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MortgagePoint ยป Your Trusted Source for Mortgage Banking and Servicing News 30 2 0 2 4 F I V E S T A R C O N F E R E N C E & E X P O MEET OUR 2024 LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD RECIPIENT Jocelyn Martin-Leano looks back at her industry accomplishments and the challenges she has overcome during her career. By DAV I D W H A R T O N D uring the 2024 Five Star Conference & Expo, held at the Omni Hotel in Dallas in late September, the Five Star Institute presented the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award during the Keys for Life Opening Luncheon. This year's Lifetime Achievement Award recipient was Jocelyn Martin-Leano, Founder of Enizio Strategies LLC. Martin-Leano, who also served as the Chair of Five Star's National Mortgage Servicing Association (NMSA) from 2022-2024, established Enizio Strategies as a professional services company focused on equipping leaders with solutions that align strategy, capital, operations, risks, talent, and culture. Before founding Enizio Strategies, she was President of Rushmore Loan Management and served on both public company and nonprofit boards. Other industry roles Martin-Leano held include serving as COO of a mortgage insurance company, president of a home equity bank subsidiary, and progressive leadership roles at several banks. She graduated from Harvard's Advanced Management Program, obtained her Executive MBA from St. Mary's College (California), and has an undergraduate in industrial engineering. MortgagePoint had the opportunity to chat with Martin-Leano during the Five Star Conference to discuss her accomplishments and the state of the industry. Q: How do you go from being an industrial engineer at Timex to working at Citibank in an executive capacity? Jocelyn Martin-Leano: I never thought, in my wildest dreams, I would be in the mortgage business. I worked on assembly lines doing productivity, process design, etc., and answered an ad from Citibank seeking a "process engi- neer to help figure out the origination process." I grew up on the origination side of the fence, and from there, started to work on different parts of the business, like time and motion studies for apprais- ers. I did all kinds of nuts-and-bolts work, including capacity planning and all of that for Citibank's business. There are two important things I learned from my time at Citibank. One, there is no degree that I know of in any university about mortgages. Everybody gets into the mortgage industry through a different path. This path was very helpful to me in the sense that I understood what it took to build and how to put parts together. When you have a breakage in the flow, I know where to find it and fix it. I find those skills to be very helpful in everything that I did, building different corporations and businesses. It was great preparation for what was to come. The second thing is that engineers are critical thinkers, so you can dispassionately and objectively look at things because you know how to look at things from a clinical lens. The third thing that is interesting about engineering is that it requires you to understand what your "givens" are and then work the best out of what you have been given, and so much of that is needed in decision-making. You may not always know all the factors, but then you understand, okay, here is what is given, and how do I solve the problem given what I have? The final part about engineering is that it's really helpful in optimizing for solving variables. It gives you focus because if you are trying to solve for "X, Y, and Z" all at the same time, that's hard to do. So, when you focus on one, you get that done, and then you solve for the next one, and the next one, and so on. It just gives you a nice frame for approaching and mentally looking at things. Q: We have some amazing women leaders in today's industry, but the industry remains very male-dominated. What are some of the difficulties you encountered or had to deal with coming up in a very male- dominated industry? What advice would you offer to women who are coming up the ranks behind you? Martin-Leano: The first one is ambi- dexterity because sometimes you must