About Tara

Tara Graff

Tara Graff is the Chief Impact Officer at the Minnesota Credit Union Network, where she draws on her 15+ years in the credit union movement to turn strategy, storytelling, and system-level collaboration into lasting impact.

Previously, Tara served as the Senior Vice President/Chief Communications Officer at Blaze Credit Union, the credit union born of the merger between Hiway Credit Union and SPIRE Credit Union. As part of the Hiway + SPIRE = Blaze merger, Tara oversaw all internal, executive, member, and public communications, and played a critical role in the largely internal brand development and launch. In her role as Senior Vice President, Marketing & Business Development at Hiway Credit Union the six-ish years prior, she led a complete rebranding, and oversaw two de novo branch builds, ITM implementations, and market entries into Twin Cities metro communities.

In previous lives, Tara has held leadership roles at other large credit unions, including SPIRE Credit Union (yes, the truck) and Royal Credit Union, overseeing branding and rebranding, website overhauls, digital channel experiences, M & A communications, and, of course, the day-to-day world of marcomm. Tara also brings extensive experience on the agency side, spending several years as a creative at a Duluth-based advertising firm, and she still enjoys getting her hands dirty in copywriting and broadcast production. Tara’s marketing work, both in and out of financial services, has won numerous awards, and her collaborative branch designs have been recognized with multiple honors, including a Future Branches 2021 Design Award and a Finance & Commerce Top Project designation.

Tara is a graduate of the Credit Union Executive Society CEO Institute, completing her three-year experience at Cornell University, the Wharton School of Business, and the University of Virginia in 2019. In 2014, she was named a CUNA Credit Union Rock Star. In 2021, she was spotlighted as a Notable Executive in Marketing by Twin Cities Business. In 2023, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal honored her as a Top Woman in Business. She holds a UX certification from the Nielsen-Norman group, a B.A. in communication and psychology from the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and an M.A. and an MBA from The College of St. Scholastica (CSS).

When the workday is done, Tara pursues a second deeply held passion: wellness. She is a certified yoga instructor, an American Council on Exercise-certified personal trainer, and a passionate runner and skier; most importantly, though, she is wife to Tom and Mom to 14-year-old Nate.