Mike Goodwin is the Credit GTM Lead at Plaid, where he drives go-to-market strategy for the company’s credit and lending solutions. With deep experience at the intersection of financial technology, partnerships, and product strategy, including prior leadership roles at Credit Karma and SquareTrade, Mike plays a key role in Plaid’s mission to make financial services more inclusive. At Plaid, he is currently focused on enabling the next generation of underwriting, helping lenders adopt cash flow data to better assess creditworthiness. Michael holds an MBA from The Wharton School and a BA from Johns Hopkins University, and brings a thoughtful, data-informed perspective on how technology is reshaping mortgage lending.
Carissa is a dynamic sales leader with deep expertise in SaaS and mortgage technology. Currently Head of Sales at Cloudvirga, she drives revenue and market expansion through innovative strategy, team leadership, and cross-functional collaboration in the digital mortgage space.
With over a decade of experience, Carissa has held high-impact roles across organizations like Stavvy, ReverseVision, and UNMB Home Loans. Her strengths span partner strategy, enterprise sales, reverse mortgage consulting, and building scalable sales processes from the ground up.
Carissa brings a proven track record of transforming sales teams, exceeding growth targets, and aligning go-to-market efforts across product, marketing, and customer success. She’s known for turning strategy into execution — and results.
Having graduated from WVU in 2004 with a Bachelors in Finance, Christopher started his career during one of the most unprecedented highs in the real estate industry. He navigated the raging rapids of the lending market and gained invaluable experience in identifying strategic areas of potential growth. Then during the subsequent recession, he studied government reformations to understand how to pilot the new topography mapped out by the CFPB and to also find new areas of profitable expansion within the fintech industry.
In 2015, Christopher’s background and expertise caught the attention of an executive team of a company later to become Cloudvirga. Over his tenure at Cloudvirga, Christopher has used both his professional successes and failures to drive key areas of product improvement and development. His personal mantra has always been at the core of this strategic approach: ‘find the best and make it better.’
Ryan Ma is a Solutions Engineer dedicated to the UiPath Banking, Insurance, and Financial Services vertical. As a solutions engineer, Ryan works with enterprise customers to educate and drive adoption of robotic and agentic technologies within core business operations. Prior to UiPath, Ryan spent five years working in process management, process improvement and process mining.
With over 20 years of proven success in mortgage operations, loan fulfillment, and operational strategy, Rola excels at transforming end-to-end lending operations, driving digital innovation, and leveraging AI, automation, and data analytics to deliver measurable improvements in efficiency, compliance, and profitability.
As Chief Fulfillment Officer at Rate, Rola leads enterprise-wide initiatives that modernize loan manufacturing, streamline underwriting workflows, and strengthen credit policy and collateral risk management. She spearheaded the launch of Same Day Mortgage, a disruptive fulfillment model that delivers approvals within hours—cutting cycle times, elevating borrower satisfaction, and significantly reducing operational costs. Additionally, Rola co-led the development of Gateless Smart Underwrite, an AI-powered platform that automates document analysis, condition clearing, and underwriting decisions to improve speed, accuracy, and scalability.
Rola has deep expertise in credit policy governance, collateral evaluation, and investor guideline alignment—ensuring regulatory compliance while mitigating risk and maintaining high loan quality standards. Her track record includes successfully scaling mortgage operations, building high-performance teams, and implementing process optimization strategies that enhance operational excellence and support sustainable growth.
A strategic and people-focused leader, Rola emphasizes collaboration, continuous employee development, and a data-driven mindset that aligns operational execution with long-term business objectives. She is passionate about leveraging technology and process innovation to create agile, future-ready mortgage operations that drive competitive advantage.
Nicole Booth is the Head of Public Policy at Zillow, bringing nearly two decades of expertise in housing technology and executive leadership. She has a robust background in business strategy, public policy, and regulatory affairs.
Previously, Nicole was the Executive Vice President of Public Affairs at Proof (formerly Notarize), where she established and led the Public Affairs Team, driving the company’s digital transformation initiatives. She also held the position of Vice President of Public Policy at the Rocket Family of Companies and served as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at QC Ally.
In 2024, Nicole was honored by Women in Housing Finance at their 40th Anniversary celebration as an outstanding leader recognized for her impact and leadership in the housing and financial services industries. She is also a previous recipient of the MBA Burton C. Wood Legislative Service Award and an active supporter of mPower.
Peter Idziak has represented clients in all areas of residential mortgage lending for more than a decade. Lenders regularly call him for advice on regulatory matters and compliance issues concerning all aspects of consumer lending and real property law.
His experience advising lenders on federal and state consumer financial laws and regulations spans several statutes, including the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, Truth in Lending Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act and the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. He also routinely advises clients on Veterans Administration, Federal Housing
Administration and Government-Sponsored Enterprise requirements.
As Polunsky Beitel Green’s senior associate, he is also responsible for training and supervising the firm’s associate attorneys.
An honors graduate in government at Harvard University, Peter earned his law degree with honors at the University of Texas School of Law. He is also an MBA Certified Mortgage Compliance Professional (CMCP).
Raised in Phoenix, Arizona, Shawn Malkou started his entrepreneurship journey at the age of 14 when he began uploading videos to YouTube. Through consistency, persistence, and quality… he generated over 100,000,000 video views before the age of 18. Fast forward, Shawn entered the mortgage industry in 2018 and eventually founded X2 Mortgage in 2021 as local mortgage brokerage with about 20 employees. Focusing on consistently being a top producer, Shawn was named #1 Mortgage Broker in the Country Under the Age of 30 for 2024. To Shawn, it’s all about finding not only what works – but what works better each and every day.
Leah Sommerville is DocMagic’s Director of Sales, responsible for leading our sales team with nearly a decade of experience in the eMortgage industry. She is a thought leader and frequent speaker on managing digital mortgage transformation, sharing her passion about empowering the mortgage industry towards the future of lending.
Leah has been honored with numerous industry awards, including Mortgage Professional America’s 50 Elite Women in Mortgage, Mortgage Professional Association’s Elite Women Award, National Mortgage Professional’s 40 Under 40 Influential Mortgage Professionals, Progress in Lending Association’s NextGen Leader Award, Progress in Lending’s Trailblazer Award, and the HousingWire Rising Star Award.
Prior to DocMagic, she held sales executive and director of marketing positions in the mortgage technology industry. Leah holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington.
Josh Weinberg is the President of Firstline Compliance, a consulting company specializing in mortgage compliance and technology and a Co-Founder of Talk’uments, the industry’s solution for providing language access and increasing market share. He previously served on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Residential Board of Governors (RESBOG) as the Chair of the State Legislative and Regulatory Committee and was the past Chair of MBA’s Regulatory Compliance Committee, and the previous Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for MISMO.
Before Firstline he was the Executive Vice President of Compliance for Guaranteed Rate, Inc. (now Rate), and before that the EVP of Compliance for First Choice Loan Services Inc. He has also worked for a major LOS vendor, and in retail banking and non-depository environments, as well as independently, as the owner of a mortgage broker company.