AIME focused on being better

She vowed she was fit to the task of ushering in such change, despite not having a background in the mortgage industry: “I’m not an originator,” she began. “I never have been. I’ve never closed a single loan in my life. But I can guarantee you that I can run this trade organization better than anybody else,” she declared, prompting spontaneous cheers and applause from the audience.

“But to do that, so that we continue to get better, we need more leaders,” she continued. “We need more people that are working directly with consumers, that are bringing ideas forward, that are focusing on policy and regulatory change that’s negatively impacting American homebuyers. We need people that can come up with creative solutions to education. We need people who can focus on creating a standard and a structure – something that we can continue to build towards. Those decisions are not for me to make in an ivory tower by myself. Those are decisions to be made by the leaders who are among our communities right now.”

She gave an example of past growth that will serve as template for the future: “We have 15 member-led committees that launched in the last 12 months,” she noted. “Twelve months ago, we had zero. Those are the leaders you’re going to see out on social media. Those are the leaders who are taking time out of their day to make sure you get better. We hired a member leadership team. The leadership team is not just me. There are 10 of us. Six member leaders, four business leaders and of that group today 50% of our leadership is women,” she pointed out, again drawing applause from the audience.

She continued: “To better serve you, we have to better reflect who you are, our members and our leaders need to look the same – the same way that brokers and originators need to reflect what the American consumer looks like right now. Better partners. It’s not a secret the industry has not always been a fan of ours – we’ve ruffled some feathers and shaken things up a bit in the past – but we’re building alliances with organizations that have long-standing reputations in Washington DC. Why does that matter? Because when we bring bills to the table, when we bring ideas and concepts forward, we need the weight of people who have already proven themselves to lock arms with us to push our message forward. We need state-level groups. Next year you’ll see us launch state captains. Every single state will have a leader that is hyper-focused on their state regulation that’s there, the consumers that are there, the products and solutions that exist in that market so that that information can make it back to us so we can focus on bringing more opportunities, more access, so that we can focus on making every broker better in their market.”

She noted another example of change that’s been undertaken in the way of sponsorships: “Working more closely with our sponsors,” she said in ticking off goals. “We’ve had great partnerships with many of our sponsors over time. This year alone we expanded to over 65 industry partnerships. When I started at AIME two and a half years ago, we had 12. These are the partners that are going to help you get better. Talk to them. Give them feedback. Give us feedback. Because if you sit on issues, we can’t work on creating solutions and solutions are how we get better.”