Guild Mortgage selected Victoria Garcia DeLuca as its first vice president of marketplace diversity strategy to lead the company’s initiatives to promote diversity, equity and inclusion in lending. DeLuca will lead Guild’s participation in organizations focused on diversity and inclusion, including the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals, the National Association of Minority Mortgage Bankers of America and the Mortgage Bankers Association. Prior to joining Guild, she served nearly three years as senior vice president at Federal Savings Bank. Her other recent leadership roles include serving as area sales manager for more than five years with Wintrust Mortgage and four years as a sales manager and diverse segments specialist with Wells Fargo.
Open Mortgage named Scott Harkless to the newly created position of chief revenue officer. He will oversee all sales functions within the company, including wholesale and retail lending in both the reverse and forward mortgage divisions. Formerly a civil litigator, Harkless joined Countrywide Home Loans’ strategic alliance division in 2006. After Bank of America acquired Countrywide in 2008, Harkless led its business-to-business platforms as executive sales leader, and he finished off his tenure at Bank of America as Merrill Lynch sales executive. In 2018, Harkless joined American Advisors Group, serving as East divisional sales executive and later as vice president for enterprise partnerships. Harkless earned a J.D. from the University of California at Davis School of Law and holds a bachelor’s degree from Asbury University.
Popular Bank announced the appointment of Adam E. Dejak as national director of residential lending. Dejak will oversee the bank’s residential mortgage business and will be responsible for driving growth and development of the entire program, cultivating talent and continuing to expand the lending product suite. Most recently, he was director of residential mortgage lending at Sterling National Bank, where he led business development, third-party originations and capital-markets loan acquisitions. He will be based in New York.
Total Expert hired Chad Gaydos as its president. Gaydos will focus on scaling and enabling business operations and executing a plan that supports Total Expert’s growth trajectory. He will lead strategy and execution for the day-to-day operations of the company, with all functional lines and executive leaders reporting to him. He joins Total Expert from Talkdesk, where he was chief operating officer for the past two years. Total Expert also added John Emerick as chief financial officer. Prior to this role, he served as CFO for Code42 and CyberGrants.
Title Alliance announced that Tiana Brown is its new general manager for Arizona. She will oversee all joint ventures in Arizona, ensure consistency with the company’s processes and procedures, and have ultimate accountability for profit and loss within the state. She began her career with Bank of America, where she became a mortgage loan officer. Prior to joining Title Alliance, she served as director of consultant operations at CCG Catalyst Consulting Group.
Marcus & Millichap announced that Greg Willett has joined the firm as first vice president, responsible for spearheading the company’s Institutional Property Advisors (IPA) multifamily research. Prior to joining IPA, Willett spent 22 years at RealPage Inc., where he served as chief economist and was responsible for the company’s real estate industry research and analysis team.
