There are few things that Marcia Davies hasn’t succeeded at in the mortgage industry. Her first attempt at retiring was one of them.
But after a four-decade career spanning stretches at Freddie Mac, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), Davies is preparing to give retirement a second try. Her last day as the MBA’s chief operating officer is Dec. 31.
“Everybody who knows me and talks to me can’t believe that I’m actually going to stay retired this time,” Davies laughed when discussing what her future holds in a recent conversation with Scotsman Guide. “I tried it before and it lasted about six months. But I was 20 years younger then.”
Davies joined the MBA in 2011, but she had been attending association conferences all the way back to 1984, when “Ghostbusters” was packing theaters and Van Halen was dominating FM radio.
For the past 14 years, Davies has been one of the biggest presences at the MBA. Ten years ago, in what she says is one of the highlights of her career, she founded mPower, short for MBA Promoting Opportunities for Women to Extend their Reach. It is the largest networking organization for women in real estate finance, with an online community of more than 10,000 women and nearly 29,000 people engaged in its events.
First retirement
After 21 years working for Freddie Mac, Davies retired in 2005 due to personal circumstances.
“I was way too young,” she reflected, sharing that her mother had died unexpectedly, leading her to take a break from working. “I thought, take a step back and focus on things non-work related. It didn’t last long.”
In 2009, she got a call from Dave Stevens, with whom she had worked at Freddie Mac. Nominated by President Barack Obama, Stevens had just been confirmed as Federal Housing Administration commissioner and assistant secretary of housing at HUD.
“He asked if I would come join him and help him. And I was really honored for the call because the financial crisis had happened while I wasn’t part of the industry,” Davies said. “And sitting on the sidelines and seeing the headlines and the stories and the families that were impacted, it just felt strange not to be involved. Like, ‘How do we fix this?’ and ‘What do we need to do to get back on track?’”
Working for the government was never part of her plan, but neither was working in the mortgage industry to begin with.
“When you grow up on a farm in New Jersey, I don’t think you even know there are jobs in the secondary mortgage market,” she said.
Davies delved back into an industry that had been devastated. Her former employer Freddie Mac, along with Fannie Mae, had just been taken into conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, and government assistance was crucial amid a deep recession. She and Stevens, faced with one of the most challenging times ever for housing, worked through the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act and the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
After 16 months of progress at HUD — where they were “able to get so much done,” according to Davies — midterm elections split Congress. Predicting gridlock for the remainder of Obama’s first term, Stevens opted to leave the administration to take over as president and CEO at MBA. Davies joined him as chief of staff.
A full circle moment
The return to the MBA was “a full circle moment for my career,” Davies said, referencing her early years.
But joining the nonprofit at the time wasn’t without its challenges. When she went to MBA in May 2011, “it was not in a very good place, not only because of what was happening to our members during the housing crisis, but also the association had made some bad investment decisions,” she said.
“When Dave and I got there, our first job was to bring the organization back to not only financial stability, but also to get our members more engaged and more involved and really turn up the volume on MBA’s voice,” Davies added.
Comparing the standing of the MBA today and its position at the time is like night and day, she said. Financially, the organization is in a much stronger position, Davies noted, and its members are far more engaged.
But over the past year, all the changes made by the Trump administration have made it difficult to predict what will come next for the industry.
“The next election will help us see what that might look like,” Davies said. “But there’s never, never a shortage of issues and legislative agenda items that we must focus on for our members. There’s never been, in the years I’ve been there, there’s never been a downtime at MBA. And I’m not exaggerating, ever.”
Looking ahead
Davies has been planning for her retirement since January, which has given her the chance to develop a transition plan to eliminate her role and elevate others within the organization to new responsibilities.
“I didn’t want to just walk away. I wanted to make sure when I left, that everything was in a good place and that the people who had been working so hard beside me had an opportunity to rise and excel,” she said.
And while some of her colleagues might not believe they’ve seen the last of Marcia Davies in the mortgage realm, she said that for now, she’s looking forward to having a good time and traveling without worrying if it’s conflicting with an MBA conference.
Davies smiled as she shared one final piece of coaching advice she received from an unlikely source — actor Sharon Stone, who was the keynote speaker at this year’s annual mPowering You event.
“She told me, ‘Whenever you say it, say you have the ability to retire. Having the ability to retire is very different than retiring,’” Davies recalled. “And it’s true, right? It’s a much more empowering way to say that I’ve reached this point in my life where I’m choosing: This is how I’m going to spend my time.”
