Forbes ranks top Idaho credit unions for customer service

By Catie Clark, Idaho Business Review
According to Forbes, the top five credit unions in Idaho for customer satisfaction range from small to large and local to multi-state. The youngest is a mere six and a half decades old. Only one is headquartered in the Treasure Valley while three are based out of Eastern Idaho. One is not even chartered in Idaho.

The rankings were issued during the last week of June by Forbes, one of the country’s three leading weekly business magazines. Forbes hired market research firm Statista to survey customer satisfaction across the country for both banks and credit unions. This is the third year that Forbes has ranked financial institutions that provide consumer banking services.

The survey sample size was more than 25,000 bank and credit union customers in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia. Customers were asked to rank their financial institutions on their overall recommendation, satisfaction, trust, terms and conditions, branch services, digital services and financial advice. Out of the country’s 5,236 credit unions, only 3.5% received rankings. Idaho has 45 credit unions registered with Idaho Department of Finance; one-ninth of these were included in the Forbes top five.
 

Starting with the highest-ranked, the top five Idaho credit unions in 2020 were: Connections Credit Union, Idaho Central Credit Union, Westmark Credit Union, CapEd Credit Union and Mountain American Credit Union.

Business group seeks computer donations for students in need

Idaho Business for Education, a non-profit organization of nearly 250 businesses across Idaho, is launching a new phase of its Close the Divide campaign to get computers and internet service to students who do not have these learning tools at home.

“If we do not close the divide these students who don’t have these learning tools will not have an equal opportunity to learn should the COVID-19 virus force students to learn part of the time or all of the time at home,” said IBE President Rod Gramer. “It is imperative that we get these resources to students for the 2020-21 school year.”

IBE is calling on communities around the state to see if they have spare computers that can be provided to students who do not have devices at home. On Aug. 5, IBE is hosting Close the Divide Day, an effort aimed at collecting spare laptops from the community to donate to the nearly 200,000 Idaho students without devices.

Volunteers will be at the College of Eastern Idaho, in the parking lot, accepting computers from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m.

If you cannot make it on Aug. 5, you can drop computers off at Citizens Community Bank in the following locations throughout the month of August:

• Rexburg Office, 452 N 2nd East, Rexburg
• Ammon Office, 2797 South 25th East, Ammon
• Taylor Crossing Office, 900 South Utah Ave, Idaho Falls

Another way you can help is by donating at https://www.idahobe.org/close.

For more information on how you can donate a computer or make a donation, contact IBE's eastern Idaho chair, Rae Moss at rae.moss@inl.gov.

The Close the Divide campaign media sponsors are IBE Members the Spokane Teachers Credit Union; the Innovia Foundation; The Garrigan Lyman Group; KTVB; KREM; and the Idaho Press. Intermountain Gas and Idaho Central Credit Union are IBE members supporting the effort.

A Mindset of Abundance | Kristopher Walton, Kristopher L. Walton Associates

Kristopher Walton

Considering himself an entrepreneurial social worker sets Kristopher Walton apart from other mental health professionals. “I use a lot of business ideas in order to create an outcome. I measure outcomes,” he said. He feels this approach helps his clients to work toward the future and limits their time in mental health counseling with a growth mentality. “My belief is the world has abundance, there's enough for everybody,” he said.

Most therapists don't end up being in private practice. Social work is usually focused on community mental health. Walton agrees that he doesn't fit into that mold, but he's been working with clients for 30 years. “I'm an entrepreneur, I live my life in the entrepreneur business perspective with business ideas mixed with therapy ideas and that's fun,” he explained.

Walton showed his entrepreneurial spirit early in his life when he became an inventor. When he was 15 years old and in 9th grade, he invented the candy pen. On his own, he found a patent attorney, and with $1,000 in a bag, he hired him. The patent attorney told him, “There's nothing like that out there do you want to put something together?" He went ahead and had drawings created with the mock-up of the pen. Once this was complete he took a bus to Salt Lake City and met the investor, alone, at the library. The investor said he had $100,000 in cash to invest. Based on advice his father had given him, Walton demanded 51% of the company. The investor wasn't too excited about that and said, “Young man you are 15 years old. There's no way I'm going to give you 51%.” Walton held to the advice from his dad and kept replying that “my dad said”. Believing that he'd get nothing without having 51%, he walked away from the deal and his invention didn't go anywhere.

“Life is an opportunity versus a missed opportunity and we have to figure out how to innovate and create ourselves from the opportunities we miss out on,” he said.

As a therapist, Walton said he really loves his career. “I love being able to maneuver in life versus being stuck,” he said. “I see business owners being afraid, especially in the world of COVID. If you look at it through the lens of fear, it's going to cause negative reactions,” he explained, “What is the opportunity of COVID?” He advises looking at your business through a lens of opportunity. He believes that envisioning your future and creating the system will get you to your goals. “The biggest part is to have faith, hope, and belief that it will happen,” he said.

Understanding that receiving therapy can have a negative stigma, Walton works with his clients to make sure he's the right fit and works hard to work on helping clients grow rather than focus on the past. He gives a one-hour free consult to make sure his potential clients feel that working with him is the right decision.

Walton is a published author and the name of his book is Navigating Your Mind – Achieving a Life of Peace, Joy, and Happiness. “When we reach out and tell people how we think, feel and believe, a lot of times those people don't necessarily understand how we feel and so we pull inside of ourselves and we internalize a lot of fear, and that creates disconnection,” he says about his book. He teaches in the book how to overcome embarrassment and shame so individuals can deal with their pain and heal. “My main demographic is 14 years old to 45 years old,” he said.

Walton has also started a podcast called What We Don't Talk About. This show is focused on the complexities of young adult life. “I talk about helping women and teenage girls how to be strong independent people. Outside sources do not have women in mind in order for them to be valued,” he said. He explained that this is seen in all aspects of life and he is using the format to educate and to help women create happy lives with boundaries and healthy relationships.

Having anxiety himself, the training that he has had has helped him be able to manage that himself. “We have to learn how to get rid of our stinky thinking,” he said, “I'm a huge person on facing fear.” One of his fears is skydiving, so to overcome that he has skydived several times. “Once you face your fear there's so much less to be afraid of and you can become what you want to be,” he said.

Navigating life can be difficult on your own. Walton recommends creating a support system and consider utilizing professional help if you are feeling overwhelmed. We all have the power within us to live lives of abundance and joy.

Information

For more information on Kristopher Walton and his services, visit his website at https://navigatingyourmind.com/. You can find information about the podcast on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/whatwedonttalkabout/.

Rare glassy metal discovered in battery performance research

New research describes the evolution of nanostructural lithium atoms (blue) depositing onto an electrode (yellow) during the battery charging operation. 

Materials scientists studying recharging fundamentals say they have made an astonishing discovery that could open the door to better batteries, faster catalysts and other materials science leaps.

Scientists from Idaho National Laboratory and University of California San Diego scrutinized the earliest stages of lithium recharging and learned that slow, low-energy charging causes electrodes to collect atoms in a disorganized way that improves charging behavior. This non-crystalline “glassy” lithium had never been observed, and creating such amorphous metals has traditionally been extremely difficult.

The findings suggest strategies for fine-tuning recharging approaches to boost battery life and — more intriguingly — for making glassy metals for other applications. The study appeared online this week in Nature Materials.

Charging knowns, unknowns

 

Lithium metal is a preferred anode for high-energy rechargeable batteries. Yet the recharging process (depositing lithium atoms onto the anode surface) is not well understood at the atomic level. The way lithium atoms deposit onto the anode can vary from one recharge cycle to the next, leading to erratic recharging and reduced battery life.

The INL/UCSD team wondered whether recharging patterns were influenced by the earliest congregation of the first few atoms, a process known as nucleation. “That initial nucleation may affect your battery performance, safety and reliability,” said Gorakh Pawar, an INL staff scientist and one of the paper’s two lead authors.

Watching lithium embryos form

 

The researchers combined images and analyses from a powerful electron microscope with liquid-nitrogen cooling and computer modeling. The cryo-state electron microscopy allowed them to see the creation of lithium metal “embryos,” and the computer simulations helped explain what they saw.
In particular, they discovered that certain conditions created a less structured form of lithium that was amorphous (like glass) rather than crystalline (like diamond).

“The power of cryogenic imaging to discover new phenomena in materials science is showcased in this work,” said Shirley Meng, who led UC San Diego’s pioneering cryo-microscopy work. The imaging and spectroscopic data are often convoluted, she said. “True teamwork enabled us to interpret the experimental data with confidence because the computational modeling helped decipher the complexity.”

A glassy surprise

 

Pure amorphous elemental metals had never been observed before now. They are extremely difficult to produce, so metal mixtures (alloys) are typically required to achieve a “glassy” configuration, which imparts powerful material properties.

During recharging, glassy lithium embryos were more likely to remain amorphous throughout growth. While studying what conditions favored glassy nucleation, the team was surprised again.
“We can make amorphous metal in very mild conditions at a very slow charging rate,” said Boryann Liaw, an INL directorate fellow and INL lead on the work. “It’s quite surprising.”

That outcome was counterintuitive because experts assumed that slow deposition rates would allow the atoms to find their way into an ordered, crystalline lithium. Yet modeling work explained how reaction kinetics drive the glassy formation. The team confirmed those findings by creating glassy forms of four more reactive metals that are attractive for battery applications.  

What’s next?

The research results could help meet the goals of the Battery500 consortium, a Department of Energy initiative that funded the research. The consortium aims to develop commercially viable electric vehicle batteries with a cell level specific energy of 500 Wh/kg. Plus, this new understanding could lead to more effective metal catalysts, stronger metal coatings and other applications that could benefit from glassy metals. Read more about this research: https://inl.gov/article/discovery-of-rare-glassy-metal/

Commercial real estate transactions | 07.27.2020

Commercial real estate transactions reported July 27 by TOK Commercial:

• The Radley Group leased 1,000 square feet of office space located at 2285 E. 25th Street in Idaho Falls. Dustin Mortimer of TOK Commercial facilitated the transaction.
• Helix Auto, LLC leased 3,865 square feet of retail space located at 555 N. Yellowstone in Idaho Falls. Brent Wilson and Brian Wilson of TOK Commercial represented the landlord. Shane Murphy of Venture One Properties represented the tenant.
• Rebound Financial renewed their 525 square feet of office space located at 626 S. Woodruff Avenue in Idaho Falls. Dustin Mortimer of TOK Commercial facilitated the transaction.
• Tolsma USA leased 1,000 square feet of office space in the Colonial Plaza, located at 1276 S. Woodruff Avenue in Idaho Falls. Dustin Mortimer of TOK Commercial facilitated the transaction.