Small credit union CEO, foster father of seven, is just getting started
James Higgins knows what it feels like to need someone in your corner. As a child growing up in Connecticut, he was closely connected to the Department of Children and Families while his parents struggled with substance abuse and addiction. The experience left him with a clear resolve: to build the kind of stable, loving home he wished he’d had.
Today, he speaks with pride about his parents, who have maintained nearly a decade of sobriety, transforming a difficult childhood dynamic into a positive and healthy relationship in adulthood.
That resolve led Higgins, while still in his late teens and early twenties, to petition a probate court for guardianship of his younger siblings. He won. A few years later, once the siblings were settled and thriving in high school, he looked around the house and saw empty bedrooms. So, he got licensed as a foster parent.
Since 2018, Higgins has welcomed 28 foster children into his home. He has adopted or taken guardianship of seven. Today, with the loving support of his girlfriend, Kara, five of those seven still live under his roof alongside two current foster placements, and he is now licensed at the therapeutic level, working with children who have more specialized needs.
Running a credit union and a full household
Higgins is also, by day, the president and CEO of Skyline Financial Federal Credit Union, a $46-million institution with just over 4,100 members and a staff of nine, himself included. He may still hold the distinction of being Connecticut’s youngest credit union CEO, a title he has carried for several years. He is rounding out his fifth year at Skyline after previously serving as chief operating officer at a $130-million credit union.
His daily routine starts before dawn: wake the kids, get them dressed, send them off to school, then shower and head to the credit union, where the hours run from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. After that, he becomes what he wryly calls the “unofficial, unpaid taxi driver,” shuttling children to and from multiple schools for sports practices.
He also teaches as an associate professor at Post University and is adding a second professorship at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven this fall, manages six rental properties and handles all his own property management along with volunteering and serving on multiple boards including chairing the Finance Board and the Tax Incremental Funding District for Naugatuck, chairing Jane Doe No More, and being involved with several other boards and committees in the Waterbury region.
“I live by the model, ‘Be where your feet are,’” Higgins said. “That way I stay focused, and I’m not worried about what’s happening here, there, and everywhere. I’m worried about the things in my immediate surroundings.”
Connecting people to benefits they don’t know exist
Higgins channels the same instinct that drove him to care for his siblings into Skyline’s community programs. The credit union operates along two main tracks.
The first is the Skyline Benefits Navigator, launched in June 2024 in partnership with Starlight, a platform that matches users with government benefits they may be eligible for, from SNAP and heating assistance to food share programs. Skyline was among the first credit unions in the country to adopt the platform. The tool asks only a few simple questions (first name, number of dependents, income) and then identifies programs the user may qualify for, complete with links to applications and lists of required documentation.
The distinction matters because navigating benefits can be a bewildering process. “A lot of people don’t know how to search or what to search or the right words,” Higgins said. “They might be feeling insecure with food, but they don’t know that they’re insecure with food. They’re just hungry. So how do we match them up with things like that?”
The navigator is free and open to anyone, and membership at Skyline is not required. Higgins is blunt about that choice. “I really don’t care if you need the credit union,” he said. “If we can actually get you connected with the right benefits that you rightfully deserve, that’s what matters.”
Mortgages that house former foster youth
The second track is more tangible and more personal. The Annie C. Courtney Foundation, a Waterbury-based nonprofit founded in 2011 that supports children and families in the foster care system, had a dream: to purchase housing for young adults aging out of care who had not been adopted. The foundation’s executive director told Higgins about the vision, and he responded with a question that surprised her: “Where do you want the house?”
Big banks had already said no. Community banks had declined, citing the lack of a personal guarantee and the perceived risk of lending to a small nonprofit. But when Higgins reviewed the foundation’s financials, the answer was straightforward.
“Thankfully, it all worked out financially,” Higgins said. “I didn’t have to get creative. I didn’t have to try to figure out why we’re doing this as an exception.”
Skyline granted the Foundation a mortgage, and it purchased three one-bedroom condominiums in Waterbury. Those units are now occupied by young adults who aged out of the foster system. One of the three mortgages has already been fully paid off, and Skyline is currently financing a fourth condo for the Foundation. The credit union also extended a working line of credit, so the Foundation can move quickly when properties become available.
Another nonprofit, inspired by the model, has since been approved for similar financing and is currently searching for a property.
The team behind the mission
Higgins is quick to credit his staff for the credit union’s momentum. When he arrived as CEO in 2021, Skyline was in rough shape: a forensic audit was under way, the books were in disarray, and the institution was absorbing annual losses in the range of $200,000–$400,000 with diminishing capital.
“Our problems of the past do not define our present or our future,” he said. Since then, Skyline has completed two mergers, posted double-digit growth in membership, assets, and loans in 2025, and built a hybrid-remote work model where every employee has the flexibility to work from home. One team member works from Harrisburg, Pa.
The catalyst of that turnaround, Higgins said, is an intentional culture in which the workplace is designed to be the least stressful part of his employees’ lives. Compensation and benefits packages exceed what larger competitors offer, and the results speak for themselves: zero turnover and a waitlist of candidates from neighboring credit unions and banks eager to join.
“Every single person on staff is so well taken care of that we’ve created a safe space in which work has become the least stressful part of their lives,” Higgins said. “If they’ve got the right health benefits, if they’ve got the right financial packages, and they have the right support from the management team, I have no one leaving the team.”
A challenge to the industry
At its core, Higgins said, the work comes down to a principle he carries from childhood: “We have to be the people we needed when we were younger.”
He is unapologetic in challenging fellow credit union leaders to think bigger, regardless of their institution’s size. Don’t hide behind a tight budget, he argues. Don’t hide behind a lack of resources. And don’t wait for perfect conditions.
“If my credit union can do this at $46 million with nine people on staff,” Higgins said, “why can’t the billion-dollar ones do it? Why can’t the $500 million ones, who have a lot more resources and way deeper pockets than we do? It’s just a matter of doing the right thing.”
For Higgins, that conviction is not abstract philosophy. It is the thread that connects a young man standing before a probate judge to advocate for his siblings, a foster father welcoming his 28th placement, and a small-credit-union CEO writing a mortgage that no other lender would touch. The community, he said, is the reason any financial institution exists.
“That’s not just a credit union thing,” he said. “That should be every financial institution’s thing. The community is the reason we’re here. We’re not here for any other reason.”
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