Women in Technology: HC3’s Maureen Sears
In what is a recurring feature, Finopotamus spotlights innovative women who are positively impacting technology applications in the credit union industry, and beyond.
In the latest installment in our “Women in Technology” series, we visited with HC3’s Chief Experience Officer Maureen Sears. The Birmingham, Ala.-based company bills itself as a statement partner for banks and credit unions.
By W.B. King
Beginning her career as a teller at Regions Financial Corporation, Maureen Sears credits her time as member of the University of Montevallo’s Division II volleyball team for giving her the drive to excel professionally.
“Working at Regions showed me how much I enjoyed helping customers. Later, an operations role at an office technology company taught me to figure things out, solve problems, and keep moving forward,” said Sears who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology (the scientific study of human body movement). “When I joined HC3 as a project manager in March 2018, those three things came together: striving for excellence, helping clients, and finding a way forward when the answer was not obvious. That is when I realized I had found the right fit.”
Move Forward With Confidence
Before being named HC3’s chief experience officer in February 2026, she served as a senior project manager and the director of project management. “When I joined HC3, our role was often viewed as executing the requests a financial institution brought to us,” she told Finopotamus. “As we grew, we recognized that our clients needed more than a vendor—they needed an advisor who understood their business, the banking ecosystem, and the friction points that could affect implementation and the client experience.”
Sears also noted an industry shift from a reactive service model to a proactive partnership platform. “Over the years, we have built deep expertise across the banking ecosystem so we can anticipate challenges, guide clients through decisions, and walk hand in hand with them during onboarding rather than expecting them to figure it out on their own,” she continued. “Our goal is to act as an extension of their team—understanding how their business operates, identifying potential friction before it becomes a problem, and helping them move forward with confidence.”
When a member opens a statement or receives a notice, Sears said they don’t see HC3. Rather, they see their credit union. “That’s why the partner behind those communications has to share the credit union’s commitment to members and operate as an extension of its team.”
A Strong Pipeline of Leaders
Not only has Sears noticed an uptick in the number of women working in tech in the FI space, but she also highlighted HC3’s unique culture. “Three of HC3’s executive leaders are women: Tori VanCura-Rutland, our Chief Growth Officer; Kristin Jones, our Chief Financial Officer; and me,” she shared.
In Sears view, women often develop exceptional focus, adaptability, and leadership while managing meaningful responsibilities both at work and outside it. HC3, she added, has created the flexibility and work-life balance that allow women to keep growing, take on broader responsibilities, and lead at the highest levels. “Combined with the experience gained in project management across sales, implementation, production, and delivery, that support has helped build a strong pipeline of leaders who understand how the work actually gets done,” she noted.
Among professionals who have served as champion is Jones, who has been a mentor from her time as a project manager. “She consistently created opportunities for me to demonstrate leadership in ways typically reserved for management roles, and she made time to give me direct, practical feedback on where I could grow,” she continued. “Her investment in me shaped how I lead today: I look for opportunities to put members of my teams in the spotlight, stretch their skills, and help them see the path to their next role.”
Protecting the Member Experience
As the company’s Chief Experience Officer, Sears leads its project management team, client success team, and account management team. The company serves more than 400 FIs, including credit unions, and has 140 employees, 100 of whom are tech-facing.
“Our job is to make every stage of working with HC3, from implementation and onboarding to ongoing support, as seamless as possible for the credit unions and banks we serve,” she told Finopotamus, noting that bringing those three teams under one umbrella was a deliberate strategic decision.
“It means a credit union doesn’t experience HC3 as a series of handoffs,” she shared. “The team that implements a client’s statements stays connected to the team that supports them afterward, so nothing gets lost along the way.”
To best serve credit unions, Sears said HC3, and all fintechs for that matter, need to become a “true extension of the financial institution’s team,” helping carry the operational load while protecting the experience their members expect. “That is a role we fully embrace.”
The credit union industry, she noted, differentiates itself from other FIs because they think about technology through the lens of their members first. “Every institution weighs cost and efficiency, but credit unions also ask how a change will feel to the member on the other end,” she continued. “That makes the experience side of technology, including clarity, consistency, and trust, especially important. Credit unions are also highly collaborative. They share best practices with one another and compare notes on partners, so a fintech’s reputation for service travels quickly.”
