Senior Loan Officer, Stonecastle Mortgage
Anna is a mortgage broker. While the past 15 years have been in loans, she’s been in the mortgage industry for over 25. (You’d never guess she’s lived long enough to do anything for that long!)
Apparently, need is a great motivator. When Anna left home, she took her little brother with her – making the trials of putting herself through school that much more challenging. She started at DVC (the local community college) with the goal of becoming a lawyer. In an accounting class she realized that she liked numbers and that they made sense to her. She adjusted her goals and ended up with a degree in accounting from Cal State Hayward. She started off doing the books for a start-up company, that eventually went under. However, one of the people there referred her to a mortgage shop that needed an accountant, and the rest is history.
Because Anna works closely with people who want to get their finances in order so that they can purchase a home, one of the main things she does is talk people off the proverbial panic cliffs of fear and anxiety. Once they are back in a relatively calm head space, Anna works with clients to problem solve issues in their financial lives. Although Anna is a Wonderful Woman, she is not Wonder Woman and cannot do all the things herself. She works very hard to delegate the tasks she doesn’t need to do so that she can stay connected with her clients.
Personally, I found it amusing that many of Anna’s clients think she’s also a realtor. But then she added that these clients already have a level of trust with her and are reluctant to build another relationship. This is why Anna keeps a list of top-rate realtors that she feels she can safely refer.
For Anna, the best part of the job is the people. The ones she works with over time – some for years – to get their finances in shape to buy a home. The relationships are long-lasting, even with the people she’s never met in person.
Shortly after I met Anna, she suffered a devastating loss. Being human, she was knocked down for a while. And then she got up and started to take care of the new hole in her life. To me, it seems that she’s put a decorative fence around it. The fence protects the hole and herself. She can visit it, tend to it, and not fall down it. I had already liked Anna; as a distant observer of this process forced upon her, I began to admire her. No one is perfect, and I know that hole feels overwhelming at times; yet, how Anna has chosen to deal with what life has thrown her is impressive to me.