Reception and Dinner in the Crown Room with Illusionist Robert Strong
We begin with a magical evening of cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, dinner, and
sleight of hand with magician Robert Strong. Sometimes the eyes deceive us.
Tomorrow, all is revealed.
Bygie Quigg
is the President and CEO of Wachovia Settlement Services. In this role, she has direct
responsibility for Wachovia’s Valuation Services, Title Services, Flood, Documentary
Services, Data Entry, Strategic Vendor Management, Process Improvement and Client
Services. She directs 346 employees across two sites; is responsible for $120
million in sales; and oversees two million transactions per year. Quigg attended
Georgia State and Mercer universities, specializing in Computer Information Systems
and Accounting. In her spare time, she enjoys golf and karate and has earned a black
belt. Quigg lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with her husband, Dale, and has four
children and one grandchild.
Lyle E. Gramley
is the Senior Economic Adviser of the Stanford Washington Research Group,
which joined in June 2002. From 1985 through May 2002, Gramley was a consulting economist
to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Previously, Gramley was one of the seven Governors
of the Federal Reserve Board. Prior to that, he was a member of the President's Council
of Economic Advisers.
Born in Aurora, Ill., Gramley was educated at Aurora University and Beloit College,
where he received a B.A. in 1951. He performed his graduate work at Indiana University,
where he received an M.A. in 1952 and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1956.
Mike Freeman
is an Executive Vice President with First Horizon National Corporation,
and leads the Consumer Credit Risk Management organization for First Tennessee Bank
and First Horizon Home Loans. His areas of responsibility include underwriting,
credit administration and governance, consumer portfolio management, consumer real
estate appraisal administration, asset management, modeling, and analytics.
Freeman’s career began in the consumer finance industry, and has included assignments
in all facets of consumer lending; including collections, credit review, credit
administration, credit scoring, decision technology, data warehouse development,
direct mail solicitation, credit card risk management, merchant processing, home
equity lending, indirect and direct auto finance, small business lending, and retail,
wholesale, and correspondent mortgage lending. His 23 years of experience includes
assignments at AVCO Financial Services, Bank of America, Compass Bank, Decision One
Mortgage, HSBC, and Wachovia.
John Vella
is President and CEO of EMC Mortgage Corporation and oversees its daily
operations and professional staff of more than 1,600 employees. He joined the
company in March 2006 after more than 20 years in other mortgage industry positions.
Vella is responsible for non-performing loan due diligence, operational property
valuations, analytics, loan servicing, and quality control.
Previously, Vella held top executive positions at Aames Investment Corporation,
Option One Mortgage Corporation, Household Automotive Finance Corporation,
GMAC/RFC, and Freddie Mac and FDIC/FSLIC.
EMC Mortgage Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Bear Stearns Companies
Inc. headquartered in Lewisville. EMC has a total servicing portfolio of $80 billion
and specializes in the acquisition, servicing and disposition of residential mortgage loans.
Zaneta Jones
is a staff appraiser in the Veterans Administration Central Office. In this
position, she provides recommendations for policy and guideline changes and assistance
to field offices. Jones also networks with industry participants to improve stakeholder
alliances and serves as the VA’s representative to The Appraisal Foundation Advisory
Council (TAFAC).
Prior to her appointment as staff appraiser in 2006, Jones served as assistant valuation
officer in the Atlanta Regional Loan Center. She started her VBA career as a loan
servicing representative in February 2002. Prior to VBA, Jones was a supervisory loan
specialist with the U.S. Small Business Administration Disaster Assistance in Atlanta.
In this position, she managed residential and commercial loan specialists to ensure
that disaster victims received assistance to rebuild their homes and businesses.
Jones holds a business degree from North Carolina A&T State University, and earned her
Juris Doctor and MBA from North Carolina Central University. A native of Atlanta, she
is a registered appraiser in the state of Georgia. She currently lives in Northern
Virginia.
Steve Conlin
is a Senior Vice President and Manager for Valuation Risk Assessment and Standards at HomeFocus
Valuation Service, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America. HFVS provides automated
and traditional valuation services to support the Consumer Real Estate Group of the bank. As
risk manager, Steve is responsible for the effectiveness of automated products and ensures
Bank of America’s appraisal quality meets industry and regulatory standards and complies with
all federal, state, and secondary market requirements.
Steve has more than 35 years of residential and commercial appraisal experience. Previously,
he held the position of Chief Appraiser for both Wells Fargo Bank and Bank of America.
Bob Reynolds
is the Executive Vice President and Chief Administration Officer of SunTrust
Mortgage, Inc., a role he has had since 2001. In this role, he is responsible for
managing balance sheets, mortgage loan portfolios, servicing assets, credit risk,
mergers and acquisitions, enterprise risk, and production profitability.
Reynolds joined SunTrust in 1998 when it acquired Crestar Bank, where he had worked
since 1993, rising to Executive Vice President and Strategic Financial Officer. After
Crestar’s merger with SunTrust, he was appointed Chief Financial Officer of the new
consolidated SunTrust Mortgage, Inc. headquartered in Richmond, Va.
Reynolds lives in Richmond and earned his economics degree from Hobart College.
Todd Baur
leads Countrywide’s national appraisal organization, LandSafe, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corporation, where he and his team are responsible
for all collateral decisions and over one million appraisals a year. Baur joined LandSafe
in 2004 as executive vice president and chief operating officer. In 2006, he was promoted
to managing director, president and chief operating officer.
Before LandSafe, Baur enjoyed a successful 18-year career at Washington Mutual (and its
acquired company American Savings Bank) where he started as an appraiser trainee.
Working his way through the ranks, he ultimately ascended to the position of national
production manager over the largest appraisal organization in the country.
Todd Buchholz
is a former director of economic policy at the White House, a managing
director of the $15 billion Tiger hedge fund, and an award-winning economics teacher at
Harvard. A sought-after speaker and author, Buchholz is a frequent commentator on ABC News, PBS,
and CBS, and recently hosted his own special on CNBC. Buchholz has debated such luminaries as
Lester Thurow and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. He is co-founder of Enso Capital Management,
LLC and co-founder and Managing Director of Two Oceans Management, LLC.
Buchholz’s books are used in universities nationwide, including Harvard, Brigham Young
and Princeton. Market Shock: 9 Economic and Social Upheavals that Will Shake Our
Financial Future, was released to rave reviews and dubbed “outstanding” by the Wall
Street Journal. Buchholz is also author of the best-selling New Ideas from Dead
Economists and From Here To Economy, which were lavishly praised by the New York
Times and Financial Times. His newest book is New Ideas From Dead CEOs.
Buchholz is a contributing editor at Worth magazine, and he has penned articles for the
New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Forbes. He delivered a lecture at the White
House entitled “Clarity, Honesty and Modesty in Economics,” and has been a keynote
speaker before such groups as Microsoft, Citibank, and the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce.
Susan Kulakowski is the Chief Knowledge Officer and Senior Vice President of
Dominion Bond Rating Service and has been working in RMBS/structured finance
research since 1993. At Duff & Phelps Credit Rating Co., using Loan Performance
data, she conducted the statistical analysis for one of the first loan-level
credit enhancement models ever used by rating agencies and co-authored DCR's
rating approach.
From 1993 through 2000, Susan supported the RMBS rating analysts on topics as
far-ranging as the Northridge earthquake, credit scoring (including proprietary
scores developed by originators and mortgage insurers, as well as FICO scores),
and automated valuation models used to estimate property values. After Fitch
Ratings acquired DCR in 2000, she continued to analyze loan performance data
and was responsible for building new credit enhancement models for Fitch.
Susan joined Dominion in 2004, where, in addition to residential mortgages, she
has been mastering a new set of asset classes. Susan earned an MBA/MS in
Statistics and Operations Research from New York University in the early 1990s.
Allan I. Mendelowitz
has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Housing
Finance Board since 2000.
He was the Executive Director of the U.S. Trade Deficit Review Commission, a
congressionally appointed, bi-partisan panel, from October of 1999 until his
appointment with the Federal Housing Finance Board. His previous positions include
Executive Vice President of the Export-Import Bank of the United States and Vice
President of the Economic Strategy Institute. Mendelowitz was also Managing Director
for International Trade, Finance and Economic Competitiveness at the U.S. GAO,
during which time he directed a large number of studies of the nation's
international trade and finance programs and policies and testified before
Congressional committees.
Mendelowitz spent 1980 as the senior economist and representative of the
Comptroller General with the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Board negotiating
the terms of the federal loan guarantee. Prior to joining the GAO, he was an
economic policy fellow at the Brookings Institution and on the economics faculty
at Rutgers University, where he taught courses in urban and regional economics
and international trade and finance.
His articles have appeared in the Journal of Business, the National Tax Journal,
the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Financial Times, and various
conference proceedings’ volumes.
Mendelowitz received an A.B. degree from Columbia University, and M.A. and Ph.D.
degrees from Northwestern University.
Norton Wells
is Executive Vice President of EMC Mortgage and currently oversees the Quality
Control division, which includes operational reviews of all servicing functions
and supporting vendors, regulatory compliance, centralized policies and procedures,
scratch and dent due diligence, imminent default and ARM resets, and office services
and disaster recovery. Wells joined EMC Mortgage in August 2004.
Prior to EMC, Wells' experience includes four years in public accounting with Arthur
Young and 28 years in finance and mortgage. He spent 23 years with Associates First
Capital Corp., serving in several senior-level positions, including Executive Vice
President of Origination and Servicing Operations for Associates Housing Finance.
Wells also served as Executive Vice President over Servicing Operations at Centex
Home Equity and Senior Vice President over Servicing Operations at Provident Bank
/ PCFS Mortgage.
Wells holds a BBA degree from the University of Texas at Austin and is a licensed
Certified Public Accountant.
Peter Gillispie
joined the Federal Housing Administration in 2003 and is the senior staff appraiser
with the Home Valuation Policy Division in the Office of Single Family Program
Development at HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C. There, he is responsible for the
development and implementation of real estate valuation policies for FHA single family
programs and serves as HUD’s representative to The Appraisal Foundation Advisory Council (TAFAC).
Prior to joining FHA, Gillispie served for four years as a staff appraiser with the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers, North Atlantic Division, and specialized in condemnation appraisals.
He has 18 years of experience as an independent fee appraiser, 12 of which were spent with
an appraisal consulting firm that specialized in the valuation of commercial properties,
high end residential properties, and offered condemnation litigation consulting services.
Gillispie holds a Bachelor’s degree in history from the University of New Hampshire.
Lance Thoet
recently joined CBCInnovis as a key business development leader in their Real Estate Services Companies.
He has worked to quantify and improve the quality of loans throughout his entire
career. After working as both a real estate appraiser and a mortgage underwriter,
Lance created and ran settlement services companies for PHH Mortgage Services and
then American Home Mortgage. In 2007, the appraisal management system he designed
identified over $100 million each month in overvalued appraisals and actually
reduced the average cycle time for loan decisions.
CBCInnovis is part of a privately-held family of companies established in 1948,
currently employing almost 2000 people who provide risk management to customers
in the business, government, and not-for-profit sectors.
Joaquin Tremols
is currently Acting Director for USDA Rural Development’s Single Family Housing Guaranteed
Loan Division in Washington, D.C. He is responsible for administering a program that obligated
nearly $3.7 billion in loan guarantees during fiscal year 2007. Among other things, Tremols has
played a key role in automating USDA Rural Development processes by developing a new automated
underwriting system known as GUS (Guaranteed Underwriting System).
Tremols has been involved in the mortgage industry since 1983, and he joined Rural Development
in 1998. His background includes nearly a decade at the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, where
he filled management positions in mortgage origination and servicing. Tremols has been involved
in the credit union industry and has served on the Supervisory Committee for the Agriculture
Federal Credit Union. He also worked in the Regulation and Legislation Section of the FDIC’s
legal department.
Tremols was born in Havana, Cuba, and grew up in Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil, and Guatemala, where
he graduated from high school. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delaware and
a Juris Doctor degree from the George Washington University Law School. A naturalized U.S.
citizen, Joaquin has lived in the United States for more than 30 years. He lives with his wife
and son in Fairfax County, Virginia.
Bill Rayburn
has served as FNC’s CEO since the company began. A finance expert and
visionary, Bill intimately understands how collateral underpins the mortgage industry
and has a special talent for imparting that knowledge to others.
A former business professor at the University of Mississippi, Bill earned his Ph.D. in
business finance, a Chartered Financial Analyst designation, and the Appraisal Institute’s
MAI and SRA designations. He has published extensively on collateral’s role in the
marketplace, including Sheshunoff’s Bankers Guide to Real Estate Appraisal Compliance
and Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice: Applying the Standards, now
in its 13th printing.
Bob Dorsey
, an FNC co-founder, is the Executive Vice President of Data and Analytics.
In this role, he supervises FNC software implementations, trouble-shoots for clients,
and plans for the future of FNC and mortgage lending by developing new data and analytic
product concepts.
Dorsey has worked as a research physicist, a research engineer, and a corporate risk
manager. Before founding FNC, he taught in the Business School at the University of
Mississippi, where he co-founded a consulting firm that provided artificial
intelligence to business problems. Unlike many in the business world, Dorsey also
spent time as a chief mine ventilation engineer for the world’s largest underground mine.
He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Arizona.
Jennifer Harris
is Director of Analytics at FNC, where she focuses her expertise on analytic
product development and implementation. She earned a Masters in Economics from California
State University, Fullerton where she focused on Applied Econometrics. In spring of 2005,
she published her thesis on hedonic pricing models for the Southern California housing market.
Bygie Quigg
is the President and CEO of Wachovia Settlement Services. In this role, she has direct
responsibility for Wachovia’s Valuation Services, Title Services, Flood, Documentary
Services, Data Entry, Strategic Vendor Management, Process Improvement and Client
Services. She directs 346 employees across two sites; is responsible for $120
million in sales; and oversees two million transactions per year. Quigg attended
Georgia State and Mercer universities, specializing in Computer Information Systems
and Accounting. In her spare time, she enjoys golf and karate and has earned a black
belt. Quigg lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., with her husband, Dale, and has four
children and one grandchild.
Lyle E. Gramley
is the Senior Economic Adviser of the Stanford Washington Research Group,
which joined in June 2002. From 1985 through May 2002, Gramley was a consulting economist
to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Previously, Gramley was one of the seven Governors
of the Federal Reserve Board. Prior to that, he was a member of the President's Council
of Economic Advisers.
Mike Freeman
is an Executive Vice President with First Horizon National Corporation,
and leads the Consumer Credit Risk Management organization for First Tennessee Bank
and First Horizon Home Loans. His areas of responsibility include underwriting,
credit administration and governance, consumer portfolio management, consumer real
estate appraisal administration, asset management, modeling, and analytics.
John Vella
is President and CEO of EMC Mortgage Corporation and oversees its daily
operations and professional staff of more than 1,600 employees. He joined the
company in March 2006 after more than 20 years in other mortgage industry positions.
Vella is responsible for non-performing loan due diligence, operational property
valuations, analytics, loan servicing, and quality control.
Zaneta Jones
is a staff appraiser in the Veterans Administration Central Office. In this
position, she provides recommendations for policy and guideline changes and assistance
to field offices. Jones also networks with industry participants to improve stakeholder
alliances and serves as the VA’s representative to The Appraisal Foundation Advisory
Council (TAFAC).
Steve Conlin
is a Senior Vice President and Manager for Valuation Risk Assessment and Standards at HomeFocus
Valuation Service, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bank of America. HFVS provides automated
and traditional valuation services to support the Consumer Real Estate Group of the bank. As
risk manager, Steve is responsible for the effectiveness of automated products and ensures
Bank of America’s appraisal quality meets industry and regulatory standards and complies with
all federal, state, and secondary market requirements. 
Bob Reynolds
is the Executive Vice President and Chief Administration Officer of SunTrust
Mortgage, Inc., a role he has had since 2001. In this role, he is responsible for
managing balance sheets, mortgage loan portfolios, servicing assets, credit risk,
mergers and acquisitions, enterprise risk, and production profitability.
Todd Baur
leads Countrywide’s national appraisal organization, LandSafe, a wholly owned
subsidiary of Countrywide Financial Corporation, where he and his team are responsible
for all collateral decisions and over one million appraisals a year. Baur joined LandSafe
in 2004 as executive vice president and chief operating officer. In 2006, he was promoted
to managing director, president and chief operating officer.
Todd Buchholz
is a former director of economic policy at the White House, a managing
director of the $15 billion Tiger hedge fund, and an award-winning economics teacher at
Harvard. A sought-after speaker and author, Buchholz is a frequent commentator on ABC News, PBS,
and CBS, and recently hosted his own special on CNBC. Buchholz has debated such luminaries as
Lester Thurow and Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz. He is co-founder of Enso Capital Management,
LLC and co-founder and Managing Director of Two Oceans Management, LLC.
Allan I. Mendelowitz
has served on the Board of Directors of the Federal Housing
Finance Board since 2000. 
Norton Wells
is Executive Vice President of EMC Mortgage and currently oversees the Quality
Control division, which includes operational reviews of all servicing functions
and supporting vendors, regulatory compliance, centralized policies and procedures,
scratch and dent due diligence, imminent default and ARM resets, and office services
and disaster recovery. Wells joined EMC Mortgage in August 2004.
Peter Gillispie
joined the Federal Housing Administration in 2003 and is the senior staff appraiser
with the Home Valuation Policy Division in the Office of Single Family Program
Development at HUD headquarters in Washington, D.C. There, he is responsible for the
development and implementation of real estate valuation policies for FHA single family
programs and serves as HUD’s representative to The Appraisal Foundation Advisory Council (TAFAC).
Lance Thoet
recently joined CBCInnovis as a key business development leader in their Real Estate Services Companies.
Bill Rayburn
has served as FNC’s CEO since the company began. A finance expert and
visionary, Bill intimately understands how collateral underpins the mortgage industry
and has a special talent for imparting that knowledge to others.
Bob Dorsey
, an FNC co-founder, is the Executive Vice President of Data and Analytics.
In this role, he supervises FNC software implementations, trouble-shoots for clients,
and plans for the future of FNC and mortgage lending by developing new data and analytic
product concepts.
Jennifer Harris
is Director of Analytics at FNC, where she focuses her expertise on analytic
product development and implementation. She earned a Masters in Economics from California
State University, Fullerton where she focused on Applied Econometrics. In spring of 2005,
she published her thesis on hedonic pricing models for the Southern California housing market.
