How Advocacy & Leadership Shape Mortgage Banking

0:00 - Val Buresch: Welcome back to CMBConnect. I'm your host, Val Buresch. My guest today is Rhiannon Bolen, a certified mortgage banker. She is a powerhouse in the industry. Rhiannon is the senior vice president and national sales director at GridBase. And formerly she held leadership roles at companies like CoreLogic, ICE, Mortgage Technology, and ArchMI.

0:28 - Val Buresch: She also founded the Texas Women Mortgage Bankers Group and Rhiannon currently serves as the 2025-26 Morpac Associate Vice Chair. Rhiannon, it's so fun to have you on the CMBConnect. Welcome.

0:45 - Rhiannon Bolen: Thanks Val, I appreciate it. Happy to be here.

0:48 - Val Buresch: Happy New Year and also happy for you to be here. But before we start looking at your career, I wanted you to talk a little bit about your current role. You joined GridBase about a year ago. Can you tell us what GridBase actually is, what they do?

1:10 - Rhiannon Bolen: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I joined GridBase about a year ago. You know, effectively, we are a tech startup, we're a technology solution. And my role when I joined was to kind of help lead the strategic sales initiative to take us kind of into the next phase of the growth of our product. And basically what we're attempting to solve for is the interaction between lenders and the title agents that they work with.

1:48 - Rhiannon Bolen: The interaction between a lender and their title agents has historically been and still to this day is still pretty manual. Most of it's done via email, most of it outside of a system of record.

2:24 - Rhiannon Bolen: Our solution is a technology middleware. And basically what we do is we connect those two systems so that lenders and their title partners can get completely out of email. It's an integration that passes the data and the documents and notes and statuses and alerts and different things back and forth between a lender system of record and a title agent's system of record.

3:42 - Val Buresch: That's awesome. Let me see if I understand it correctly. So you are like the glue. You're not necessarily doing title, title research, title recording, but you are the bridge, as you said, the glue between systems in order to make that transfer of information more efficient between the lender and the title company.

4:02 - Rhiannon Bolen: Yeah, I sometimes call it the invisible connector, but that's essentially what it is. Not doing the workflow. We're not handling the workflow. Basically, our technology does is from the time the order itself gets placed for title and then through that eventual workflow, there's a lot of back and forth that takes place.

4:43 - Val Buresch: Yeah. And who are your clients? Are the title companies your clients or the lenders or both?

4:50 - Rhiannon Bolen: Both, yeah, it's a bit of both. When, before I got to GridBase, our strategy was really around working with title agents. And so many of our clients were title agents that we had an integration built to their title production systems.

5:31 - Rhiannon Bolen: My job was and is to try to communicate the opportunity to be able to work with all of their title partners irrespective of the business model, whether it's more consumer direct and refi driven or purchase and retail driven to kind of have a consistent workflow, right?

6:36 - Val Buresch: Yeah, I can see that. Totally see that. And it's a very exciting opportunity and I would love to learn more. Yeah. Well, but let's go back to the beginning of your career, because it's always interesting to me.

7:02 - Val Buresch: Yes, yes. And so you had a little picture of you as a little girl and or little boy, know, all of your colleagues there. And then we see you, your picture now as a grownup. So I was wondering when I looked at your pictures as a little girl, what drew you to the mortgage banking as a career?

7:33 - Rhiannon Bolen: I'm like a lot of others in the industry in that I'm a child of mortgage. So my mom was in the mortgage industry for her whole career. She retired a couple years back. So she spent most of her, all of her career really in mortgage banking and working in various different types of roles.

8:03 - Rhiannon Bolen: I was a small business owner before I got into the real estate finance space and ended up winding down the business. And effectively needing to find a job. And so I was very young at the time, young entrepreneur, and my mom was in the industry and she had a lot of friends and a big network and she was able to identify an opportunity for me.

8:32 - Rhiannon Bolen: I've kind of grown up in the industry, to be honest, I've been in the industry for about 25 years. And I've spent most of that in outside business to business, some sort of a sales or sales leadership, strategic sales type of role, and in various parts.

9:19 - Val Buresch: Yeah, and with 25 years of experience and so many different parts of the industry, you have seen it all. You have seen 2008, 2022, kind of period of COVID. So how did you navigate all these changes?

9:53 - Rhiannon Bolen: I mean, I think much like probably everybody else, we all just kind of held on for dear life, depending on, you know, what, what was going on at the time. You know, being around for so long, I think that the, the only thing that's consistent in our industry is that it changes consistently.

10:23 - Rhiannon Bolen: I think it's just more about, you know, you find yourself in, and I myself have been involved in, you know, acquisitions and the closing down of companies while I was there and, you know, selling off of the company. And so I've been involved in a lot of those different things throughout my career.

11:27 - Rhiannon Bolen: We've all kind of joined arms and been through this roller coaster on this roller coaster ride together, right? So there's a lot of, you know, I a lot of friends in this industry, lot of, you know, colleagues that, you know, I lean on for advice throughout, you know, these kind of challenging times and vice versa.

12:11 - Rhiannon Bolen: You know, partly. I think that having a broad knowledge of the holistic mortgage industry, not just the pieces and the parts that maybe you are involved with or maybe where you've built your career, but kind of understanding how it all holistically works together and how it's interconnected, I think is a really critical component of being able to be successful.

13:21 - Rhiannon Bolen: I'm gonna put my stake in the ground in the mortgage industry. And so I needed to learn as much as I could and hone the skill set for the role that I was in at the time. And sometimes I've had the good fortune of, I worked for companies that invested in their employees and invested in certain skill sets to help you grow in your career.

14:34 - Val Buresch: I wanted also to ask you about something that you built. So I didn't know that you were an entrepreneur in the beginning of your career, but you, I think you have preserved that entrepreneurial spirit.

15:05 - Rhiannon Bolen: Yeah, I mean, yes, to a certain extent, yes, that there was, you know, there was a gap that I saw, you know, we started the Texas Women Mortgage Bankers in 2019. And there was at the time.

15:52 - Rhiannon Bolen: Empower sort of really brought that to light. So for me, when I went to those first meetings, was kind of like, huh, this is, I've always been passionate being from, like I mentioned, child of mortgage and the daughter of a female executive in the mortgage industry.

16:22 - Rhiannon Bolen: Empower kind of was an inspiration for that because they approach things with like, know, there are some gaps that exist here. It's statistically out there that there's gaps in pay and gaps in opportunity.

17:12 - Rhiannon Bolen: TMBA in its 107 year history, 107 years, has had six women presidents only. And so at the time there happened to be a woman president and she's a friend of mine and I went to her and I said, hey, there's this thing that's going on over here.

18:00 - Rhiannon Bolen: And the reason that is, is because we're a state association. And from the beginning, my, almost my, you know, my kind of number one objective was that we could touch and interact with women in the state of Texas that maybe don't get to travel to empower.

19:00 - Rhiannon Bolen: Take three hours out of their day and come join us for this particular event. And so we set it out to be a distinctly different event, but part of the greater event of one of the Texas Mortgage Bankers events, separate registration.

20:10 - Rhiannon Bolen: A role or a bigger role in that scenario, but they also work full time, right? So, for us, it was just really important that we could touch women maybe that couldn't go to the bigger conferences or travel or go to those things, but also what we could do by being together in a room and progress sort of whatever our key objectives were for our lives and our career.

21:01 - Rhiannon Bolen: Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, actually, we started out in 2019 officially. I think there was 45 people at our first event and we now have over 550 members that participate in our events. So the growth has been incredible.

22:08 - Rhiannon Bolen: So when we set out, we've kind of settled into a little bit of the way that we frame our events. And that has evolved since we first started because we actually started in 2019 and then we went into COVID. And so that was a real challenge because when you're trying to kick off a new networking group or whatever you want to call it.

23:03 - Rhiannon Bolen: And so we've gotten into a place where we identify topics that are important or timely. And we have a portion of all of our events that we have some, maybe it's a speaker or panel or some subject matter expert that speaks to the group.

24:01 - Rhiannon Bolen: Know, laughter and tears and people sharing and people getting, you know, finding mentors in the moment and then carrying on and then, you know, eventual success stories of people taking what they've learned or the advice they got from one of our events into something else that made them, you know, more successful in their career or they got a promotion or they embarked on a different journey that they didn't have maybe the...

25:02 - Val Buresch: Really, really wonderful and beautiful. And I would love to come to one of your meetings. I really, this sounds wonderful. Yeah. I love to travel and especially to events that are a little bit like that, like what you're describing. This is very wholesome in my opinion.

26:06 - Val Buresch: And I wanted to move in this topic. One thing that I have mentioned to you is that I always thought that advocacy is the same as lobbying, but you began to tell me that this is not the case. Can you help me have that story straight? What is advocacy? What is lobbying? How are they different? How they're the same or they're never the same?

27:10 - Rhiannon Bolen: And for purposes of us being able to continue that mission and putting people in homes, we are a very regulated industry, as everybody knows. there's a number, every time Congress is in session, there's inevitably some kind of piece of legislation that comes up on the docket that potentially could positively or negatively affect what we're trying to do.

28:27 - Rhiannon Bolen: And kind of, you know, government affairs, let's say, even before I did the Texas Women Mortgage Bankers. So at the state level with TMBA, I spent the better part of like, I think, like five years being the PAC chair, as well as our industry relations, spent time doing our industry relations and ran a couple of our state level, we had advocacy days as well.

29:26 - Rhiannon Bolen: You know, about specific issues, you know, in particular issues that are going to directly affect consumers that buy homes. And I think it's incumbent upon us that participate in the mortgage industry to be aware of and educate ourselves on whatever's coming at us, you know, whatever legislative issues, you know, it could be new bills, could be changes to old, you know, bills that were put into law.

30:27 - Rhiannon Bolen: Right? It's focused on directly influencing specific legislation and that could be at the local, the state, or the federal level. Meaning we're actively engaging with lawmakers about specific issues that we learned about, that we advocate for, but now we're engaging with a lawmaker to say, hey, this is, you know, maybe not the right path to go down or this is awesome, but could we all

31:25 - Val Buresch: Yeah, I've attended two, three times the National Advocacy Conference and I'm always amazed how interesting the discussions get. And also for me, as an immigrant to the US, I am always amazed at the process of democracy. You have access to the legislation, you go to the Hill and you speak directly with the people who vote on those things. So I think it's an awesome experience.

32:15 - Rhiannon Bolen: For me, I'm on the business to business side, so I feel that legislation that affects my clients, meaning mostly in the lending community, is gonna directly affect me because it affects my ability to do business with them if it's gonna impact their business in some way.

32:41 - Val Buresch: Can you share a specific win of this process, maybe in Texas, maybe nationally, where this type of grassroots advocacy really changed a legislator's mind, maybe moved the needle on a bill, maybe changed the housing policy completely, or anything you would like to share with us?

33:12 - Rhiannon Bolen: In Texas. It was previously written into the Texas state constitution that if you had done a cash out loan on a property in Texas that it always had to be considered a cash out loan from forever forward, right? So from that moment forward it always had to be considered a cash out loan.

34:20 - Rhiannon Bolen: And we successfully passed legislation that would allow homeowners to take advantage of those low rates and do a rate and term refi without having to call it a cash out loan. And then at the federal level, this is really recent. I'm sure a lot of us have heard about it or seen it.

35:00 - Rhiannon Bolen: And eventually the legislation passed. I think it took it crossed over into a into a new session, but it eventually passed. We picked it back up and it eventually passed in the next session. And now that was signed into law by the president and that goes into effect in March of this year. And it was a big win for our industry and for consumers.

36:10 - Val Buresch: So I want to pivot because we both of us have to go to other parts of our business lives today. But I want to talk to you about the habits, about some skills that you have developed, best practices in your practice, so to speak, both as a consultant, as a business to business solution provider, as well as advocacy.

36:58 - Val Buresch: I know that, and you have mentioned it also, that people often underestimate the time that you spend preparing for a call or a meeting versus being on that call or in that meeting. And so I was wondering what your pregame looks like, whether you can share some of your secret sauce with us.

37:08 - Rhiannon Bolen: For me the importance of investing in my skill set and my own growth and education in my career. And I've been doing business to business or B2B sales since the dawn of time, it seems like sometimes. And it's a very, I think B2B is first off, it's a hone to skill set for sure.

37:58 - Rhiannon Bolen: A lot of my focus throughout my career has been to build my reputation as a trusted individual with the network that I operate in. And I tend to kind of lean in more to a consultative style of engaging because I do honestly have a genuine desire to help support solutions that are solving a challenge in our industry.

38:28 - Rhiannon Bolen: And I approach my interactions with kind of what I would call a genuine curiosity because I really want to understand what's happening inside of a business and where I might have an opportunity to support an initiative or resolve an issue that's inside of that business or not.

39:11 - Rhiannon Bolen: Questions that are relevant to whomever it is that you're speaking with and what their role is. Learning how to navigate inside of an organization and being able to talk about different aspects of the business. We talked about this a little bit earlier. That's why CMB, think, is so important because in going that journey, having a broad knowledge of the holistic nature of our business

40:08 - Rhiannon Bolen: Sales also heavily involves inter-department cross-functional management where you have to engage with internal stakeholders in the product organization or the development team or the business analysts or customer success or legal or procurement or whatever it might be inside of an organization depending on its size.

41:15 - Rhiannon Bolen: But it's all what I talked about. It's managing that sales cycle along the way, but on both sides between the external component of it, which is the client, and the internal component of it, which is getting everybody aligned so that you can get the deal over the finish line. That's a lot of what goes into these types of discussions in this type of role.

42:01 - Rhiannon Bolen: A lot of it's incumbent upon you as the sales professional or the sales leader to come armed with the right types of questions to ask so that you could identify where or whether or if your solution is going to fulfill a need, whether it's now or in the future and what that timeline looks like and then how to get it done.

42:28 - Val Buresch: Yeah. Rhiannon, I can talk to you all day and I definitely would love to come and visit you and get to in one of those meetings. would love to. Yeah. But I have one last question for you in our podcast. So let's imagine this scenario, a young mortgage professional, like maybe out of high school or close to

42:58 - Val Buresch: High school or out of college comes to you and says, Rhiannon I have $1,000 or I have 10 hours to invest in a new skill. What would you say to that young person? What skills should they buy or learn right now, now that we are standing in and looking at 2026 in order to future-proof their career? You've been through it all. What's your advice?

43:25 - Rhiannon Bolen: This is a very easy question for me to answer. And it's probably not one that you potentially hear a lot. Cause I know, you you've got, everybody talks about AI coding, you know, all this stuff around, around technology that, that I think is the, whatever, whatever everybody says you should hone your skillset on, but I'm going to go a completely different direction.

43:55 - Rhiannon Bolen: I think there is there's so much to be gained from learning how to engage with your superiors, with your colleagues and peers, with clients. I think there's so much to be gained from learning how to ask for and advocate for yourself, how to navigate challenging discussions, how to articulate your value.

44:26 - Rhiannon Bolen: And communication, I believe, is critical for what we do. So I think communicating effectively, while it may not be the obvious choice, I think it's a crucial part for creating success for yourself as a young professional. And this ultimately, I think, can take young professionals into leadership roles and for them to see future growth in their career.

45:02 - Val Buresch: This is an excellent advice and I totally agree with you. I think as people are leaning into the role of artificial intelligence in their day-to-day work, they will be craving more and more real connections with other human beings and real communication.

45:41 - Val Buresch: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you if you can tell us, share with us where they can get involved with you with more PAC, where they can follow your work at grid base, learn more about Texas Women MBA, if you can give us those links or idea how to stay in touch.

46:06 - Rhiannon Bolen: Yeah, think, mean, LinkedIn is kind of the mechanism for how we communicate in real estate finance business more often than not. much of that is all, I post a lot and share around some of the things that we're doing with Morpac and MAA for the MBA, same thing with Texas Women Mortgage Bankers.

46:43 - Val Buresch: Good. I'll share your LinkedIn link in the show notes. Rhiannon, thank you very much for your service to the industry that you shared with us today and for joining us for this very honest and useful discussion today.

47:01 - Rhiannon Bolen: Thanks, I appreciate it, Val.

47:02 - Val Buresch: And thank you to all of our listeners. I'm Val Buresch and this is CMBConnect. See you next time.

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