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60 JENNIFER McGUINNESS, MANAGING PARTNER LIFT STRATEGIC PARTNERS Tell us how you got your start in the housing industry and how your current role at Lift Strategic Partners fits into your long-term objectives. My start in the housing industry was actually by accident. I was in college and planning to become a lawyer while working for a lender as a mortgage loan processor and underwriter. When I graduated early, I began working for a law firm as a paralegal and ended up managing a group of real estate, foreclosure, bankruptcy, and litigation paralegals. This coupled with my origination experience, was the initial foundation for my career. Although I was accepted, I never did make it to law school and almost 20 years later, I have been blessed to have had the opportunity to have roles in origination, legal, mortgage servicing, asset management, hedge funds, REIT's and now the next challenge with Lift. How has your default and mortgage servicing background helped you to shape your decisions in the other sectors of the business that you have managed? I believe there is a disjoint in the market as it pertains to the importance of mortgage servicing. Specifically, it is not a high enough priority for investment managers or holders of mortgage loans and/ or securities when determining their partners. In my opinion, the way your assets are managed and the time it takes for you to make loss mitigation or default mitigation related decisions ("Reaction Timeline") can and will drive a material percentage of any investment return. In addition, this Reaction Timeline will either optimize the relationship the servicer has with the borrower or cause a material detriment. My focus has always been to be able to see everything happening at the servicer, no matter if I was sitting in the originator chair, the aggregator, the whole loan buyer or bondholder seat. If your servicer is not expeditiously able to efficiently engage, you will lose money. How do you mitigate this? Many investors believe, for example, that non-delegated servicing is the right approach. The truth is they become their own "bottleneck" in the process because they have too much to focus on. The right prescription is a delegated/non-delegated approach that is negotiated with precision at the time in which the servicing is set up and "massaged" throughout the life of the relationship. This ensures that the investor/owner does not have to opine on every decision, but only on those that could cause the most material impacts. This structure, coupled with timeline precision, clean data and transparency in reporting at the investor level, leads to an optimized asset management outcome from day one and will increase your returns. How would you define diversity and inclusion in the industry? Where should we be concentrating our efforts? I heard a quote recently, "Diversity is the engine of invention. It generates creativity that enriches the world," and I thought to myself, I agree with that. As it pertains to the industry, although women have begun to make significant strides, I believe other minorities and minority women have only begun to scratch the surface. I would like to see this equalize and the industry move to a best candidate for the job model. How do we achieve this? By answering the following questions: Who is the most qualified? Who brings the best skills? Who will lead the best team? Who believes in the brand and empowers their staff to achieve a collective set of goals? Who will increase revenue and optimize outcomes? When you can answer these questions, this is who to hire, no matter where they went to college (it's not always going to be ivy league), no matter their nationality, race, sexual orientation or gender. There is a lot of work to be done to move the needle, and proactive discussions must continue in order to bring the industry to this next level. Lift Strategic Partners is a strategy based advisory firm focused on fixed-income related business development, investment strategies, sourcing, operational structuring, and product development. For more information please contact info@liftstrategicpartners.com. www.LiftStrategicPartners.com DIVERSITY SPOTLIGHT