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MortgagePoint » Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 16 October 2024 M O V E R S & S H A K E R S experienced before—bringing value to them and the clients they serve. "I've spent decades leveraging tech- nology to simplify the complex home financing process. Now, I'm eager to tap into that skillset to bring the broker community into the future," Sogorka said. "With mortgage brokers being such a large part of the market, my role will be to supercharge brokers to educate, en- gage, and help their clients be successful homebuyers and owners." Sogorka previously served as CEO and President of Sagent, a well-known fintech company that designs and builds digital mortgage servicing platforms. His leadership helped drive a period of intense growth for the company. He and his team modernized Sagent's technology by bringing its platforms to the cloud and building a single data and user experience across the servicing lifecycle. Sogorka fostered strong relationships with many large mortgage servicers, gaining an in-depth view of the home loan process from origination through servicing. Before his time at Sagent, Sogorka was CEO of Cloudvirga—a digital mort- gage point-of-sale system. Cloudvirga focused on automating manual tasks that save brokers and loan officers hours and days in the critical early stages of the mortgage process. Sogorka was also a business unit President at Black Knight, where he spent nearly 15 years. During his time at Black Knight, Sogorka and his team touched nearly 70% of all mortgage loans processed in the U.S. and managed glob- al data and teams, all while delivering multiple "industry first" transaction plat- forms. Throughout this period, Sogorka built and maintained relationships with some of the most prominent leaders in the mortgage industry. "This is an exciting milestone for Rocket and deeply strengthens our commitment to brokers for the long term" said Varun Krishna, CEO of Rocket Companies. "After getting to know Dan and the wealth of experience he brings to Rocket, I'm confident he will accelerate our strategy and impact." FORMER VENMO AND PAYPAL EXECUTIVE JOINS ROCKET COMPANIES Rocket Companies has named Venmo Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and former PayPal Technology Executive Papanii Okai as its new EVP of Product Engi- neering. In this newly created role, Okai will work with the company's senior technology leaders to create artificial intelligence (AI)-driven products at an even greater velocity. "We've all experienced technology that drives real impact in the world through Papanii's work with Paypal and Venmo. Now, he will be using that skill to help revolutionize the homeownership journey," said Shawn Malhotra, CTO of Rocket Companies. "After serving in roles from a hands-on-keyboard engineer all the way to a CTO at both startups and large international tech companies, Papa- nii's technical depth and track record for building high-performing and highly engaged teams makes him a valuable as- set for us at Rocket. I'm looking forward to working closely with him as he helps us continue to evolve and elevate our technology teams." Okai joins Rocket at a time when the company has created its own loan origi- nation system—Rocket Logic—that uses AI to identify and automatically extract data from the documents Rocket clients submit. A related tool, Rocket Logic– Synopsis, presents team members with searchable transcripts from calls, chats, relevant documents, and data from Rock- et Logic. With the company's AI-powered tools, Rocket is projected to save more than 700,000 hours of time this year. "Homeownership is one of the most impactful things that can happen in someone's life. It brings security, stability and can build generational wealth— which is exactly why I jumped on this opportunity," Okai said. "The best way we can use technology is to make the path to homeownership easier, faster and more accessible. I'm looking forward to bridging the gap between technol- ogy and human experience, so people across the country, no matter where they are from, feel confident taking this life changing step." Okai spent nearly 11 years in tech- nology leadership roles at Venmo, most recently as CTO and VP of Engineering. He led the technology and engineering teams who built and scaled products used by Venmo's 90 million users, while driving strategic initiatives that solidi- fied Venmo as a leader in peer-to-peer payments. Okai also led the engineering teams at PayPal, the global payments company serving more than 400 million accounts, holding many roles ranging from Platform Engineer to CTO for Branded Checkout and VP of Engi- neering for PayPal Giving. He oversaw the engineers, developers, and product managers worldwide who powered PayPal's payments platform used by both customers and merchants. LOANDEPOT CONTINUES ITS DEDICATION TO U.S. VETS loanDepot Inc. has bolstered its strength in the Veterans Administration (VA) lending department with the appoint- ment of U.S. Navy Veteran and VA lending expert Bryan Bergjans as National Director of Military Growth and Strategy. Bergjans, a highly respected national advocate for the military community, has nearly two decades of military experience and a passion to serve the active-duty military and veteran community. Over the last several years, loanDepot has made a series of strategic investments in its VA lending program, all designed to build a best-in-class VA lending capacity with unparalleled expertise and outreach capabilities. "Today's announcement reinforces our strength and commitment to VA lending," loanDepot EVP John Bianchi said. "Bryan is well known as a trailblazer in the military and veteran lending space who has spearheaded countless indus- try-first initiatives that fueled impressive