Az Business and AZRE magazines announced the publications’ lists of the Most Influential Women in Arizona of 2021, including Cathy Graham of Desert Financial Credit Union. In celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Most Influential Women program, azbigmedia.com is profiling one of the Most Influential Women of 2021 each day leading up to the Most Influential Women of 2021 dinner and reception.

READ ALSO: The Most Influential Women in Arizona Business for 2021

The Most Influential Women for 2021 will be honored at a reception on August 26 at Chateau Luxe in Phoenix. For sponsorship information, email Amy.Lindsey@azbigmedia.com. For information about the event honoring the Most Influential Women, email Lynette.Carrington@azbigmedia.com or click here.

To buy copies of the Most Influential Women in Arizona issue, click here.

Today’s spotlight: Cathy Graham

Executive vice president and chief marketing officer

Desert Financial Credit Union

Graham was named Credit Union Marketing Executive of the Year in 2015. She is a member of the board of directors at Free Arts for Abused Children.

Lesson learned in 2020: “The biggest thing I learned is that anything is possible if you tackle it one day at a time. The reason I say that is because normally when there is a big challenge, we tend to want to put together an all-encompassing, bulletproof plan. You can’t do that with a global pandemic. Because none of us knew how long the pandemic was going to be, we had to each wake up every day and focus on the most important things we needed to do that day to take care of each other and keep business going. It turns out the total of all of those daily actions resulted in innovation, agility and growth beyond what we could have imagined.”

Source of pride: “All of the things I’m most proud of have been done as part of a team. If I had to pick one team accomplishment that I’m extremely proud of it would be Desert Financial’s corporate mission of Sharing Success. This is more than a platitude that lives on our intranet. Sharing Success is something we do every single day. Whether it’s giving back millions of dollars to our members, doing thousands of Random Acts of Kindness, showing appreciation to teachers, providing full tuition coverage to ASU for employees, and so much more, Desert Financial walks the walk when it comes to giving back in meaningful ways to our members, our community and our employees. This takes the commitment of everyone from our CEO, Jeff Meshey, to every employee across the organization, and I hope that the work that I do is helping us to live this important mission.”

Surprising fact: “I love the movie ‘Sixteen Candles’ and could probably quote the entire movie right now verbatim. Ready?”