NRMLA is pleased to announce that the list of confirmed speakers for the Eastern Regional Meeting on May 29 in Washington, DC, is set. A more detailed agenda is forthcoming.
Why it matters: Every week something new is going on in the HECM world. We have a slate of government officials and subject matter experts who will be on hand to provide live, timely updates on the industry’s current trajectory.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Sarah Edelman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single-Family Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- Sam Valverde, Acting President, Ginnie Mae.
- Kevin Stevens, Senior Manager, Mortgage Markets, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
- Laurie Goodman and Ted Tozer of the Urban Institute.
- Adrian Prieto, SVP, Wholesale Lending & Third-Party Affiliates, Longbridge Financial, LLC and much more.
Registration instructions:
- Click the Register Now link located in the upper righthand column. Select Existing Customer.
- Log in with your username and password. Once you’re logged in, select “Eastern Regional Meeting” and follow the registration process.
- If you don’t know your username and password, please contact Darryl Hicks at dhicks@dworbell.com and he will share that information with you.
- On the payment page, please check the box, “I am not a robot” to complete the registration.
Hotel Room Block
NRMLA has reserved a block of rooms at The Royal Sonesta Capitol Hill Hotel at the special discounted rate of $229 per night. Make a reservation online or call the hotel directly at 202-888-1850. Please be advised that the deadline to receive the group rate is May 8, 2024. Guests making reservations at the Royal Sonesta Capitol Hill DC in NRMLA’s room block must register for the conference within two weeks of making their reservation or risk having their room reservation canceled at NRMLA’s discretion.
*For administrative reasons, NRMLA no longer allows individuals to reserve multiple rooms under a single name.
Sponsorship Opportunities
NRMLA will be offering an assortment of sponsorship packages that will put you front and center before the key decision-makers in the reverse mortgage industry. For more information, contact Natalie Matter Bellis, Account Executive at YGS Group, at 717-580-8184 or by email at Natalie.matterbellis@theYGSgroup.com.
Cancellation Policy
All conference cancellation requests must be received by emailing Hannah Sievers at hsievers@dworbell.com. A $20 cancellation fee will be applied to all cancellation requests received on or before April 25, 2024. A $50 cancellation fee will be applied to all cancellation requests received between April 26 and May 16, 2024. No refunds will be issued for cancellation requests received on or after May 17, 2024.
As president of NRMLA, Steve Irwin oversees the association’s initiatives to serve as an educational resource, policy advocate and public affairs center for consumers, lenders and related professionals. His background includes experience with strategic planning, organizational design, portfolio acquisition, risk management and quality control. He received his B.A. from Grinnell College and his MBA from the University of San Francisco.
Michael Kent has served as President of Liberty Reverse Mortgage since April 2015. Before joining Liberty, Kent spent four years at Reverse Mortgage Solutions, Inc. (RMS) where he was President of Loan Originations. In addition to his reverse background, he has over 30 years of “forward” mortgage experience, and he has held leadership roles across various lending functions, including sales, operations, and secondary markets. He currently serves as Co-Chairman of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. Michael was born and raised in Chicago and attended Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He has been involved in several not-for-profits working in the areas of homelessness, world hunger, and women’s cancer. Mike is married to Sandy Kent (formerly Tennekoon) another industry veteran. They have a blended family of seven incredible children. Mike and Sandy live on the edge of the Tahoe National Forest in Nevada City California.
Melody H. Fennel is a public policy and government relations consultant, specializing in service to affordable housing and banking clients. Previously, she served as Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Intergovernmental Relations at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. Prior to her appointment to the Executive Branch, Fennel served the United States Senate Banking Committee as its chief housing finance and economic development policy advisor. As an in-house industry lobbyist, she represented the National Association of Home Builders and advocated for the National Council of State Housing Agencies. Ms. Fennel is a graduate of Vassar College.
David has spent most of the past 25 years providing government relations advocacy and strategic advice for a broad range of clients. Prior to starting his own lobbying practice, David spent six years working for Representative Rick Lazio as his Chief of Staff and Senior Counsel for the House of Representatives Banking, Housing, and Community Opportunity Committee. During 2008-2009 David was the Chief of Staff for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In addition to National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association, some of David’s current and past clients include, Multifamily Lenders Council, Veterans United, Freddie Mac, National Association of Realtors, American Land Title Association, Real Estate Valuation Advocacy Association, and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association. David received a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center, graduating Magna Cum Laude.
Scott Olson is the President of Olson Advocacy Group, a firm he founded in September 2011 to provide advocacy, lobbying, and consulting services in the area of financial services, specializing in mortgage finance and housing. Previously, Mr. Olson spent over 20 years working on Capitol Hill, 15 of which he served on the House Financial Services Committee, where he was the Housing Policy Director, Democratic Staff. Mr. Olson also has six years of private sector experience as a public finance investment banker, and four years of experience in commercial real estate finance and investments. He graduated with an M.B.A. from UCLA and a B.A. from Stanford University.
Sarah Edelman was recently appointed to serve as the Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for the Office of Single-Family Housing (OSFH) within the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Housing. In this role, Sarah is responsible for overseeing the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) insurance-in-force portfolio of more than eight million loans with an unpaid principal balance of more than $1.2 trillion. Additionally, she is responsible for managing all aspects of FHA’s single-family housing operations including origination and servicing policy, information technology strategy, quality control and lender enforcement, and institutional risk management. In this role, Sarah is also responsible for the management oversight of more than 700 employees. Immediately before assuming the role of the OSFH DAS, Sarah served as the senior director of Environmental and Social Impact and directed the Duty to Serve affordable initiatives at Fannie Mae. Before that, she worked in Housing Policy at the Center for American Progress for five years, served as a research fellow in the office of Senator Sherrod Brown, and was a graduate fellow at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Sarah was also both a Peace Corps and an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer.
Laurie Goodman is an Institute fellow and the founder of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. The center provides policymakers with data-driven analyses of housing finance policy issues they can depend on for relevance, accuracy, and independence. Before joining Urban, Goodman spent 30 years as an analyst and research department manager at several Wall Street firms. From 2008 to 2013, she was a senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group LP, a boutique broker-dealer specializing in securitized products, where her strategy effort became known for its analysis of housing policy issues. She began her career as a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Goodman was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Hall of Fame in 2009. She has a BA in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and an AM and PhD in economics from Stanford University.
Theodore (Ted) Tozer is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center (HFPC). Immediately prior to joining HFPC, he was a senior fellow at the Milken Institute’s Center for Financial Markets. Previously, Tozer served as the president of Ginnie Mae for seven years, bringing with him to the institution more than 30 years of experience in the mortgage, banking, and securities industries. During his time at Ginnie Mae, Ted led the modernization effort of the Ginnie Mae Securitization Platform and oversaw the transition for a depository-dominated issuer base to an independent mortgage banker-dominated base. Before joining Ginnie Mae, Tozer served as senior vice president of capital markets at the National City Mortgage Company (NCM) for more than 25 years, overseeing pipeline hedging, pricing, loan sales, loan delivery, and credit guideline exceptions. He holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance from Indiana University.
Jim, a law firm founding member, advises clients on strategic business initiatives, federal compliance and regulatory matters, mergers and acquisitions, asset purchases and sales, and secondary mortgage market transactions. As a former HUD Deputy Assistant Secretary, he has deep experience in FHA and Ginnie Mae (as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) requirements, issues and opportunities, and also is Co-General Counsel of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association. Jim is a Director of Enterprise Community Development, the nation’s fifth largest affordable housing developer and community owner with well over a billion dollars of investments in almost 13,000 homes with more than 21,000 residents in 112 communities in four mid-Atlantic states and the District of Columbia.
Soroush’s practice focuses on federal and state regulatory compliance matters related to the financial services industry. He advises mortgage companies, financial institutions, and secondary market investors on federal and state law in the areas of mortgage banking, real estate finance and consumer finance, including requirements under FHA regulations, TILA, RESPA, ECOA, FCRA, FDCPA, TCPA, GLBA, HMDA, and the UDAAP provisions. Soroush also regularly counsels clients on origination and servicing requirements, marketing practices, compliance management systems, compensation issues, and regulatory approvals. Before joining the firm, he was Corporate Counsel and Vice President of Operations for an automotive lender.
Michael McCully is a career investment banker with more than 40 years of transaction, investment, and operational experience. New View Advisors provides strategic advisory, product development, credit risk management, and valuation services to the reverse mortgage industry. Mike worked on some of the mortgage industry’s earliest structured cash flow transactions before establishing himself in corporate finance and M&A in the 1990s. In the decade prior to forming New View Advisors in 2008, he led teams of professionals to buy, sell, and operate portfolio companies at Lehman Brothers, including Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corporation, then the nation’s largest reverse mortgage originator and servicer. Mr. McCully received his BA in Economics from Cornell University.
Sam I. Valverde was named Acting President of Ginnie Mae in May 2024, after previously serving as the organization’s Principal Executive Vice President since January 2023. He began his tenure at Ginnie Mae in March 2022 to serve as the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer. As Acting President, Mr. Valverde leads Ginnie Mae’s mission to link the United States housing market to the global capital markets, thus providing low-cost financing for federal housing programs and making affordable housing a reality for millions of Americans. Prior to joining Ginnie Mae, Mr. Valverde was most recently Supervisory Attorney Advisor at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in the Division of Conservatorship Oversight and Readiness. In that role, he led agency-wide projects intended to support greater access to mortgage credit and affordable rental opportunities for working families. Prior to joining public service, Mr. Valverde began his career as a securities lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardell LLP. Mr. Valverde received his J.D. from Yale Law School and an A.B. from Dartmouth College.
Elly Johnson has spent over 45 years in mortgage banking, including 32 years in an executive capacity with several of the industry’s largest reverse mortgage originators and servicing providers. She now uses her years of experience and knowledge of the reverse mortgage industry to assist others in all aspects of the business as the owner and President of All Reverse Pro. She is an active NRMLA member, industry speaker, co-chair of the NRMLA HUD Issues Committee, and a member of the NRMLA Executive Committee and Board of Directors. In 2017, Elly received a “Career Achievement Award” from NRMLA for her thoughtful and tireless leadership in the reverse mortgage industry.
Adrian Prieto is Senior Vice President of Wholesale Lending and Third-Party Affiliates. In his role with Longbridge, Prieto leads the Account Executive and Partner Liaison teams to focus on wholesale business growth, with an emphasis on the broker, principal agent, and closed loan seller channels. With a career in wholesale and retail management spanning two decades, Prieto has spent most of the past 18 years in the reverse mortgage industry. His management experience in the reverse mortgage space includes role with lenders such as Financial Freedom, Senior Funding, American Advisors Group (AAG), Liberty Home Equity Solutions, and HighTechLending.
Lisa Moriello’s career spans 39 years in the forward mortgage business and 30-plus years in reverse. Moriello manages the Shelton, CT, branch for loanDepot, a mortgage company headquartered in southern California that has originated more than $165 billion in mortgages over the past decade. In her role as National Reverse Mortgage Sales Leader for loanDepot, Lisa manages 150 certified reverse mortgage loan officers across the country.
