Diane Sandoval-Griego is the Chief of Financial Empowerment at Guadalupe Credit Union, where she has worked for 15 years. She is very passionate about identifying needs in the communities of her state of New Mexico, which is ranked second highest for poverty in the US. She founded and leads a financial coaching team that reaches seven counties of northern New Mexico providing financial solutions to community members and offering access to safe and fair financial services to the unbanked and the underbanked.

As part of her work, Guadalupe Credit Union has partnered with the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market Institute with their microloan program to encourage farmers to invest in and expand their businesses. Diane Sandoval-Griego shared, “I have witnessed such amazing projects that were accomplished with funding provided by the SFFMI microloan program. I look forward to joining the Board, as GCU and SFFMI continue working together to bring funding support to more farmers and ranchers in northern NM.”

She became a National Credit Union Development Education Program graduate in 2017, and was nominated as Credit Union Hero of the Year for 2019. Diane recently obtained a certification in Solar Lending from the University of New Hampshire and has worked with the Common Cents Lab from Duke University Behavioral Economics on product development.

In her free time she loves spending time with her family, art, traveling and watching documentaries.