For me, being in a field where I would use my love of money, communication, analysis, management, and investigation skills seems to have been my life purpose. When I was young, I would walk through the neighborhood, finding out information about the goings on from older neighbors. I would come home and report my findings. However, they always had my critical, analytical twist to them as I reported back to my family. I would look for solutions and observe things to see how or what could bring resolve or better results to the many situations I would find. When people would ask me, “what do you want to be when you grow-up?” I would always answer, “I want to work in the legal field for a big company.”
I started my path into “real-life, and the real-world,” by becoming a teller at a bank. I loved making sure my drawer proved out every day and helping others to do the same. I also enjoyed helping the customers balance out their statements and find errors they could not seem to locate. One of the things I loved most was our training on bank robberies. We learned how to comply with rules, regulations, and policies. The police would run drills on robberies, criminal investigations, and describing the thief. Learning how to be detail-oriented and aware of the goings on around us intrigued me.
Within three years, I worked my way up the corporate ladder to our customer service department where I could investigate issues for clients and liaise on the bank’s behalf while finding solutions that hopefully were amendable for everyone involved. I continued climbing the corporate ladder to assistant manager of our collections department. It was there that I homed in on my negotiation, problem-solving and loss mitigation skills. I quickly learned the art of recovery and regulatory compliance. I had a 93% success recovery rate on skip traces and auto repossession. I was rewarded for my efforts by acquiring the mortgage portfolio.
The mortgage portfolio consisted of 500+ mortgages. I evaluated each mortgage loan to determine details of the contracts, which would lead me to discover non-compliance of the bank’s loan agreements on the customer’s behalf; allowing me to foreclose successfully on 150+ loans. Learning to analyze and negotiate contract terms with our clients allowed me to bring in over $300,000.00+ in funds owed to the bank in delinquent loans.
I was promoted to assistant manager of the collection’s department and quickly dove in to lead staff meetings held weekly. Before this happening, the department had not had weekly, nor monthly meetings. The weekly huddles opened trust, communication, and problem-conflicts to provide quick resolutions to office and collector situations and issues. This line of communication with our employees proved to be successful through the reduction of our delinquency rates.
My successful career in banking carried me to a position that had me work with the bank’s attorney. The legal experience I gained in my banking career eventually transformed me into a certified paralegal.
Later, working for foreclosure national law firms of the Law Offices of Gerald Shapiro (LOGS), and Stern, Levinthal & Frankenberg as a Senior Paralegal, gave me the experience and skills needed to complete all financial and mortgage document reviews for compliance and regulatory evaluations. Within my role as a Sr. Paralegal, I succeeded in the reinstatement/payoff department successfully bringing 86% of the defaults to status, increasing the overall profit of the firm by 40% and having a 62% approval rate on all forbearance contract negotiations and loss mitigation files.
To date, I can confidently say I discovered what I wanted to do with my life by, “accidentally” obtaining a position that gave me the ability to explore project management, analysis, communications, investigation and critical writing at Bank of America while working on the OCC Regulatory Independent Foreclosure Review. It was this job as a Regulatory Compliance Examiner that I was struck with an epiphany: I love this stuff! And I’m excellent at it; I’ve been practicing this since I was a kid. And my career-life was forever changed.
The skills I have acquired through my lifetime of personal and professional experience allowed me to attend Ramapo College of New Jersey’s Law & Society program and a minor in Psychology. I completed four years of college in two years and four months. I graduated Cum Laude and wrote a thesis on Corporate Social Responsibility and Accountability titled, “The Legal Justification for an International Tribunal for Corporate Violations: Lessons from Nuremberg”, which is now being published.
So, that’s a glimpse of my career life. When it comes to the rest of my life, I’m passionate about some things at the opposite end of the spectrum. I’m really into making our house a home. I also enjoy drinking “real-sugar” Pepsi (when Pepsi re-introduced real sugar back to the market it excited me like a kid on Christmas). More importantly, though, I love finding more ways to spend all the time I can with my family–which consists of my two sons.
Most recently, I decided to write this blog, this is my new past-time, it incorporates my love of meeting new people with my love of writing. I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I enjoy writing it for you.
I’m sure all that was quite enough information about me, but if you would like to know more, leave a comment…