PBN 2026 C-Suite Awards
LARGE PRIVATE COMPANY (More than 150 employees):
Michael Mattone
Navigant Credit Union senior vice president and chief retail banking and experience officer
Michael Mattone, the senior vice president and chief retail banking and experience officer at Navigant Credit Union, never stops coaching.
In his role at the credit union, Mattone is a collaborative leader who brings teams together.
“While doing that, he pushes people and challenges them to further their career and develop in their roles,” said Molly Pastore, Navigant’s first vice president of marketing, public relations and member experience.
Outside of the office, Mattone helps coach youth flag football, baseball and other sports. In both settings, Mattone brings similar elements to the office and out on the field. He loves the challenge of bringing the best out of his team.
“I think what is very fulfilling for me, is when someone realizes their potential even when they, themselves, don’t realize they have that potential,” Mattone said. “It takes a lot of work, but I spend a lot of time on that. It motivates me to come do my job as a leader.”
As a master motivator, Mattone likes to blend coaching with accountability. He calls it tough love. Being in his position, Mattone said, is very meaningful.
“To come in every day to a wonderful organization and help people maximize their potential serving our members and helping the community with their financial need, it means something,” he said.
Watching his team at work “crush it,” he said, often entails seeing clients paying their bills on time, finding stable housing and helping their children attend the university of their dreams.
“Those stories mean a lot. They make me want to show up every day and help my team do all that they can,” Mattone said.
At Navigant, Mattone’s work has resulted in overall growth of the credit union’s membership. Through 2025, the bank grew its overall deposit balances by 5%, closing out the year at around $3.5 billion in deposit balances. Under Mattone’s leadership, the credit union’s assets have grown to $4 billion. The bank has also significantly grown its net worth in the past two years, with 2025 seeing an overall increase of 2.5% in total net worth.
Mattone has also helped implement Glia, a state-of-the-art, artificial intelligence-powered contact center platform that enhances customer interactions. Primarily used by financial institutions and insurance companies, Glia unifies voice services and other customer services tools like chat, text, video and AI virtual assistants to improve efficiency.
Growing the credit union’s membership has been a great undertaking for Mattone. To get there, he said he has had to reframe and recontextualize what bringing new members on board means.
“Dedicated efforts to bring more members in isn’t just a number, it’s validation of our mission and what we do,” Mattone said. “We have done a lot of work and invested lots of time and resources in giving all our teams the tools and support they need to go out to the community and be deliberate about why they need to join Navigant. I’ve been working in credit unions for almost 20 years, and they are the best-kept secret. We have done everything we can to make it not so much of a secret anymore.”
The employees at Navigant, he said, have been able to help grow the credit union because of their belief in the institution.
“They believe in the strength of our brand, they love what they do and they love Navigant,” he said. “That has helped us grow immensely in so many ways.”
In addition to his contributions to Navigant, Mattone has also adopted Rhode Island as his home, Pastore said.
“He’s from New York, but as soon as he started here, he dove right into the community. He also immersed himself in the credit union and the culture and getting to know everyone,” Pastore said. “He is out and about with his teams. He finds time to visit our branches and be a part of our community.”
