Don Varela, Senior Manager/Service Owner, IT Service Desk, Navy Federal Credit Union
Don joined Navy Federal in July of 2000. In the past 24 years, Don serviced in various leadership and key contributing roles across the credit union-- lending, marketing & advertising, corporate communications, information technology, fraud, contact center, and branch operations. He recently completed a two-year Executive Development Program at which NFCU’s highest level of executives handpick high-potential leaders to prepare them to assume roles of wider scope and broader responsibility. Don rotated into a leadership role in 2023 where he led a high-performance team of analysts and data scientists in charge of creating countermeasures to combat debit and credit card fraud for over 13M members around the world. He’s now back to his original role as the head of the organization’s Service Desk where he oversees the operations, systems, analytics, training, automation, quality assurance, and workforce management.