Alterra Home Loans Releases New White Paper
Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) August 03, 2017 -- Alterra Home Loans, a national mortgage lender and the second-largest Hispanic-owned mortgage company in the U.S., focused on serving underserved markets, released a new white paper today, titled “Empowering Women in Leadership Starts with Listening.” This piece is authored by Kristin Messerli, Founder of Cultural Outreach and Managing Editor for Mortgage Women Magazine. Messerli and Alterra partnered to share Alterra’s insights from their efforts to increase women in leadership and bring urgency to take action in addressing this problem in the industry.
Miguel Narvaez, EVP and Chief Production Officer of Alterra Home Loans, says, “Our objective is to send a message to the industry that we should be concerned about the underrepresentation of women, what we think the industry should be doing at large and what Alterra is doing about it.”
Kristin Messerli uses Alterra as a case study due to the progress they made in identifying and addressing the issue. While the company is co-founded by a woman and over half of their operations consist of women, like most companies, they lacked female representation in sales and leadership positions. Since this realization, they have increased female leadership from 2% to 25% and women accounted for half of their new management hires over the last year. Although not where they want to be yet, Alterra hopes that their fast and significant progress could be shared with others to inspire and drive more action to create positive change in the industry.
Messerli shares, “Most companies talk about how women in leadership is a priority - it’s been discussed in nearly every keynote of every mortgage conference this year. Yet, many companies are simply not turning that priority into any meaningful action.” She explains this is why she was encouraged to write and partner with Alterra on this initiative “to bring greater awareness to the industry and share a practical case study from a company making real progress.”
The paper outlines a few challenges that many companies are not aware of in attempting to recruit female talent. As cited in the paper, women are three times as likely as men to say that being a working parent makes it difficult to advance in their careers. Valerie Madiedo, Alterra’s Co-Founder and EVP, says many women are unsure they can handle the work-family balance if they take a leadership position. “They need support from leadership who understands their needs as women and encourage them to take that step.”
Through interviews with six of Alterra’s female managers and additional outside research, the paper provides practical insights to improving women’s talent development and recruitment. The Senior Vice President of Business Development and National Expansion, Tom Middleton, states, “I realized that I had to understand their way of thinking in order to effectively recruit more great leaders, both male and female.”
“These women aren’t just doing a job, they are righting wrongs, protecting their neighbors and building their communities,” Middleton continues. “After performing the research for this paper, I came away with the feeling that American businesses have squandered an incredible opportunity to achieve organic growth through customer service driven by powerful female executives.”
Jason Madiedo, CEO and Co-Founder of Alterra Home Loans, says he is proud of their progress. “We founded this company on the ideal of inclusion and promoting wealth among the underserved...We cannot move forward as an industry or properly serve our customers without women in strong leadership roles. I am proud to see we are making strides to move the needle in this direction.”
For a copy of the new white paper, download here.
About Cultural Outreach Solutions
Cultural Outreach Solutions connects financial institutions with underserved markets and Millennials through cross-cultural training and marketing tools. Through solutions including BetterLoanOfficer.com, Cultural Outreach arms lenders with critical tools to drive homeownership growth in all channels. To learn more, visit http://www.CulturalOutreach.net.
About Alterra Home Loans
Alterra Home Loans is a minority-owned, top U.S. mortgage bank and the second-largest Hispanic-owned mortgage company in the country. With loan coverage in 26 U.S. states, Alterra strives to represent the underserved in the mortgage industry, specifically serving the Hispanic community to help build wealth through homeownership. For more information, visit the company’s website at http://www.goalterra.com.
Press Contact
Mikki Hernandez
Cultural Outreach
mikki(at)culturaloutreach(dot)net
(918) 324-6271
Cindy Smith, Cultural Outreach, http://www.culturaloutreach.net, +1 918-324-6271, [email protected]
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