Clint Hardison’s path into identity was anything but traditional. Starting in international furniture sales and later transitioning into banking, Clint discovered the power of communication and relationship-building long before stepping into IAM leadership. Today, as AVP Identity & Access Management at Navy Federal, he leads one of the largest credit union identity programs in the world — and credits his success to vulnerability, trust, and empowering teams.
In this episode, Clint shares the pivotal moments that shaped his journey, from humbling early setbacks to building enterprise-wide authentication systems that protect millions of members. He explains why listening (WAIT: “Why Am I Talking?”) is his most valuable leadership tool, and how simple mottos like “How can we help?” transform culture and collaboration across teams.
Clint emphasizes that IAM leadership isn’t just about technology — it’s about people. He explores how vulnerability builds trust, why training and investing in people pays off, and how leaders can translate complex identity challenges into business value that resonates across the organization. His candid reflections offer a roadmap for anyone looking to lead with empathy, clarity, and purpose in IAM.
02:10 — The Origin Story: From Furniture Sales to IAM Leadership
09:55 — The Gauntlets: Building Authentication & Facing Failures
22:14 — The Justice League: Team Dynamics, Trust & Vulnerability
36:39 — The Road Ahead: AI, Agile, and Identity’s Value to Business
🔗 Discover more episodes: strata.io/identityheroes
🎙 The views expressed in this episode are solely those of the guest and do not represent the opinions of their employer or family.
Mark Callahan (00:00.114)
Okay, everyone smile and be quiet for five seconds. Yeah, right? I know it’s one of those so If we’re all set, I’m gonna go ahead and get us kicked off
Clint Hardison (00:10.354)
Yeah. Excellent.
Mark Callahan (00:12.656)
All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the newest episode of the Identity Heroes video cast. I’m your host today, Mark Callahan. I’m joined by my cohost, Jerry Gable. And today we’re joined by Clint Hartison. And we’re thrilled to have you here, Clint, to share your story and your path and identity.
Clint Hardison (00:30.579)
Yeah, thanks, Mark. Thanks, Jerry. I’m happy to be here.
Mark Callahan (00:33.292)
Awesome. Well, this series is one of helping practitioners and people in the industry who are really trying to level up their own personal and professional careers and lives in the space. so we love having you join us, Clint, because this is a way for you to show, and I think the audience is going to love this one, is you’ve probably got one of the least linear paths to identity, if I may, I don’t want to get too much away, but that we’ve had yet. And that’s awesome because people don’t realize that they don’t have to start
point A, B, C, D, and do this sequential thing to get to the level that you are in your organization today. And that’s awesome. That’s what we want to hear.
Clint Hardison (01:12.264)
Yeah, no, I’m excited to share the story. So it’ll be interesting.
Mark Callahan (01:15.248)
Sweet. Well, if you don’t mind, so what I like to do, you know, as we we think through every good hero story, whether it’s superheroes or comic books, take your your pick. There’s there’s kind of this arc and you’ve got the hero’s journey that if you will. And so as we think about your path and identity, we’re going to take the audience through some questions with you to hear a little bit about your origin story.
as how you came to lead identity at Navy Federal as you are now, moving on to some of the gauntlets and challenges that you came across in your career that maybe were pivotal for you, moving beyond that into how you enable a team and work together because all of us recognize that identity is not just a solo endeavor. And then finally, any recommendations you might have for the audience about how to up-level themselves. So sound good? Can we jump in? All right. Well,
Clint Hardison (01:53.51)
Mm-hmm.
Clint Hardison (02:07.973)
Sounds like a great plan.
Mark Callahan (02:10.162)
I’m going to pull out a piece of paper here, which happens to be all of the titles that you have held since you finished schooling. And if I may, I’m going to read these kind of just in a rapid fire sequence, and we’re going to get a feel for how you came to point B where you are today. Alrighty. So as I look at the list here, I’m going to start with you were a regional sales manager.
You, after that, became an owner and manager of a company. After that, you became an outbound financial sales rep. You became a sales coach.
You were a project manager. You were a first vice president of retail authentication. You were a senior vice president, BISO client security. You were an SVP, the head of client identity, access, authorization, and authentication. You were a manager and member of the identity and access management team. And you were the AVP of identity and access management, which I believe is your current title today.
Clint Hardison (03:09.211)
All right. Yep. Yeah.
Mark Callahan (03:15.791)
That’s a path. That is a here to here. What can you tell us about the path?
Clint Hardison (03:22.235)
Yeah, no, it’s interesting when you start to put it down on paper and you start to look at it. And my first career out of college was I’m going to be in international furniture sales. was you make a connection in college and it’s like, hey, this is going to be interesting. So started on the road, traveling consistently. I was a road warrior 80 % of the time. So selling outdoor furniture, you learn a lot when you’re on the road.
You learn to manage the ups and downs of traveling, of having a car breakdown and you fixing it yourself. And you learn how to sell. You are face to face with people. Over that timeframe, I met with executives from Walmart, from Lowe’s, C-Suite’s, and you learn to communicate. That’s the key. You learn to understand that we’re all human.
We all have a need. We all trying to do something, our roles, our jobs, our responsibilities, and you try to communicate at that level of that person. So through that period, I ran across a company that was interested in getting into the U.S. market. So I was the first actually to import outdoor furniture from Vietnam when we opened trade agreements in 1999. It was very interesting. I got a call from the shipping company. Hey, you’re the first.
company that we’ve ever shipped, you know, since this trade agreement, I was like, this is exciting. So five years of that was very interesting, very different working across with Dutch, Vietnamese, doing some things with Indonesia. It really, you get a sense of how small the world is in some senses, right? Cause I’m attending trade shows and seeing the same people. After about 10 years though, I’ll be honest, it took a toll on my marriage.
And it was one of those where it’s like, okay, this isn’t working. I need to figure something out. So I went through a divorce and after about five years also mass merchants started going direct to everybody to Vietnam. So it wasn’t fun anymore. so about eight months of, Hey, trying to figure out what do I want to be when I grow up? I took a job because I wasn’t working at the time.
Clint Hardison (05:43.503)
as a telemarketer at SunTrust Bank. So that was the outbound sales job that you said. Now, you go from managing your own company, multimillion dollars, to being a telemarketer in a contact center. You want to talk about humbling? I think I’m pretty sure that my first six-month evaluation had the word condescending in it.
Mark Callahan (05:50.203)
Okay.
Mark Callahan (05:59.666)
in a huge bank, in a huge bank.
Mark Callahan (06:10.108)
Nope.
Gerry Gebel (06:10.201)
Hahaha.
Clint Hardison (06:12.663)
Pretty sure it did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I struggled. I will be honest. I struggled. And I came home and I was dating someone at the time and I was, I was upset. was the day being a telemarketer is hard. It is very hard. This is the dialing system, right? So in 2005, it was two beeps in your ear and you start off your pitch. And I came home and I was like, man, I just, this jumps awful.
And the pay was awful. And it was like, I don’t know if this a career path they want to pursue. And my girlfriend at the time, she’s my wife now. We’ve been, we’ve been married for now 14 years. She said, the problem is, is you’re doing it their way. And you’re used to doing it your way and you need to find a way to make it work for you. And that will make you happy and that will make you successful. I, I. Lick my brain.
on that moment. And I went into the office and I started talking to people. I started talking to the clients on the phone. And within three months, I had exceeded the sales of everybody on that floor. And they brought me into the office and they said, what are you doing? Like almost accusatory. And I’m like, what are you talking about? They said, well, you’ve exceeded all the sales of everybody. And I said, I’m listening.
I’m listening to what the customer wants, and then I’m making a recommendation rather than just trying to sell them a product. And they go, we know. Now what we want to do is we want to put you on the road for four months to go tell everybody how to do this. So here I was. Yeah.
Mark Callahan (07:52.598)
And if I may, this is, this is untrust and obviously something worked because you had a really long tenure there, but this is, this is banking, right? We haven’t switched into identity and access management, financial service. Okay.
Clint Hardison (08:01.416)
Yep. We’re banking. We’re banking. Yep. Yep. Yep. I left the whole furniture behind. Took about an eight months stint there of not working and then took on this job and again, telemarketing and it was, I was reading their script and I was hating life. And when I came in and said, I’m just going to start talking to people and being me, it worked and people.
bought everything. It was, hey, I recommend this because you told me this and this is what you need. Okay, yeah, you’re right. And so we went to the branches for four months and taught the top 10 % of all branch salespeople how to effectively make outbound sales calls.
Mark Callahan (08:49.626)
And just for grins, this mortgage product? Like what sort of products just as we’re thinking? Because I want to see the leap into identity. I want to see this technology pivot, that plot twist, if you would.
Clint Hardison (08:51.475)
Everything. Everything.
Clint Hardison (08:58.963)
Yep. So it was everything. was, you know, selling everything that you could see on a profile that somebody had or didn’t have. So there was a lot of marketing into it of, well, somebody came in and did money or they’ve got good credit. You know, this is the 2000s prior to the market crashing in 2008. So it was a lot of, you know, picking up the phone and saying, Hey, I think you need this and here’s what I see. But it was having that conversation. So.
Hit forward, I come back and they’re like, okay, great job. We’re not going to put you back on the phone. So I went into a coach role. Didn’t last long where they said, Hey, you seem to have a little bit more grasp with things. We want you to be on this project. Now every bank has a platform system where you see all of the member data or all of the client data and you can work with it, whether it’s a teller system, you know, platform. We’re replacing that.
And they said, we want you to represent the contact center. Okay. About a month in, they said, we want to keep you because we want you to help us with the authentication and redoing the IVR. Well, I did because I had to authenticate and I, as an outbound sales representative, we had to state the calls recorded for compliance reasons. We had to make sure that we weren’t calling because TCPA, Telephone Client Protection Act.
Mark Callahan (10:06.662)
you know what authentication was? just, just for grins, like, authenticate.
Clint Hardison (10:23.205)
said that these are some of the things that you cannot do. So I understood those things. And as an authentication, inbound call was a little bit different from outbound. I did both in the contact center. And I understood that we’re manually doing a lot of things that means that fraudsters who call in and have members’ information or clients’ information are easily authenticated. So it was, how do we stand up a system
that tells the agent this is what was entered in the IVR and here’s what they should ask for. So let’s just make it stupid simple. So I was tasked to help build that along with the new platform system. And so I met with people, we had all of these technology backgrounds from people to build the right screens. Here’s what the IVR did, I learned all about the IVR. And that led into, well, hey,
we’re going to start up like this authentication team in the fraud side of the world to manage all of the authentication for all of the channels. Now, along this journey, I came up with an acronym and I still use it today. It’s the ABCD. Now, anybody paying attention to this, you can write it down, but you can’t use it. I’ve trademarked this.
Mark Callahan (11:37.06)
I’m doing that right now and we’ll put this on the screen after, but we got it. ABCD. All right, we’re ready. All right, TM, TM, yes.
Clint Hardison (11:44.949)
And my team members who work with me all know this. It’s ATM, branch, contact center, and digital. Now from any financial services, those are the channels that a customer, client, or member communicate with. They go to an ATM. Some of them are interactive ATMs. They walk up to a branch, or they do digital, or they call the contact center, or they go online. Basically, ABCD.
So that was what we stood up with a team to manage authentication across SunTrust from a client perspective across each one of those because they all have different nuances.
Gerry Gebel (12:27.382)
Right. Now, what’s interesting to me so far, just hearing part of the origin story is how one step in some random direction leads to two or three other logical steps after that. You know, that’s really quite a set of building blocks so far.
Clint Hardison (12:43.387)
and listening to your girlfriend wife.
Gerry Gebel (12:46.414)
Always a good thing.
Mark Callahan (12:46.93)
Nobody knew we were giving relationship advice on the series, but we are as well. Yes, listening to a partner, is excellent advice, yes.
Clint Hardison (12:51.647)
You
Gerry Gebel (12:54.926)
100%.
Clint Hardison (12:55.182)
They know you better than you do sometimes. and yes, it was, my degree is in marketing. It is not in cyber. So everything that I know cyber, I learned along the way, managing it by figuring it out and working with people that either had very strong engineering backgrounds. I’m not an engineer. I don’t, but what my biggest strength is.
And when I tell people that my superpower is you, you, called me a hero and a super, I’m like, no, no, I’m more like the anti-hero, but, but it’s the being able to translate complex things that we do into terminology that the business or the people that we are communicating with can understand and why.
Mark Callahan (13:42.69)
I mean, that’s really hard to do, right? Because I say that myself too as a product marketer, I feel, and you have to really know what you’re talking about to make something really complex, really simple. So how did you get on top of this? I’m a marketing background as well, non-developer. How did you get on top of that? How did you learn enough to be sort of casually competent about telling the message?
Clint Hardison (13:48.811)
Okay.
Clint Hardison (13:58.731)
Mm-hmm.
Clint Hardison (14:03.987)
You ask the right questions. You ask the questions to get it to that level. So what you’re telling me is this. What I understand this does is this. Yes. Okay. But if I do this and then a little critical thinking and saying, well, what happens about this? And understanding the experience that you’re trying to drive to. I work with engineers all day. Love my team. I have a fabulous team and I, I, I’ve always had an.
one of those thoughts that I want to hire people smarter than me, because that’s how we get things done. Continue to hire people smart, let them do the smart things and we will grow and we will do amazing things. And I do have to translate though. I do have to come in and ask, well, wait, did you think about how this might impact X? Well, no, because their focus is on engineering. Their job is not to understand how it all connects. And that’s my job.
So that way I can pull it all together for each of my teams and say, here’s the big picture. Here’s what we’re trying to get to. Understanding the strategy and helping to design a team that can focus on the work that they know to do and that builds on their strengths allows the team to grow and to get the things done if you have somebody who can see the big picture.
Gerry Gebel (15:23.81)
think also Clint, one of the superpowers you have is growing up in the business side of the house, basically. You know, one of the things we often talk about is, you know, if you come from just the strict technology or engineering background.
Typically, we don’t have an understanding of what’s happening on the business side. I I started in banking, but I worked in the central IT area and did all technical things. I really did not understand syndicate loans or mortgage processing or credit cards. But you coming from the business side, I think that gives you an added superpower as you were just describing because you have a different experience here.
Clint Hardison (15:43.335)
All right.
Clint Hardison (15:55.165)
Yeah.
Gerry Gebel (16:07.952)
empathize or you identify with the folks on the other side of the screen, if you will.
Clint Hardison (16:14.862)
I’ve been on those calls. I’ve heard what those clients say. And the other, and I appreciate you saying that. Thank you, Jerry. I think that one of the things that I continue to lead is a sense of purpose. And this is going off just a little bit from the origin, but I’ve learned over time that I need to focus on
why we’re doing what we’re doing and bring it down to what that impact is to our members or to our customers. And if you think about it and you start breaking it down, every engineer that is helping to code or helping to build something that we’re doing is a next step forward to protecting our members from bad guys getting in. We are that first line of defense. When you talk about authentication, if a bad guy can get in, regardless of one of those channels,
Now, are there controls in place that we can possibly stop the money? Yes, but they’re already in your house. They’re there. I want to keep them out of your house. I want to keep them out of your bank account. And because that’s so intrusive and it feels bad and you don’t trust anymore when that happens and nobody wants their grandmother to not be able to give their kids, you know, Easter money or whatever, because their bank account’s been drained. And that’s how emotional I attached this to it.
Mark Callahan (17:36.626)
I mean, there’s nothing more than our partners, our money, accounts. I mean, that’s everything. That’s how we live. Yes.
Clint Hardison (17:36.718)
and try to drive it for my purpose. No.
Right. Right. Right. So I often tell my team, look, you’re doing important work, but here’s what it really means. Here’s what it breaks it down to and what you’re really doing on a day to day basis. Now everybody’s going to, again, to your point, Jerry, have a different background. They’re going to, and I want to build on their strengths. So, you know, when I step back and I look at where it came from, I did take those opportunities when they came, when people said, can you go do this?
After time, I was like, I have no idea what the hell I’m doing. But you know what? I’m going to ask questions and I’m going to move forward and I’m going to fail. And I failed miserably many times. And yeah.
Mark Callahan (18:16.604)
You did it. Okay.
Gerry Gebel (18:23.47)
Yeah, what I, sorry, sorry, the way I often describe this is you have to get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. know, taking that first step in a new direction is nerve wracking, it’s scary, but you know, the potential reward if you get through that is tremendous. So yeah, we’ve got to be okay with being a little uncomfortable at times.
Clint Hardison (18:49.189)
I’ll never forget the first time when I went through training to get on the phones at the contact center and you’re in the training room with 30 other people and they go, okay, we’re going to go out on the floor. You’re going to sit with someone, but I want you to take a call. And everybody’s like, no, I’m not ready to do that. And I’m like, you know what? I’ll do it. Cause the worst thing that can happen is the person hang up on me or, you know, I fumble on the script, whatever.
Like this is not life and death. Thank God it’s not life and death.
Mark Callahan (19:21.554)
Yes, yes. I was gonna say, this isn’t surgery. Let’s go try our hands and see how you do and good luck. Yes, no, that’s true.
Clint Hardison (19:27.926)
And you get the adrenaline flow, you get the flush of adrenaline and you’re like, and then you get over it. And you’re like, I can do this. But I’ve taken those opportunities. And yes, many times have I had the discussions with, well, this wasn’t exactly what I wanted, right? We’ve all been that point where you create a PowerPoint and you’re like, this is the best PowerPoint ever. Everybody’s going to love it.
And then you hand it to your manager and he just marks it up and goes, no, this is, you know, this is what I meant. Yeah. Many of those moments.
Mark Callahan (20:02.194)
Absolutely. Now, and Jerry, I think a great point there was taking those opportunities, making sure that as you’re saying, Clint, the worst that can happen is they can say no or that you could fumble in one scenario. It’s not brain surgery. This isn’t our residency of 14 years to try to become a surgeon, but it’s taking those opportunities and really just putting yourself out there. I think we’re hearing that as a kind of a trend amongst all of our heroes.
is that they took on opportunities just like you have Clint, that was like, maybe you thought it was above you, but honestly, they don’t often present themselves to you if there wasn’t some capability innately in you to be able to do it. And our heroes are proving that out. And so asking questions, communicating as we’re thinking about, we started this conversation, our audience, before we began, we were just talking about there’s no college degree for identity. And as we’re hearing your path, Clint, I hear a lot of communication being a critical.
Clint Hardison (20:29.965)
Thank you.
Clint Hardison (20:58.525)
Yes. Yeah. So I went back to school in 2015. I got my masters and I thought long and hard, do I want it to be on? And
Mark Callahan (20:58.982)
thing and what that degree might look like for a good identity leader. Anything else you would add to that degree curriculum?
Clint Hardison (21:18.277)
Cyber, again, engineering is not the way my brain works. I’m a people person, if you want to call it that, right? So I got my degree actually in project management and in my master’s, that was my concentration. And the reason behind it was communication. I needed to be able to not only communicate everything’s run by project. I need to be able to communicate at the project level of what I wanted to get done.
understand the constraints that the project team may be under and be able to communicate that up leadership so that I could say, here’s what we need to accomplish this in a way that both ways and then retranslate it back to each other. And that helped a lot in terms of making me more marketable as well. Yes, I was 16 years at SunTrust Bank. I was really not looking. We went through the merger.
Mark Callahan (21:59.238)
Yes.
Clint Hardison (22:14.028)
And I thought, well, this is my opportunity. Let me, you know, figure something else out here. And I can go into, you know, some other personal reasons, but we all have those times when you’re like, okay, I’m not a victim. I can either put up with this or I can change career or change something and decided to change. and it was the best thing. have a fabulous team. As I mentioned a moment ago, we get everything done that we need to get done because I am as important.
Mark Callahan (22:31.538)
Mm-hmm.
Clint Hardison (22:44.095)
And we’re able to explain that. one of the other things that I would give kind of just as advice is learn from the people around you and listen. I have an acronym that I use.
Mark Callahan (23:00.944)
Another one. I mean, we’re going to trademark this one as well. had ABCD.
Clint Hardison (23:04.637)
This one I picked up somewhere else. It’s called Wait. It’s called Wait. W-A-I-T. And I tell my team this, and it’s why am I talking?
Mark Callahan (23:06.277)
Okay, all right.
Gerry Gebel (23:13.742)
I love that. If you’re talking, you’re not listening. Yeah, exactly.
Clint Hardison (23:17.277)
And it’s a flowchart. That’s right. And it’s a flowchart that goes, it something important? Has it already been said? Be concise. Don’t try to impress. Is it my turn to talk? No. Wait. Right? And it all comes back up to, why am I talking? We do need to listen more often. And I think about what we could get done if
Sometimes our own egos don’t get in our own ways, right? And that’s the other thing is let your ego go. We all want to promote what we do, but don’t let it get in the way and hinder you of promoting yourself over what you’re trying to do as part of a team. Being a part of a team is even more important than just promoting yourself. The work will get recognized.
Mark Callahan (24:09.106)
Well, and kind of, know, as we’re bouncing around the hero’s journey a little bit, I want to dig into the team part a little bit more, if I could. You know, as you’re helping to elevate the team right now, especially as you know, there’s possibly a bit of uncertainty in the economy and hiring budgets. You know, we might be getting a little bit tight on what we can do and vendor solutions and things like this. How are you helping the team that you have lift themselves higher and doing more with the team that you have today? This awesome team you’ve
Clint Hardison (24:38.612)
So a couple of things. Let me go back to a little bit when I started at Navy Federal where I work now. I initially being part of COVID was remote and I am still remote. I reached out on an annual basis. had a goal of 100 meet and greets. So
Mark Callahan (24:45.275)
Okay.
Clint Hardison (24:59.59)
When you want to talk about communication and building and working with a team, you need to build rapport and they need to understand you. So I did a hundred meet and greets per year for the first two years. So that’s two a week, right? If you consider, and I met with just different people across the entire company. And my goal was just coffee chat. I want to get to know you. want you to get to know me and let’s just talk.
What that has done for my team and the organization is that resonated actually across the company. And I still have people that I met today, somebody in there like, yeah, you mentioned your hundred. And I met somebody that was part of your first 100 because people talked about this. it grew a culture of connecting and talking. Now, when you talk about a team, my company is a team and we have a team.
different teams doing different projects. But I refer to it as one team. We are one team. We all have the same goals. So to work together and do that, we’ve got to communicate. We’ve got to trust each other. To build that trust, you have to talk to each other and you have to be vulnerable and you have to tell people personal things sometimes. I’m not talking about too personal. I’m talking about, I’ve got a cat, two dogs. No, no, no, no, no, no.
Mark Callahan (26:19.026)
Yeah, we don’t want to get awkward. We want to keep it above, yeah.
Clint Hardison (26:23.554)
Right. Right. Not TMI. But you do have to be vulnerable. And I do overshare with my team sometimes the way I’m feeling. If I’m overworked, if I’m feeling underworked, if there’s things going on that they need to be aware of. And so by building that trust and being transparent and vulnerable with them, we’ve built a team that can communicate, that can talk to each other, that I can feel the vibe as to where we’re going with it. I hold the quarterly town hall with my whole team.
This past quarter, I just held it last week in Pensacola, met with my Pensacola team, met everybody on a virtual site. And because of what you just said, Mark, of the uncertainty, everything going on in the world today, I focused my, they call it Clint’s motivations. I focused it on anxiety and depression. And I said, if you’re feeling this way, you need to talk to us. Things are uncertain right now. And we understand that.
And so what I did was I opened the platform to being transparent to me or others to let them know that your emotions and your feelings and the way that life is right now is human and you are human and we are a team. So we’re here to help. If you don’t have anybody on the team, here’s some resources that you can go to, but don’t let this get you down to a point where you’re not feeling comfortable and you’re avoiding or you’re so my other.
acronym was avoid avoidance, right? Like, let’s talk about it. So that’s how I build up my team. I have learned more from bad bosses than I had from good. We all can say that, right? But I learned what not to do. And over that time, I learned the first thing that you have to do is respect people that they’re human first and that they have a life outside of this work and that they’re getting paid for what they do. We are not a family, we’re a team. Difference, big difference.
And so I’m just human to them. I’m, I’m transparent and that’s how I built before.
Mark Callahan (28:27.89)
Is there anything in addition, you sound like an amazing manager, I’d to work for you someday. Is there anything on the, like the technology side that you’re able to help the team with as well to lift themselves up and to become more, elevate their identity acumen?
Clint Hardison (28:46.605)
yeah, we’re constantly looking at training. So I, every year I’m like, what training do you want to go to? What certificates do you guys want to earn this year? let’s put that through. I heard this somewhere and I don’t know where I read it. And so I’ll give credit to whomever said it right. And it said, well, what if we train people and they leave? And I’m, I read, you know, well, what if we train them and they stay?
And I have that mentality of I want to, I want smart people on the team. want to give them what they need. I know I can’t send everybody to a conference in Vegas, you know, every month of every year that would bright. That’s just not in the budget. But what I can do is as I see potential in people, because I try to work with my team close enough that you have superstars, you have people that also are, are thinking ahead or that have ideas.
that promote something that can make identity easier, faster, better. I want to put forth the value of that. The other is we’ve gone agile in the sense of Scrum, scaled agile, and we’re working on product operating model right now. Now, there’s a lot of what does that really mean. It means that we’re focused on the value of what we do, which is buying down risk, primarily for identity. How do we manage that?
How do we make it easier for our business units to be able to do access reviews? How do we know who has the right access, privileged access? The other side of my fence is I manage also the member side as well. So I have both workforce and member. And I’m looking at how do we make it easier for our members as well with the technology that we have to bring their own authentication. If they want to use
certain authenticators that make it more secure. Let’s allow that. Let’s move to Fido, things like that. So I’m looking at building the right technology that allows us to expand and be easier when the technology or the fraudster shift in their plans for us to be able to move faster.
Gerry Gebel (30:59.072)
It sounds like that’s where your project management skills come into play as well. You know, when you’ve got a large team, you’ve got very diverse communities you’re serving, your workforce as well as members, and you have multiple projects happening all the time. It sounds like that’s a skill that’s super important for you as well.
Clint Hardison (31:21.042)
Yeah, we live off projects, all of us do.
Mark Callahan (31:21.042)
them.
Mark Callahan (31:25.218)
Well, and your acronym of the ABCD has today almost kind of reversed in priority of like the DCBA in terms of how your members at Navy Fed are working with you. And as we think about that digital experience, it also makes it not so much of the walk-in branch per se, but like you need to have an amazing digital and secure digital experience because people have flexibility in how they’re banking now if they’re going primarily online.
Clint Hardison (31:53.86)
Right. And I will add, we’ve added the E to that, ABCDE, for our employees, right? Because they are just as important in terms of the internal side of authentication. So when I’m giving the speech and whatnot, it’s like, the E. But when you focus on the member side, it’s the ABCDE. working with our digital partners, we have to be tight at the helm, right? To be able to build what we’re building, release code.
And again, being in that DevSecOps mindset that we’re in, it’s how do we make sure that we’re all aligned in our roadmap with our planning, with our releases, and understand the impact that it may have to those other channels. And I’ll give another example real quick. Back when one-time passwords was a big thing about 15 years ago, I launched it at SunTrust and the contact center blew up. Like we turned it on.
Mark Callahan (32:32.38)
Mm-hmm.
Gerry Gebel (32:39.064)
you
Mark Callahan (32:42.802)
Please.
Clint Hardison (32:53.615)
And everybody called to contact, what am I getting these OTPs for? I don’t understand. And so we had to turn it down, right? And it took us about nine months to deploy that. I come to Navy Federal, I hear the same story. It was the same thing across the board. Now, I think that our customers and members have all gotten used to some of the ways of digital and authentication has changed over the years. So it’s a lot easier now, but
Mark Callahan (33:20.274)
That’s right. It used to be only our bank had these levels of security and now it’s, I shop at any online retailer, it just becomes commonplace, right? Our muscle memory’s changed, yeah.
Clint Hardison (33:23.355)
That’s right.
Clint Hardison (33:28.421)
Yep. But now we’re also looking at what does the new AI do for us, right? How can we leverage it either to detect potential bad guys using AI or to leverage it ourselves to make our customer experiences even better? So there’s a lot coming with that.
Mark Callahan (33:46.93)
Well, so thinking of AI, if I may, Clint, are there other topics? So we’ve covered a lot of ground and I just want to be respectful of your time as well. We’ve heard an incredible origin story. We had an amazing journey from A to B where you are now with Navy Fed. Some of the challenges, some of the failures, but became learning moments as well. Working with the team and upleveling your team. Thinking about the ways that you tell the story of identity and the value of identity internally.
How do you position it today in a way internally in the organization so it resonates with other departments?
Clint Hardison (34:23.821)
Well, they understand somewhat of it. But again, it’s bringing it down to how do we know who has access to the applications that you have? How do you know that it’s the right people? And it is provisioning the right access at the right time. So a lot of what we’re looking at is just in time, zero trust, understanding what does that mean to the business units, to those who own those applications.
The biggest is over-provisioning. And we’ve been able to create some cartoons that say, you know, when you model after, here’s what happens. And you proliferate the over-provisioning of access over people’s tenure. And we say, we’ve got to stop that. Now you have people on your team that you don’t know what access they have. And they’re like, yeah, you’re right. I don’t. And I said, so we’ve got to centralize that. And that makes it very simple and easy to do, but it’s very hard and complex to actually build.
So when you talk about things like identity governance administration, it’s getting everything connected. It’s building all of that when you have thousands of legacy applications. But really communicating to people at the level that they care about is the key. It’s making them understand that you’ve got a high risk application or you’ve got privileged users that could be a target for potential phishing. You hear about it in the news constantly, but it’s
How did that happen? And this is how this happens. You have people who shouldn’t have the access they have. They’re not usually in privilege to access that information. And now they can become a target. And people get that.
Mark Callahan (36:06.546)
Well, I love the mention in the cartoons even too. It’s like the casual competence of just bringing things down to the approachable level is what we all need to do as heroes to, because if we just keep talking and from a technical position, that doesn’t matter to anybody. And, you know, as I was listening and I was waiting, I’m sure Jerry wants to use weight on me sometimes in our interactions, but I love the acronym. You know, as you’re thinking about those areas of focus going forward, what are you personally?
Clint Hardison (36:19.937)
Mm-mm. Yeah.
Mark Callahan (36:32.59)
exploring and learning right now just for yourself as you’re seeing new trends and identity. What’s kind of top of your reading list?
Clint Hardison (36:39.756)
It’s still focusing on the people, right? The technology, honestly, with AI coming is going to change a little bit, but it’s understanding what AI can bring for us and how fast do we need to think about moving. For me, it’s also agile and product operating model and understanding value. So when we start to understand what
value we bring to the business because we’re a cost center, right? We are not a profit center for any business. We cost money. But it’s really helping to explain here’s the value that we bring. And when we can understand that, we can explain it, then we can get the resources that we need to keep the system job. My CISO has a saying, keep me out of prison. So that’s one of my goals in life, right? Is to keep
him out of prison by making sure that we’re not hacked and doing the right thing. So personally, you know, my focus is honestly, I wake up every day going, how do I keep my team motivated and how do I give them what they need to be successful? And I worry about that.
Gerry Gebel (37:54.51)
Yeah, it sounds like you’re grounded on, you know, basically first principles here and, know, so technology can change, you know, AI can change things for you, but you’re focusing on the core aspects of your team and, you know, keeping them in line, keeping them motivated, happy and effective, right? That’s, that’s, um, sounds like the main focus for you.
Clint Hardison (38:17.362)
I mean, those are the keys in my mind to success. If you’ve got the right people that want to do the right thing for the right reasons, you can move mountains.
Mark Callahan (38:27.295)
That’s shared mission. Absolutely. OK. You started by saying you didn’t think yourself a hero. And I’m hearing some very heroic statements in all this, Clint. So nevertheless, audience, you know, as they’re thinking about, hey, Clint, is there anything they not everyone can work for you, but it sounds like an amazing place to be. What ways can our audience up level their own personal skills or their?
Clint Hardison (38:49.481)
Okay.
Mark Callahan (38:49.708)
Organizations that they can join are things that you would recommend if they don’t all have the budget to travel for Identiverse or Gartner IAM or things like this.
Clint Hardison (38:57.309)
I mean, there’s, there’s lots out there and it depends on what your focus is, right? LinkedIn has a lot of different learning that you can look at. That’s for free. That helps you not only communicate, but one of the biggest things that people started talking to me about was how do I open the door with someone? How do I reach out to them to say hi to them? You know, I did a hundred meet and greets and it’s what, how did you do that? What, did you say? Because, and it’s like, well, it’d just be you.
Don’t focus on what you’re trying to get out of it. Focus on learning more about the person and them learning more about you rather than having an agenda of, well, I want to make sure that I do this so that one day I can get promoted because this person now knows who I am. Like that shouldn’t be the focus. It should be really just letting you be you. And when you can have those conversations with people, you’re going to learn more.
about other people and that helps you grow as well. But there’s lots of organizations and again, there’s lots of training out there. If you want more AI or Azure or, you to me building certificates for me was not helping me. It was more listening to people and talking to people. I’m more of a, I wanna have a conversation with you and that’s how I’m gonna learn. I’m gonna ask some questions and figure this out.
And if that’s the way you learn, then do that. Meet with people and talk to them and ask the question, but give them a heads up first. Tell them what you’re expecting out of it. Tell them what, you know, the discussion topics will be, any questions you might have. And that way people can be prepared and understand why you want to meet with them. But yeah, there’s lots of different trainings out there. I can’t give you just one or two. mean, you know.
Mark Callahan (40:44.858)
Okay. Yeah. And it sounds like, but the question asking and you started, you told us about the need for that purpose and communicating the purpose. Jerry, you talked about not having the fear of asking the questions or asking of a team. There’s that ability to, you might find a mentor along the way for all you know. mean, the worst that someone that can happen is someone can say, don’t have time. The best is you can end up with an identity mentor that teaches you the world about what we do.
Clint Hardison (41:06.917)
Yeah. Right.
Clint Hardison (41:13.798)
Yeah, and just dive into it and take the opportunities when they come. When somebody says, hey, can you help with this? Yes. So when I started leading this team, I came into it and I said, we’re going to have a motto. And it was kind of a funny, funny story. I told the team, we’ve got a motto now and it’s how can we help? Because there was a slight reputation of, well, that’s not ours, so we’re not going to touch it. I’m like, but.
We’ve got people who have 20 years tenure on this team that know where all the bodies are buried and can simply say, Hey, I know John, let me introduce you to John and he can help you with that. So I started the motto of how can we help. So we’re on a team with internal audit. They’re asking questions. I’m taking notes. And I said, yeah, you know what, internal audit, we appreciate, we want to work with you. Hey team, we have a motto, don’t we? And one of the people on my team goes, yeah, it’s do what Clint says.
Gerry Gebel (42:08.173)
Hahaha
Mark Callahan (42:08.242)
Hahaha
Clint Hardison (42:12.357)
So I loved it because everybody cracked up. It was a joke, right? But I always feel that if people can joke with me that they’re trusting that we’ve got a good relationship. but yeah, it ended up, you know, how can we help? So I always look at that. How can I help? What can I do to help, you know, and come into every relationship with that attitude.
Mark Callahan (42:12.667)
Mark Callahan (42:33.38)
And depending on how we look at it, DWCS might be the next acronym for Do It, Clint says. we’ll, but nevertheless, we had a lot of acronyms throughout. This was awesome. Clint, thank you so much for joining us. You know, Jerry.
Clint Hardison (42:37.113)
Hahaha
Clint Hardison (42:44.943)
Thank you for the opportunity. I think everybody’s got an origin story. I appreciate you guys asking me. And again, it comes with experience. comes with having a great team and really loving what I do. That’s why I do it.
Gerry Gebel (42:46.562)
Yeah, thank you so much.
Gerry Gebel (43:00.852)
really come across here and thank you so much for sharing your story with us, Clint, it was awesome to hear.
Clint Hardison (43:07.501)
Thank you all.
Mark Callahan (43:07.622)
The passion is evident, it’s there. And I’m going to ask one favor of you as we bring this to a close today is we’ve had, as we interviewed different members of the community, we actually ask if you have someone you might nominate that you would see as an identity hero that we might also then interview, knowing a little bit about who we’ve mentioned we’ve talked to so far. Any names come to mind?
Clint Hardison (43:29.475)
Yeah, there’s one and he’s on my team. He’s one of those quiet pessimists, Jesse Wolf. He’s been at Navy Federal for over 20 years. He’s one of those that the entire team respects because he speaks the truth. He has one of those mentalities of why are we doing this? Does this make sense? Okay, that makes sense. Let’s go do it. Or that doesn’t make any sense. Why the hell are we doing that?
and really has led a team there for a long time and they really respect him. So he’d be the name of somebody that I would put out there.
Mark Callahan (44:08.262)
Well, it sounds like do what Clint says might come in handy. So I’d love to the intro, if you would, with Jesse, and we’d love to have him, him join and share his story. Awesome. Well, I want to thank everyone for joining us today. Clint, that was amazing. Love the story. Such a unique background. just can’t thank you enough. And, and Jerry, as always, thank you for joining us on the journey. All right. Well, take care and we hope to see you on our next episode. Thanks everyone.
Clint Hardison (44:16.863)
Absolutely.
Clint Hardison (44:23.117)
Thank you.
Gerry Gebel (44:31.214)
anytime.
Clint Hardison (44:32.259)
Thank you. I appreciate y’all.
Clint Hardison (44:37.279)
All right. Thank you.
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