assess the member that's in front of them, and to be able to provide the tools there.

James Hilton (09:23):

So, it's really serving up seamless data, seamless tools, and an easy way for the member or for the team member to serve the member, and not let the systems and tools get in the way of, and be frustrated with those type of things while they're trying to serve the member that's in front of them. So, a lot of good things that way.

Jim Marous (09:40):

So, stick with you for one more second. We just had a general session around the new account opening, the onboarding process, the integration of accounts, making it so a customer or a member doesn't have to start from scratch every time. But even when they are meeting you for the first time, that your front door's more open as opposed to simply marketing things that we make very hard for the member to do and do what we want to do. What have you done in that area over the last several years?

James Hilton (10:08):

That's a great point. We do focus on products per account, and it's really is looking at the member's needs. We're not trying to push products, try to sell or provide something that the member doesn't need, is it really going to help them? Is it going to benefit the member?

James Hilton (10:22):

As a member joins Mountain America, we run about just over six products per new member as they start with us. That's the measurement that we look at, and not necessarily track the amount of products, but are we serving the members that are joining us?

Jim Marous (10:35):

Is that branch space or is that digital as well?

James Hilton (10:37):

Digital, we only open about 10% of our account opening is self-service. So, we do get lots of products that way. And so, we're able to better — and that's where MANTL does provide on stage there something that excited me or looked at Alkami's new partnership with MANTL is the ability, this checklist that they talked about. So, as a member, it's like opening an account.

James Hilton (11:00):

And people have so many seconds to open the account. And so, if you provide a long list of products and different things they'll probably disappear and never come back. So, how do you follow up with those things? A certificate, for example, is a great way, how do we get that in front of them in a couple clicks? Be able to open that up.

James Hilton (11:16):

There's some distance for us to go to improve the ease of some of those experiences, funding the accounts when you join, opening a visa card, opening an auto loan, those type of things. I think it's exciting where Alkami is going.

Jim Marous (11:30):

As Steve said too, not treating these people like they're criminals for the first six months.

James Hilton (11:37):

Right, exactly. Which is hard, that resonates.

Jim Marous (11:39):

I'm sitting there going, "Oh my gosh, we do that" because it's been a long time. So, I opened a new account that wasn't with a digital player, but you're right. And as a small business person, oh my God, I think it went back and forth four times. They were asking me to actually print out things at home because they didn't have the right within the branch to print, something was online on their app.

Jim Marous (12:02):

So, Jesse, from the standpoint of, you mentioned earlier the importance of selecting providers that can provide the elements that make his products ham. How do you evaluate providers? Because again, I see MACU's really an organization that has really been — you go out there and you've been finding a lot of great partners over the years. And you've tested a lot of partners over the years. How has that process changed? But how do you evaluate what you're going to do yourself, buy, build or partner? How do you make those decisions?

Jesse Evenson (12:40):

That's a good question. And honestly, probably more in James' area as far as buy, or build, looking at those partners. From my perspective when we're evaluating a partner and I'm looking at it from what kind of support can they provide us. Certainly looking at SLAs and different things, looking at the overall experience.

Jesse Evenson (13:04):

My quality team maybe is going to be looking at how we can get in and test this and understand the product a little bit better. How do they manage changes on their system? All of these to really minimize our downtime and maximize the experience looking at just the overall flow of the system, and trying to understand that better. And kind of gauge how our members are going to experience that system. And is that vendor going to provide those things?

Jesse Evenson (13:36):

Looking at MACU, we've grown a lot. We are continuing to grow and plan to continue to grow. And as we're evaluating these partners, we're also looking at are they going to be able to grow with MACU over the next 10 years? Can they continue to provide that experience that we expect for our members and that our members expect from us?

Jim Marous (13:56):

Well, it's interesting because we've seen it with people we've interviewed and people I've interviewed on the other podcast, Banking Transformed that I do, is that a lot of clients, a lot of financial institutions today are actually pushing their providers as much as the providers are pushing the financial institutions. So, it depends on where you are on the long maturity cycle.

Jim Marous (14:18):

But when you look at digital maturity, it's great to have partners that you can actually push and have them move. We all lived in the environment with traditional core providers that because of your size, you're at a disadvantage because you're not getting a lot of attention. And when it used to be that the core providers did everything for you it's a matter of where's your balance? What are you focusing on versus what if the core provider focuses on?

Jim Marous (14:49):

Doesn't matter if they have that solution. Are you one generation or two generations behind where the marketplace is? How do you evaluate, how do you determine which elements you bring into your organization as opposed to sticking with your legacy, what I'll call legacy core, which is now a misnomer, but to a degree of looking at how do you balance all these things so that they all work together well? So, you don't have the downtime, so you don't have the surprises.

Jesse Evenson (15:19):

It's challenging. You look at over the years as we've grown our members want more features, more products in the system, and so the systems get more complex. And we've got more vendors interacting, more systems involved. We do a lot of internal development as well. And so, we've got all of these systems and it has become more complex.

Jesse Evenson (15:42):

I think one thing that MACU has done well and invested in is making sure that as we've grown, we're investing in our quality teams, making sure that we do have the ability to test and understand how these systems are interacting, making sure that that interaction is working well. That the pieces are moving, that we understand how our production systems are running.

Jesse Evenson (16:12):

And it has been challenging, but like I said, I think MACU's done well in continuing to invest in our quality teams to continue to provide that experience for our members as the complexity has grown.

Jim Marous (16:26):

Yeah.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (16:32):

So, let's take a short break here and recognize the sponsors of this podcast, Alkami Technologies.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (16:42):

Welcome back to the Flsionaries Podcast, sponsored by Alkami Technologies. James, you've both been with the organization for a long time.

James Hilton (16:51):

Yeah, true.

Jim Marous (16:52):

But none of this works unless your leadership builds a culture that allows it to work. And what I mean by that is, yes, we can buy the technology, but the technology is not what makes it run. It's the people.

Jim Marous (17:09):

Your organization has made a conscious effort to do a lot in the branches still. And having digital support branch, which a lot of organizations have flipped either for a financial reason or just because they think that's the thing to do. When you look at that culture and who you are, how do you stick to that culture while still keeping that innovative spirit?

James Hilton (17:29):

That's a really good question and culture is something that we often talk about. When Jesse and I started, we had a 10, 15-person team. Now, we're 100-plus person team as we've added, just as Jesse talked, we've grown with quality engineers. We've grown with engineers, we've grown with product managers, we've grown with the UX team, and experienced researchers and SRE, our support teams from where that was eight years ago, to where our SRE insight reliability is today is significantly better. That's talent.

James Hilton (18:01):

It adds in every time you add somebody, you're changing the culture a little bit with every new person. But it's something we've been able to maintain. There's really focus on the member, and that in turn translates to focus on team members as well, so that they're serving the members appropriately.

James Hilton (18:17):

And that culture largely hasn't changed. It's still that focus, still that purpose and that translates to the technology teams, to our front member teams, and honestly, a ton of passion around that.

Jim Marous (18:28):

I would imagine it's been beneficial that your culture has been this way. You haven't all of a sudden changed it.

James Hilton (18:35):

Right, no.

Jim Marous (18:36):

You've had that. Again, my history and knowing a little bit about your company is that you're innovative forward. You're progressive. You're touching things that other organizations are only dreaming about in many cases. As far as looking at what you've achieved, let's say, since COVID, since 2020, because it's an easy date to pick. What are some things that you've done at Mountain America, you've been responsible for that you sit back and go, "Pretty cool, we're glad we accomplished that."

James Hilton (19:08):

That's a good question, maybe a tough question to answer. One is probably the evolution of our mobile and online banking. One of the first things that we tackled early on was moving from one platform to another. And we did it with not a lot of disruption and without a lot of pain to our move which is a little bit of a trick moving from one provider to another.

Jim Marous (19:29):

Oh, yeah. And if the member never knows about it, it's been successful. You said at the very beginning of the podcast, I'm a background person, and you know what? You want to stay in that background because when you're in the foreground, because something went wrong. It's not because they'll pat me on the back a lot of times.

James Hilton (19:45):

And we've gone through different evolutions of that getting from one platform to another. Like feature focus. How many features can we get in our application so members can self-serve and manage their finances to quality, to performance? And then this next evolution as Alex talked about on stage, is this personalization. This anticipatory banking where we can, not cause friction, which is the trick, but provide solutions and anticipate things that the members can click a button and take advantage of a new visa card to waive a fee.

James Hilton (20:19):

But I think the proudest I think is the team that we've built. Honestly, I think in a credit union, I think in our space, I think we've hired a lot of great talent. We've been able to attract a lot of great talent. You mentioned Silicon Valley and in Utah, we do have a lot of talent, but there's a lot of startups, there's a lot of sections, organizations.

Jim Marous (20:38):

There's a lot of competition with that talent.

James Hilton (20:40):

There's a lot of competition, and we've been able to truly attract and retain because of that culture you talked about and some great, great people that help build this consistent innovations, help us push some of our partners as well as you mentioned. And so, those types of things, I think really stand out to me is probably the team and the team members. And then from that, what we're able to provide to our internal team and our team members.

Jim Marous (21:07):

So, it's interesting because what you're doing is what is often talked about in the industry is becoming more resilient for the future. You have more flexibility. When you change systems, you're not doing it because you go, "Oh, they got a really cool this, or really cool that." So, more than ever so you're prepared for what you don't know because everything's changing so quickly.

Jim Marous (21:33):

You don't know what the government's going to say. You don't know what the regulator's going to say. You don't know what your members are going to say that they want next because they're being driven by things way outside financial institutions. And their experiences are have to hit the level that their best human and digital experiences happen.

Jim Marous (21:52):

And as you said before the podcast, they expect us to know them and understand them, reward them based on the insights you're supposed to have. And I think one of the things that we see as being important but often missed, and you talked about it when you talked about the democratization.

Jim Marous (22:10):

If they will deploy against what you can do so that the member knows that you give them that special attention. So, you aren't having people that start knocking on the doors of your digital competitors and trying to open account X, Y or Z that is not within the bank.

Jim Marous (22:26):

Because we can't do a really good job of tracking loyalty anymore because attrition is close to zero for everybody because it's a pain in the butt to close accounts. But to see flow of funds, to be able to know where else are they doing stuff? It's a big deal. When you talk … go ahead.

James Hilton (22:45):

No, no go. We do see that. So, we see the Venmos of the world that's strong and we see where money is moving. We see how people outside of Mountain America they're using their funds. So, how can we use that data? How can we provide better tools, features, and service?

Jim Marous (23:02):

Either get them back or keep them from leaving in the first place.

James Hilton (23:05):

Exactly.

Jim Marous (23:05):

You talked about personalization. We all in this industry talk about personalization when it comes to AI and data, we're applying it more in the back office for efficiency and automation and effectiveness. How is Mountain America, MACU actually leveraging data insights to build better experiences? And even more than that, better engagement on a personalized basis? Let's talk about where Alex mentioned earlier anticipatory banking.

James Hilton (23:34):

That's right. So, I think for us right now it is starting and with member services, and ensuring that we are using the data, providing tools. Once our team members can be better, so as they're potentially listening to a phone call, they're servicing a member, we're queuing them on the screen, and potentially showing them maybe potentially what the member is already asking, prompting them. Showing them knowledge center of maybe how to accomplish a task or to open a complicated IRA or a trust account, or a new loan.

James Hilton (24:07):

So, providing the team member's ability to do that, so they're happier, they're efficient, they stay longer. Training's a lot easier. As you can imagine starting with a financial organization and getting a phone call from a certificate or a balance or a transfer or a mortgage loan, the complexity is great. And so, with agent assist tools, with AI and those type of things, we provide that.

James Hilton (24:29):

And then next is leveraging that to our members through either conversational banking, virtual assistance. We do have a great IVA where members can call up and self-serve through their voice through phone system. We authenticate that way. We can anticipate some of those things there.

James Hilton (24:41):

We've done great things around offers with visa cards and rates and balance transfers, and fees and some different things where we can anticipate really where to help serve and help our membership are probably some of the biggest areas.

James Hilton (24:57):

But we're just in the early beginnings of potentially where the combination of data, AI and this compute power that's coming, and that risk. And you're right, and fraudsters and bad actors are right there with us taking advantage of the technology as well. So, it's …

Jim Marous (25:14):

It's a balancing act.

James Hilton (25:15):

It's a huge balancing act. And we have to keep the trust of our members. Security is top of mind, obviously for us and making sure that that's there, number one.

Jim Marous (25:25):

So, Jesse, from the back office perspective, what's your biggest challenge you're trying to address today?

Jesse Evenson (25:32):

I think we've talked about here already a little bit, but just understanding how the changes we're making, either by bringing in new vendors, new products or changes to our systems, how that impacts the overall experience of our members. And being able to properly measure those impacts. Just that observability piece I think continues to be a challenge.

Jesse Evenson (26:01):

We continue to mature in that space, but we've got to understand how any change we make, even if it's a seemingly innocent change on the back end, that can have implications that we don't always see and we have issues sometimes. But minimizing those impacts and getting a better handle on how all of these changes affect each other, how they all interact and making sure we're staying ahead of that.

Jesse Evenson (26:29):

So, we know about those changes preferably before we were pushing those to our production environments, but certainly before our members are notifying us. And maintaining that experience that our members expect from us.

Jim Marous (26:42):

We talk about observability, and you continually upgrade your services, the way you’re communicating, the way maybe the mobile app or online app looks, how the brand's experience feels. How do you measure the members' reaction to what you do? How do you measure the observability?

James Hilton (27:07):

We do a lot of surveys so we get feedback from our members that way, which we review monthly and go through some of those feedback. We get great feedback; we get opportunities to approve with those things. We also have various tools to see performance of the application. How performing is it? How quick are they logging in? How long is it taking to log in? How long is it taking a transfer, to sync?

James Hilton (27:32):

And those milliseconds and seconds matter to our members. Again, when they're quickly checking a balance and how long does that take to load up, and how long does it take to complete that transfer? We do a lot of studies as well. I mentioned our UX team, which has been a great benefit to us. We have some researchers that'll go out and they'll help pick new products and different things, but also go out and talk to members.

James Hilton (27:53):

And when we talk to members, we talk to our frontline team members, and we take all of that feedback, bring it back in, and really adjust, tweak, and innovate on our product. To do that we've really found recently too, as we've been reaching out to members we found, traditionally used like emails to communicate, sometimes some text options, but really within online and mobile we built some recent widgets to reach out to members and also collect information from them.

James Hilton (28:21):

That we've usually tried phone calls or emails are very difficult to do that. But that's one of the areas, kind of subtly that we've been able to use as a channel to communicate with members. Not just to push potentially a product or to advertise, but to validate and get some information from them to service their account better.

Jim Marous (28:38):

It's interesting because it gets back to the culture. The whole mentality of what you're doing is not new to your organization.

James Hilton (28:47):

Not at all.

Jim Marous (28:47):

But it supports everything else. So, as we wrap this up, Jesse, from your perspective, what excites you about the view forward right now?

Jesse Evenson (28:58):

I look at the last five years we've talked about a little bit. You look at where we're going, and the growth, I think what excites me really is looking at that growth that we're just at the start of really looking at the teams. Like James talked about a little bit, I think one of the great successes we've had is building this great team.

Jesse Evenson (29:23):

And I think looking forward, what I'm excited about is seeing where we can go, how we can build these teams to really better serve our members, provide a better quality product, more available, more responsive with the features that they want, and building those teams that can help support that experience.

Jim Marous (29:45):

What excites you about the future?

James Hilton (29:46):

Honestly, as we look at the success of Mountain America and the growth, I think it's all generated from our member services team within the branches and the way we service members. One of the biggest challenges, and I think what excites me the most is creating a digital twin of that experience. Or how close can we get to that type of service to a member.

James Hilton (30:07):

Does a member know when they log in that they're at any financial institution back or the bank or do they know that they're at a community bank that supports their community, that's there for them? And that-

Jim Marous (30:19):

And it feels different.

James Hilton (30:20):

Is anticipatory to their needs. And they all have different needs. We all have different needs in our financial space, in our financial worlds. And so, what about prompting Jesse for, versus myself and you and how do we anticipate that and provide that service? And I think that's with AI again, and the power that's coming with computing and obviously the data that's been there forever, but I don't think we've cracked it yet. So, I think-

Jim Marous (30:43):

It's still-

James Hilton (30:44):

The ability to crack that is … and once we do, once somebody does it, it's going to be amazing.

Jim Marous (30:49):

Well, and it's interesting because when you have an organization that's built such a culture for your members around the branch's experience, around the people, every credit union says our difference is the people. And the reality is obviously, from your passion, from your focus, from everything both of you said during this podcast, this is not just lip service. This is the way you live every day. It's how your employees live every day.

Jim Marous (31:14):

And it's interesting because I remember — gosh, it's multiple decades ago now, that TD Bank acquired an organization in the northeast. And that organization had amazing little things that made that organization special.

Jim Marous (31:28):

They gave away things on parades. They had pens every time, and dog biscuits at the auto teller. And I remember at the beginning of mobile and online bank, I said, to your point, how do we do this in a digital world? How do you make a person feel warm and fuzzy as opposed to simply efficient?

Jim Marous (31:47):

I mentioned in an earlier podcast that we had Michael Abbott from Accenture on that talked about the fact that, right now almost everybody's mobile app gets high ratings from consumers. They say, "It's doing really well," but they're not differentiated. How do you make it feel good? How do you show that you're doing things differently for your members than the organization across the street?

Jim Marous (32:00):

It goes without saying that your market, the Salt Lake City and Utah area are highly competitive. You have a lot of very progressive organizations, some of which are doing major technology upgrades and have accomplished certain things. You go, "How do I hold my ground or do better than the market overall?" And you've done that.

Jim Marous (32:29):

So, both of you, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. I really appreciate you spending some time during a very busy Co: Lab 2025 at Alkami, and sharing your story because it is a great story in the marketplace. Thank you.

James Hilton (32:42):

Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Jim Marous (32:43):

Thanks.

Jesse Evenson (32:43):

Thank you.

Jim Marous (32:44):

Thanks. This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer, Leah Haslage, and audio and video engineers, Chris Fafalios and Will Pritts.