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28 Simon's extensive career has been built inside large, Fortune 100 companies, including Motorola, Baxter Healthcare, HP, and CNA Insurance. He specializes in building effective, customer focused organizations, cultivating leadership, aligning culture, and optimizing talent. Simon also has significant experience in Six Sigma and Lean and has focused on bringing these principles to Exceleras to create a more efficient and compelling user experience for our clients. "At Exceleras, we consider ourselves to be a 16-year-old start-up company," Simon said. "During the pandemic, we took the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and our platform. As current and potential customers emerge from the pandemic with steadily increasing inventories and reduced staffing levels, our investments are already paying big dividends." Romano added, "With the contributions of our team, we believe we now have a great story to tell, and we intend to stay the course, continuing to transform our company and our industry. We know our best days are ahead of us, and we're looking forward to an exciting and prosperous future." ANDREW WEISS NAMED PARTNER AT BLACKFIN GROUP BlackFin Group has named mortgage industry technology veteran Andrew Weiss as a Partner, working in the consultancy's technology practice. He brings more than 35 years of industry experience to the role, across several disciplines, including mortgage lending, technology development, and management consulting. "I'm not a technologist, strictly speaking, and I'm not a traditional business person either," Weiss said. "My work has largely been about creating the bridges between these groups, so everyone can do their best work and reach their goals. I hope to help BlackFin clients make the best choices, according to their own business strategies, managing risk while creating the future. at's the way companies distinguish themselves in highly competitive businesses like ours." Weiss mostly recently served as SVP of Platform Strategy at Origence, an LOS developer owned by CU Direct. Prior to that, he was a Principal at STRATMOR Group, as well as CIO at New Penn Bank, SVP of Strategy for Bank of America, and an Executive Consultant with Newbold Advisors. He started his career in the mortgage industry in 1991 when he joined Fannie Mae, serving the GSE as SVP of Advanced Technology and led a team that developed Fannie's Desktop Underwriter. "Andrew is one of those rare industry executives who has both a long and broad base of experience in our business," BlackFin Group CEO Keith Kemph said. "His work has always challenged the industry to do more with technology in pursuit of worthy goals. He has been an agent for change, but with a disciplined approach that will protect BlackFin clients from chasing shiny things when they should be building their businesses according to a well- developed strategic plan." Weiss added, "I'm at the point in my career where I wanted to do something that was interesting to me. Keith has attracted a great team to BlackFin Group, and I think together, we can make progress in an industry that has traditionally lagged others from a technology standpoint." NCONTRACTS APPOINTS MATTHEW PEACE AS CFO Ncontracts, a provider of integrated compliance and risk management solutions to the financial industry, has named Matthew Peace as its new CFO, tasked with overseeing the company's growing accounting and financial planning teams. Peace brings more than 25 years of financial and operational expertise in both public and private equity-back companies to Ncontracts. Prior to joining Ncontracts, Peace served as CFO at ClearStar, CloudNine Discovery, Mi9 Retail, and Brightree. He has experience in mergers & acquisitions, implementation of financial systems, development of market and product strategies, post-integration procedures, and leading numerous debt and equity financing transactions. "I'm very excited to join the Ncontracts team. e culture and dedication of the team to accomplish their goals represents the type of work environment that allows people to thrive," Peace said. "Combining the culture with the exciting market opportunity, tremendous growth, and dedicated clients, makes this an amazing opportunity to apply my expertise. I see a tremendous opportunity to help accelerate the success of Ncontracts." Michael Berman, CEO of Ncontracts, added, "We are thrilled to have Matt join our executive team. His accomplishments and experiences as a financial leader will be invaluable as we continue to scale our organization and rapidly expand. His vision for Ncontracts aligns with our goals, and we are elated to work with him to accomplish even more together." RICE PARK CAPITAL PROMOTES CRAIG FREEL TO CO-CIO Rice Park Capital Management LP, a Minneapolis-based investment firm, has promoted Craig Freel to the position of Co-CIO, alongside Matt Kennedy, who also serves as Co-CIO. "In a short period of time, Craig has led the charge to build an MSR business from scratch into a platform that we believe is rapidly becoming a market leader in the space," said Nick Smith, Rice Park Founder and CEO. "He has been very effective in deploying capital in scale in the MSR market through strategic partnerships with mortgage originator and servicer partners. We believe the market approach that Craig, Matt, and the RPC team have cultivated will provide long term access to MSR investment opportunities. In addition, the combination of Craig and Matt leading our investment process provides RPC and its investors with deep mortgage investment experience and depth." Prior to Freel's promotion to Co-CIO, he was the head of Mortgage Servicing Rights (MSR) Investments, responsible for MSR portfolio management, including acquisitions, hedging, financing, and disposition of MSR assets. Before joining Rice Park in 2020, Freel was SVP of Portfolio Management for RoundPoint Mortgage Servicing Corporation, where he built and managed the company's MSR trading desk and secondary marketing functions. Movers & Shakers Got something to share with us? Send it to Editor@DSNews.com.

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