Who are you? Introduce yourself!

Hey everyone, my name is Kevin Chew and I am a Sr. Strategy Analyst at Land Home Financial Services. I would love to connect with other Mortgage Director<>Blend users. Please reach out!

Hello! 

I am Myriah Conyers I am the Mortgage Production Engineer at Sound Community Bank in Seattle. We are using Blend for apps into Encompass. We are also bringing on opening of deposit accounts this year. This year our goal is to get eMortgages moving and the LO Toolkit running. 

Hi everyone,

My name is Britt Stenstrom, Digital Lending Manager at PRMG. I have 2 huskies and am totally obsessed with dogs. They think I spend too much time on Blend. 

Hey folks, Ryan here. SO SO SO excited to have this community kicked off and to see the continuation of what has been built over the past two years! You are all what makes the community so great already, and I am looking forward to the future.

Loving the posts about everyone’s pets..I’ve two of my own, Leo and Luna. Both mixed pups, both well loved (and spoiled). They tend to lay at my feet and act like socks most of the day so my feet NEVER get cold 

Hi everyone. I’m Kandace Klumper, Mortgage Systems Admin for Alerus Mortgage. I’m just getting back from ICE Experience22! Was a great conference. Met several people I know from online and ran into a couple former co-workers! Good conference!

So, I’ve been in IT pretty much my entire career (I have a “fancy” computer degree, which barely gets used). Started out writing custom programs in lowly Access (2.0) for my employers, and switching over to VB.Net and Visual Studio was a struggle, but once there, I loved it. About 18 years ago I fell into a mortgage company as their custom programmer (I wrote a few custom integrations for extracting data from the LOS so it could be ingested into something else. I wrote their custom Secondary Marketing system (all in Access) back in 2003). When that company switched over to Encompass in 2014/2015 they eventually realized they had a coder in the house and tapped me to join their Encompass Admin team. I’ve been working with Encompass ever since, and I’m now a Certified Admin in Encompass. The only coding I do these days is what I get to do inside business rules and behind input forms.

I’m fond of saying what I know about mortgage I’ve learned through osmosis. Listening and watching and solving software issues for the production teams.

I/we have two Mini Schnauzers in our house. Our old lady, Elke (12), and an 8-mos-old, Ava. Ava absolutely loves Elke, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Elke was an only dog until last year, and she’s not particularly happy sharing her humans with the rambunctious pup. (Our grown daughter wanted a puppy and had been working on it for a couple of years. I would have preferred to wait.)

Hi everyone! 

My name is Nick C and I am a Customer Enablement Manager with Blend. I am one of the people who helps introduce new users to Blend and often will work with your organization’s training team during and after deployment. I joined Blend a little over a year ago after spending the previous 17 years in financial services. (If you also started out as a Teller, feel free to reach out and we can swap stories!  ) 

I don’t have any pets myself but I love everyone else’s dogs. I am really looking forward to seeing this community grow and hope to connect with you! 

Greetings and salutations 

I am Ruth Clanton.  I’m the mortgage systems admin at United Federal Credit Union (based in Michigan, but branches in MI, IN, OH, NC, AR, NV).  I’ve been our Encompass admin at UFCU for 11 years.  We launched Blend as our POS two-ish years ago (not long before the WebCenter sunset with Ellie Mae/ICE).  

We currently use the Toolkit (so we can order credit, run DU, issue pre-qual letters within Blend).  We do not trigger TRID in Blend.  We do not use auto-export (because then our people can’t edit/revise pre-quals).  We have not yet jumped to the new integration...and have been discussing eClose but not jumped into that either.

No pets here...just a husband and two energetic boys (ages 8 and 9) 

Hey everybody!

My name is Mark Amantea and I’m a Customer Enablement Manager here at Blend. I work with our clients (you!) to teach the functionality of Blend’s Platform in live sessions.  All on zoom for now, but can’t wait to get out and meet y’all in person one day (hopefully soon)! 

I joined Blend last year after 10 years in commercial real estate banking.  Like Christian, I’m a fellow Clevelander and I follow my hometown teams religiously - for better or worse, and the Browns are always my Super Bowl pick (it’s a sickness, I know...).

Very excited to see this Community come to life and truly looking forward to working everyone!

Mark

Hi Everyone! My name is Ali and I am the Sr Product Analyst for our RE Lending department at Amplify Credit Union. Currently, we only lend in the state of Texas but we have tripled our business year over year in the last 3 years.

My role means I wear a few hats, being the PM on most of our projects, the BA scoping all new projects and changes, and the Sys Admin for Blend, Encompass, FNMA, and Lenderlink. I’ve been in the mortgage business for 24 years and moved from Operations Mgmt to IT about 3 years ago. I have to admit it’s where my real passion & niche is. There’s nothing better to me than seeing the landscape of the industry changing into an experience that is much more cohesive for borrowers, but that can really only be achieved when we’re able to collaborate with our vendor partners so I am SO stoked to see this community coming together in a forum like this! 

PS since we’re all sharing, I have a chaweenie named lola who is 9 and is the cutest. :)

Hello! My name is Alex Cohick and I manage our Blend system at Jersey Shore State Bank in Williamsport, PA. Our claim to fame is Williamsport is the home of the Little League World Series! We have been using Blend since 2019. Look forward to learning much more about the Blend system and working with everyone.

Hi! I’m Jenna the Corporate Training Coordinator at First Centennial Mortgage. We’re based in IL, but I live in WI (near New Glarus Brewing Company for all the Midwesterners). I manage Blend for our teams and provide training on other new features we adopt in Encompass and some other vendor services. I recognize a few of you from The Admin Portal and am looking forward to having a similar space for Blend discussions! 

Happy Tuesday!

Hello Everyone!

My name is Joe Wojtysiak, I am the Mortgage Lending Support and Systems Analyst for Credit Union 1. We are based in Lombard, Illinois and licensed to do business in IL, IN and NV with anticipation to expand to additional states within the year. We have been using Blend for a few years now and just recently transitioned to Encompass about a year ago with Blend as the POS. I am the credit union’s Encompass Admin but work very heavily with Blend to correlate the Blend and Encompass integration. 

I look forward to getting to know everyone more and hopefully use this platform to gain some additional knowledge about Blend and how everyone is using it to their advantage. 

Love me some Spotted Cow!!  I went to school in Milwaukee-  really miss New Glarus’s local-only beers!