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Marcia Davies: Creating Bold Impact Through Empowerment · The Bold Lounge

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: My name is Leigh Burgess and I will be your host.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: If you're anything like me, you love hearing inspiring stories of people who have gone on bold journeys and made a positive impact in the world.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: This podcast is all about those kinds of stories.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Every week, we'll hear from someone who has taken a leap or embarked on an extraordinary journey.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: In addition to hearing their stories, we'll also learn about their bold growth mindset that they use to make things happen.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Whether they face challenges or doubts along the way, they persisted and ultimately achieved their goals.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: These impactful stories will leave you feeling motivated and inspired to pursue your own bold journey.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: I believe everyone has a bold story waiting to be freed.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Tune in and get ready to be inspired.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bold Lounge.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Today I have Marsha Davies.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: She is the Chief Operating Officer for Mortgage Bankers Association.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: She is responsible for ensuring cross-organizational alignment and facilitating the implementation of strategic initiatives, as well as maintaining oversight of key organizational priorities.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: She's also the lead strategist of MBA's external activities, providing leadership, guidance and overall management to the public affairs and marketing divisions.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: In addition, marsha provides strategic direction in the management of MBA conferences, membership, education, information technology and the office services divisions.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: She also provides management oversight, too, and is a board member of MBA's Open Doors Foundation.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: She's also the founder of Empower MBA, promoting opportunities for women to extend their reach in MBA's networking platform for women in real estate and the finance industry.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Congratulations for all that you've done and all that you're in charge of and leading.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you on the Bold Lounge.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, leigh.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: So we'll start off with your bold definition.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: What does bold look like in Marsha's life?
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: What's your definition?
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: look like in Marsha's life.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: What's your definition?
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, I have more than one.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I will start with.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: Bold is speaking your mind, even when you know people in the room may have different opinions or want to go in different directions than you're proposing.
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: So that's number one.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: The other thing about being bold to me is being risk-taking.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So some can say that's the same thing right.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Using your voice when you know you may be the only voice speaking something is a risk.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: But I also think risk-taking being bold is stepping out of your comfort zone and really having confidence in yourself that, whether you succeed or fail, you're going to be okay and it's worth taking that risk.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: So I love the combination of speaking your mind even though there might be differing opinions, speaking up and out when no one else may be, and kind of standing out and being out of your comfort zone, of when you're standing out.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I mean that's the definition of that.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: You're not in a quiet place in the sense of you like people see you, people hear you, and that can be a risk, and so there's a factor of risk taking.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: One of the things I was going to say I learned because early in my career in the March finance industry, I was often the only woman at the table and I would speak my as I mentioned to you when we were doing our meet and greet that I'm a farm girl from New Jersey.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: That's where I was born and raised and I wasn't used to not speaking my mind the way where I grew up and what I found was a lot of times if there was something controversial, the men in the room would wait for me to say it.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It's almost like and I remember vividly a meeting where I realized the men were expecting me to carry the heavy water, like the heavy buckets of water, into this meeting, because they knew I couldn't help myself but to speak up, and so I had to learn how to use it strategically and not let others off the hook, because the meeting before the meeting, they all agreed, but none of them mentioned it in front of the boss, right, because they expected me, which I would often do, right?
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I was young and you know I couldn't help myself.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: I can relate.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: Being bold, you also need to be selective.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: I think of when you want to be bold.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you learn that as you get older.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: At least in my case I did.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I felt like early on in my 20s, early 30s, like everyone should hear my opinion and know where I'm coming from.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean in a disrespectful way, but I didn't realize, probably until my early forties in the corporate world, that I need to be sure where on the continuum of boldness I'm coming into a meeting where you know I might've been like bold factor nine.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: You know I needed to be more of a bold factor three, which doesn't mean you're not bold, it's just a quieter version of it, right?
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Well, I felt I don't want to be exploited for my boldness, Right.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: It's like if they agree with me, why aren't they speaking up?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Right yeah.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: So in your definition, what's a memorable bold moment for you that comes to mind when you think about?
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: I was bold when so.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: I was at an organization that was very big on education because it was run by a CEO who had his PhD and he hired all of his most of his, if not all of his senior leaders had PhDs and I was, you know, obviously way down in the organization.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I'm working my way up and I was applying for a vice president's job and I don't have a lot of degrees.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I went to a two year college.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I was hired at this organization in 1984.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: They hired me for my skills, not for what school I went to, and I remember the CEO interviewing me, which was unusual, but I had been previously in a job where I worked very closely with the CEO and we had I always say we grew up there together.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: He was older than I was, but I watched his rise to be the CEO and you know it was my turn to step into a vice president role and he wanted to interview me and I will never forget him sitting around the table saying why do you think I should make someone who doesn't have a four-year degree a vice president in this organization?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: And I said well, with all due respect, the last two vice presidents that you picked didn't work out.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: They had advanced degrees, and every time they didn't work out, I had to step in and do their job.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: So why don't you just give me the job that I've been doing for the last three years?
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: And your two failed attempts of selecting the right person?
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: And he put his pen down and he said I can't argue with that.
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: That's a great answer and it's very bold answer, right?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: So you're?
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: You're not only saying I'm definitely qualified one, two, I've been doing the job, and three, the people you've picked with the letters behind their name.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: It doesn't equal experience, success and the ability to do the job Right, and we're not dissing four-year degrees.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: No, not at all.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: We're saying that sometimes and I can use my mom as an example she has no letters by her name and that's a really big deal to her.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: She wishes she had them, but she's wise beyond any letters behind her name.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: So I think, thinking about what actually equals ability, what actually equals success.
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: It sounds like your CEO made an incredible decision and started you on your path in leadership and, I think, knowing ahead of time what I was unsure about.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: So women oftentimes will self-select putting themselves forward for a promotion right, like we'll select-select putting themselves forward for a promotion right Like we'll select ourselves out.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: We'll look at the requirements and we'll say I've only got nine of the 10.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: So I've got to get that 10th before I can.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: And men look at a job and go, oh, that's my next job and so walking into it.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: I knew I didn't have what the CEO felt was the most important qualification, but I know from the seat I was sitting in and the job I had been doing.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: And I felt my advantage was he isn't that close, obviously, as the CEO, to know the daily workings of the job that I was doing.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: So the best thing I could do was to look at what scared me the most.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: What question could he ask me that I was nervous about answering and figuring out a way to do it, and so I used my experience and my success in the job to be the selling point, not the things that he necessarily valued the most.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: So even taking a different vantage point on how to talk about your qualifications right Sometimes even just today I was having a conversation about it's not the resume, it's how you talk about and tell your story, right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Storytelling is something that we hear a lot about, but it sounds like you were doing that as you were going for this VP role.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: You were telling the story about your ability, about you know the organization itself and on how you can actually do the job you were doing, as well as take it to the next level.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Had you always thought of yourself to be in the banking industry, or Never?
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Okay, what did you think you were going to be when you were at Farm Girl in New Jersey?
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I was raised my parents you know I'm a traditional boomer right I was raised by parents.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: My father was the provider and my mother took care of the kids and my father had a business and addition to the farm and he really believed that we would get married and be taken care of.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I have a sister and a brother and he put the brother in the business and my sister and I were you.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I were left to get a job and get married so early on.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I didn't have these dreams and aspirations of a young woman saying, oh, this is what I'm going to do with my life.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: I had to figure it out on my own and I went into my first job.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: It was in New Jersey at a French chemical company and I was there as a secretary and I got married young and my husband at the time we'll get back to that other story but my husband at that time got transferred to the DC area and my sister was already here in DC.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: And my sister was already here in DC and she put me this is back when they had hiring agencies Do you remember where you would go in and the agency had a group of clients and they'd send you off on all these job interviews and I worked.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I got a job at the Association of Trial Lawyers.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: And.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: I went in as a secretary there to the head of administration.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: It was a not-for-profit, so the job that he had was to make money for the association by hosting conferences and things that would bring revenue in.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: We had other revenue sources as well, but that's what my boss did, and so I was working there and doing a good job and advancing in my abilities to make money doing conferences and events into a different department, which left this hole, this vacancy, where they needed someone to help them market their company at industry conferences and events.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: She said to me I think you would be great at this job.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: And then back in 1984, you know they walked your resume to HR.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Hr gave you a call and you talked to the hiring manager.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: You know we didn't have hiring panels and you know the various interviews.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it was very kind of, and I ended up getting a job at that organization, which was late later rebranded as Freddie Mac, which is in mortgage finance, and that's how I ended up in finance.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, and then, when you kind of got into that role.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: It sounded like you didn't have anything planned, like you didn't have anything planned, like you hadn't planned to like.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: This is what I'm going to be.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: This is what I'm going to do.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: What did you start to see about yourself that you realized I can do this, because sometimes when we're being bold, it's the I can do it, that I just wish I could help people see what I see?
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: But as you started to like, do the things in the industry that you know wasn't planned, but trying new things, talking to people, learning new things was there a moment of like wow, I like this and I'm good at it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Interestingly, because I came from a job where I had to make sure I negotiated everything with whether it's vendors or hotels, you name it everything with, whether it's vendors or hotels, you name it I had to make sure everything went well.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: But also I had to do it with as little money as possible in order to return money to the organization right.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So you have to have this great experience, but you also need to make sure the person who's paying their registration fee or they're, you know, paying for a syllabus, whatever it is that they really feel that they got the value for it.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: I go to this other organization where my job is to market the company in a memorable way.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: It was a corporation.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: They had so much money that my first six months when I was there, we went into the budgeting process for them and I said I can return all this money to you.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I don't need it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And they're like how is that possible?
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: Your events are amazing.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: You've brought them to another level, and so what's so funny is I didn't even know that that was a skill at the time.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: I just knew that was the only way.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: I knew how to do it Right and I got promoted in the first six months they thought I was brilliant.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't feel I was brilliant.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I feel like I was just doing my job, and so I don't think it resonated with me until I had a boss who, after I had been at the organization and I had grown the area that I was managing, he took me to lunch one day and he said you know, you've been here seven years, you made the organization better.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: Our brand is doing really well.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: We're known for all of these things.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Is that all you want to do?
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: And I said well, I haven't really thought that far in advance.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I had just had two babies very close together and you know I'm juggling being a mother and I've got this job.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: That I know.
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: And you know that feeling when you're so confident in your job, you don't worry about it at night.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was worried about making sure the kids got to daycare, you know all of those things were kind of taking over my stress.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: And he said I want to move you into a completely different area where you're going to have more ability to grow and contribute in a different way to the organization, because right now you're at the top of where you can be and if that's all you want.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: That's fine, but I think you can make bigger contributions.
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: And he saw something in me that I never saw in myself, which was my leadership skills, my ability to get people, to influence people, get them to see things, my because a lot.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I made a lot of change in that organization from the when I had started to where I had gotten to, and so he literally took a leap of faith with me and put me in an area that I had never.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: I had no technical skills in right.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: It was to manage public affairs and media relations.
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a communications background.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I didn't have a communications background.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I didn't have the skills to determine what's a good press release from a bad press release.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: And what he said to me is I'm not hiring you because I need you to write the press releases.
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I'm hiring you for your leadership, your instincts, your ability to influence your way with people, and this department needs all of those things.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: And I took that leap of faith and it changed the entire path of my career and I learned that I can do things that are really hard.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: I can survive a change that I didn't know how it was going to end.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: Right, I didn't know if I was gonna be successful or not.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: I didn't know if I was going to be successful or not when I took the job.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: I also, after four years, had the strength to take care of myself, which was, I understand, that organization was happy with me in that job.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: But the job didn't give back to me.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: It didn't fill my cup and I wanted something to fill my cup and I took a risk same organization and I went completely in a different direction and went to work for one of the business units and took those skills and I'll never forget the boss that had moved me into that job was gone from the organization and I had just heard I got this new job.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: It was in the part of the organization it's servicing.
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: So when you send your mortgage payment in, the people who process that mortgage payment, make sure it gets posted.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: That's in our industry, that's lingo for the servicing part of the industry.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: And I called him and I said Dan, I got this great job, it's in servicing.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: And he said Marcia, I got one question.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: I said what's that?
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: He goes what the hell do you know about servicing?
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: I said, dan, I don't know a thing about servicing, but I can learn and I know I'm going to be great at it.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: So he, by taking that leap of faith, by having someone who was willing to take a chance and a risk on me because they saw something, literally changed my entire career.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: You kind of just walk through a masterclass of being bold based on the framework.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: So we talk about our beliefs.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: So it's believe, own, learn and design.
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: So your belief in yourself, your belief in your abilities, your belief of you'll figure it out.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: And sometimes our beliefs help us and sometimes they hinder us.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: We all have some that hinder us, you know.
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure they're in there, but you didn't let them be louder than the ones that were helping you.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: You owned it like nobody else.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to take the horse by the reins.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do what I want to do.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I'm going to set out, I'm going to believe in myself, even though, like that first pivot where it was, like I'm taking you out of the event space and putting you in a different space.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: Like you're like, well, I'm pretty comfortable, I have two little ones, but I'm going to do it.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: But you realize that you had to own that, even though someone was promoting you, you really had to own the success of it.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You said repeatedly learn the word learn Like you are a growth mindset in action.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Like we're going to learn through our success as much as our failure and I think our failures.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Usually that's where we learn the most from right In that sense, and I think our failures usually that's where we learn the most from right In that sense.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And I'm sure, along the way, as you're doing these things, there's things that didn't work out, there's things that didn't, you know, go the way you thought, but you kept moving.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: And the D is design, and that's to me like what you were doing the entire time.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: You're designing the next step, designing the path, designing the group, the organization, the units of work in a way that it can be successful, Like you rolled through that in a really lovely fashion.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to point that out.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Oh well, thank you.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's one of the failures you cherish most about that?
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: And then I want to start talking about the creation of Empower.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: But what's a failure you cherish Me?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: You learned a lot.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: It taught you a lot.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: So for me it was a failure to myself.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: So I freely talked to you about the fact that I have a two year degree, and the backstory of why that is doesn't matter.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: But you know, it was the opportunity I had that I took and I was embarrassed by it.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: I so many people start when you're young oh, what school did you go to?
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: And I felt like it was this really black mark against me on my resume and I was so afraid at you know, just that job, that story I told you about that somebody would find out.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Obviously my boss knew, but he had been working with me for so many years, he didn't care where I went to school and I was so afraid that somebody would find out, they would measure you against it yeah, yes, judge me yeah, but once I put voice to it, it like took all of that fear of failure away.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: I failed myself for probably 10 years of my career by being afraid, and who knows, I may have taken other opportunities, but I was too afraid because what is one of the first things in job requirements?
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: You see, bachelor's degree, bachelor's assignment, whatever it is, and I would opt out.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: So to me, overcoming that fear was something I should have done earlier in my career and I didn't.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: I failed myself, and so I don't know if that meets your definition.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, what'd you learn?
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: What'd you learn from that?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: Putting voice to it.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, put voice to what you're afraid of, and you know what People can.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: They might listen to this and judge me for it.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: I understand it's not as easy in this time in our world for people to navigate as we did, as we talked about, you know, in HR you took a resume in.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: They picked up the phone and you know things.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: We have a lot more hurdles to get through, but my experience was I needed to probably put that behind me and have more faith in my so all of that you said.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: I had faith in myself, but I had that secret that I was afraid people would uncover.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: So when I finally let it out, it was easy for me to talk about.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wrote a post today was basically you know, being bold is saying to your fear, I am in charge, and that's what you did.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: It was like okay, I hear you, I see you, I feel you fear, but I'm in charge and you can judge.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: You know, people are going to judge, no matter what you know.
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: Taylor Swift said it best haters are going to hate.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: So, for whatever reason, we don't need to worry about that.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: We need to just really focus on ourselves and kind of moving ourselves forward are you a Swifty?
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: uh, yeah, well, I I really love her message.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: I have some of her albums, but the community that she creates and the connection she creates is I'm in awe of it.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: I love everything about her yeah, it can't be fake, right, you know, and that's what I cause.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: You see a lot on social media and you see a lot of people trying to do things that you know just are surface level, but you don't get to the level she's at by being fake and not being real and not being authentic and being transparent, which she's done all of those things and been judged all the time for it.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: And such a brilliant businesswoman.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she was just named the first billionaire musician in entertainment.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: So and it's not about money, like I think she went into it because she loved what she did and does, and so I think, yeah, I think she's a masterclass in building a business, building a community and creating an authentic connection.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: And staying true to yourself.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Staying true to yourself.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: So I sorry to take you off the mark, but when you quoted a Taylor Swift song, I'm like I love everything about her, everything, and I think she's an excellent role model for business women, as well as this next generation coming up and all of the young women and little girls who go to see her and admire her.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: I just think it's an excellent model for us to have.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she uses her platform for good.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I think that's also what I think life is about doing good for others, you know, solving problems for good meaning they don't come back or they're, you know, for the good of the world or those around your community.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: So a great segue into Empower.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: When you think about why you created it, tell us a little about what Empower is and what you saw as a need or idea, inspiration when you created it of all.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: Thank you for asking because it is one of my passions.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: My current role at Mortgage Bankers Association, MBA, is as you read in my bio I'm responsible for the conferences that MBA does right, and it's a full circle thing because I started at an association and now here I am at an association and we need to go around the country with various conferences and events and my first few years at MBA I've been here 13 years now but going back my first few years I traveled to all of the different disciplines which meant if you're in the secondary markets or if you're in the primary market or if you are in servicing right, we had events for all different disciplines in mortgage finance and after a few years of having this unique ability to be watching kind of our industry in all of these different areas of mortgage finance, I noticed that I wasn't surprised there weren't as many women that went to conferences, because I grew up in the industry so I know that it's primarily, like many others, male dominated.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: But what surprised me is the women that were there didn't seem to know one another.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: They knew their male colleagues or they knew some of their female colleagues, but like if you're just going into a general session and you need to go sit down, women weren't even sitting together.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: It's like they didn't know each other, and so I decided at our largest convention, which is our annual convention, one year back in 2015.
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: Now to take the registration list randomly invite 75 women to have lunch with me.
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: List randomly invite 75 women to have lunch with me.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: I wanted to do two things.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: One I wanted to understand if women would take an hour out of a very busy conference schedule for themselves to meet somebody new, have lunch with just a group of women.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: And we know as mothers, when you're traveling, the workload when you get home or the workload that you do to prepare to be away from home, is a lot of pressure and a lot of things that have to get done.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: So your time when you're traveling has to be really, really well managed.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: Right, you put your head down, you get to all those meetings on time and you make it as efficient as possible.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: So I wasn't sure if women would take the time to do something for themselves.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: So I invite at random 75 women and 150 showed up and we had lunch together and we networked and we met each other and we did a personality set, Like we had something that we did that sparked something.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: Did you know this about yourself?
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: So you could say oh, I even learned something when I was here about myself.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: And so I decided that year to try it at other disciplines.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: Right, the fact that it worked at our annual convention.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: Would it work if I hosted a reception at another event?
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: And so I started doing it and it just got bigger and bigger.
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: And then I thought would they take 90 minutes?
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: And if I had a speaker that talked about some of the issues that we face as women in the industry or just women in the workplace.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: And what happened was it was during one of our conferences and I was on stage interviewing the woman who was there talking and we were talking about.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: She was a successful woman on wall street and she was talking about what it was like for her and her workplace where they're told don't wear pants and you know, telling you how to dress all of these, these different things.
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: And we're having this like conversation and my boss is looking for me and he goes into the somebody tells him where I am.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: He walks in the room and he is stunned at the number of people that are in the room, because it was better attended than any of our educational breakout sessions that were happening that afternoon and the media picked it up.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: I came back to the office and he said to me I hope you see what you're on to and I want you to do whatever you choose to do, to grow it, to formalize it, to do what you want to do.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Just take the reins and go.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: So he gave me permission to make it part of my job, to spend my time.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: I do a lot of research making sure that it was put together in the right way.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: So we have a mission statement and that's where you get to promoting opportunities for women to extend their reach.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: We're not all things to all people.
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: We are literally a community to support one another, to network, to get to know the other women in the industry, to provide professional development opportunities, to have candid, safe conversations.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Men are free to come in.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: It's not that we don't and we think male allies are really important.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: But we don't talk about mortgage finance.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: We talk about issues facing women We've done back when Me Too, you know, really came to light, we did sexual harassment surveys and we didn't want to just understand the issues in our industry, we wanted to solve for them, and so we spent an entire year talking about ways to deal with sexual harassment, ways to identify it, ways to combat it, how male allies can help us, and so we really don't want to just talk about the issues, we also want to try to support each other to solve them.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It started out at just doing these at MBA conferences and we now have regional events for other organizations in mortgage finance that want to bring Empower to their conference.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: And then, after that first year, when we branded it Empower and launched it, the board of directors there were some women on our board that met with me for breakfast right before the board meeting started and said we want you to do a whole day.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And so each year, the day before our annual convention, we have the Empowering you Summit.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: It's a full day of networking, empowerment, inspiration, and you'll hear it first.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: My big speaker this year is Jane Fonda.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: We're going to sit down and do a fireside chat together and, you know, learning from women who have come before us and who have paved ways that some of them you know, think of all the risks that she's taken.
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: It talks about the importance of having a female support system, and so it's just exceeded any expectation I've had.
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: We've had over 30,000 women participate.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: We have an online community where we do free webinars quarterly.
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: We have 9,000 women in that online community.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: So, for example, we'll post this podcast to the 9,000 that are in the online community.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: So, for example, we'll post this podcast to the 9000 that are in the MBA community and they can listen to our conversation here and and they can forward it along to others within their organization as well.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to go back to like when it happened, like when, when the CEO again is this the same CEO that also put you in the role?
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: No, Okay.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: So when someone's like I, you know, want CEO, that also put you in the role.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: No, okay.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: So when someone's like I want you to see it want to make sure you're acknowledging it intentionally that you just created something, that it's going to grow, it's going to be bigger and you didn't have that intention starting off.
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: Like I'm just going to see if it'll happen.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: What is that feeling like when you're like I now have something I didn't plan to do something with, but now I feel I have to like it's a responsibility, in a good way to like go to the next level.
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: How do you do that?
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Because I bet that happens to some people and they, they like push it away.
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: They're like, oh no, I don't have the time, I don't have the money, I don't, I just don't.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: You know right, what?
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: What was different for you?
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: You were like I have to.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: It was re-energizing me in a way that, after being in this industry then it was about 30 years hadn't energized me in a long time.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: It was being able to do something that was bigger than myself because I didn't make it successful.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Let me be really clear.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: It's the women who showed up and it's the women who raise their hand when we're in a session that talks about what are you most afraid of or what is your biggest vulnerability at the work, and they will stand up and say in a room full of 500 other women what their vulnerabilities are or what's you know something, and they created the safe space.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: So I always say Empower was my vision.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: I am very protective of the brand so, like I said, we don't talk about mortgage finance there.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Right, there are a lot of places you can get that experience, that education.
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of women's organizations that do small retreats and people bring their clients and it's great female bonding.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to replicate that.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: I just want as many women who want access to this type of networking and education to come.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, at one point I got a note.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: Somebody said maybe you should start doing yoga ahead of time and I'm like, no, I love that I've been to places.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: I love starting with yoga in the morning, but that's not what we're doing here.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, do that before you come right.
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, everyone always has an opinion.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's interesting.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Just even as I've grown, I think that you know you create the space and they create the magic that happens within their connection through their openness, through their honesty, through their use the word vulnerability, which I really like.
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Those are all bold things to be Right and they're not always on social media or splashed.
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, those are moments of like.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you what kind of I don't like you talking about some of the issues and the things you tackle.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: Those aren't easy issues.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: How do we handle sexual harassment in our industry?
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: You know you really are talking about things that matter and that are complex and that are not just an easy solve Check the box.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Hey, we talked about it.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: So, like you know, kudos to you in a sense of tackling the big things and also having the place and the I think, the importance for something like this that, like you said, it's not coming to get your credits or tick off.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: How many times you've heard this about?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: You know, mortgage, finance or industry updates.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: You can go somewhere else and this is for us.
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: This is specifically for women coming together and connecting.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: What's the most unexpected outcome of it to date.
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: So we're almost at the 10 year anniversary.
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: One more year and you're at 10 years, yeah.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So I expected women to connect.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: The unexpected is the amount of doors it opened for women to do business with one another.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And I didn't realize the number of times that in an organization, women, if they're trying to make their way up, or if you're in sales and you're trying to get to the right person, you might have a barrier because the person who's owning that relationship won't give you the opportunity because that's their relationship.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: And when you strip away because we have CEOs that come and we have young women in the never been able to get in front of some senior women breaking through, whatever their organizational challenges were, because they were able to create relationships that were outside of the organization and could pick up the phone and call the CEO or email the CEO because they've started their own relationship, or the head of production, or the head of production or the head of something else.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: It was something I I'm not in sales and I also am not there's.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of components within our industry where there's some hierarchy, so I didn't realize the break like that.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: This broke through some of the internal hierarchy that women were facing that prevented them from being able to be as effective as they could be.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you broke down a barrier for connection and communication by basically saying what we have in common is we're women.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: We're women in business, no matter our age, our experience, our degrees, whatever it may be.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: We have a commonality and that's what you help people and help women understand.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: That's all you need One to start the conversation.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Right, we try to.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: Even though we tackle these meaty issues or we talk about things that may have happened to us in our career, we also turn it to say what did we learn from it?
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: How would we handle it again?
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: What would we do now?
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the focus is on forward.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: Yes, and I think that's you know.
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: I've definitely met women who have had negative experience.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Heck, I've had the negative experience you know, like I think we all have that potentially in common.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: But I think for me, like I do, I focus on like, wow, I learned something.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Maybe it was what not to do, how not to act, how not to be, or maybe I learned how strong I was or resilient I was, or how I now am more powered.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: But I like focus on the next step forward versus the looking over my shoulder back, and I think that's so, so important, because I think that's actually how change happens is people realize, you know, the world isn't perfect.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: The things that we try and plan and you know to do, like we, we do realize at a certain point that people are human and mistakes will happen.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Do we want some of these things to happen?
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Absolutely not.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: But what can we learn from them?
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: How can we not have it happen again?
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Or how do we replicate excellence and doing that together forward?
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: And the more of us doing that, the greater the impact and the bigger the ripple.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, incredible things that you're doing.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: So, as we close out, just one of the things that you talked about was, you know, when you felt energized by creating something, the empower, and it was like you hadn't felt that in a while.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: What advice would you give someone who's feeling that but they're not sure what to do with it?
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: I can answer it this way Learn how to incorporate it into what you have to do, right?
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: So if you can't afford to be a full-time soccer coach, incorporate it into your life in some way, whether it's volunteering at the Y or on weekends doing the rec league, whatever it is.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: People have asked me because Empower has gotten to a place where they're like do you want to just go do Empower?
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: And I'm like part of what makes me effective is being a COO, being a woman who is in the C-suite and being able to make Empower part of the experience that I have in my life.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: It's not a one-off thing.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: It is something that is embedded in the work that I do now, and so I really believe that you make space for it, and I still, to this day, do a lot of research.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: So for this all day event, I will pick all of those speakers myself, and the way I do it is I spend a lot of time googling and finding speakers and working with.
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: You know I do work with speakers, viewers as well with my team.
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: I do work with speakers, viewers as well with my team, but a lot of times I'm trying to find out how much does this person cost because they've said something or I've seen them somewhere or I've heard about them and on the other side flip coin of that.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I'll do research and this person will be so good on paper but when I watch them actually do like I'll go to a TED Talks or a YouTube.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Well, if it's TED Talks, they're usually pretty polished, but I'll go on YouTube like I'll go to a TED Talks or a YouTube.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Well, if it's TED Talks are usually pretty polished, but I'll go on YouTube and I'll watch their interviews and I'll be like, okay, they lost me in the first five minutes, like I had to stop, go get a cup of coffee.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: Come back Like, so they didn't engage you.
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, and so I love that creativity of it and finding out which issues are the right spot.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: And before I interview my keynotes, I was.
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: I had the honor of being able to interview Rita Moreno twice, and the first time I was really nervous because she does such an icon.
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she had a memoir and I listened to it in my car as I would drive to and from work.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: I'd listen to it on the weekends.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I read every article I could find on her and I do something called empower moments.
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: So you do a podcast once a month.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: I sit down and we film about it eight to 10 minutes segment with somebody and we talk about various things.
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: Rita agreed to sit down with me for an empower moment before we hit the stage for the event, and so I opened it up and I started to talk to her and she told the people to stop the cameras and she looked at me and she goes you have done your homework and I said I I wouldn't do any any other way but to be here with you.
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: You're giving me time I wanted, and she goes.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: It is the number one key to success.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: And then she told the guy did you really shut off your camera?
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: This is what a really good interview is about is like.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: And then she went off and on her way and you know, telling the production people you shouldn't have shut off your camera.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: This was, you know, and we felt like we really connected and part of that was because I knew I couldn't just show up.
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: But for me, that's part of what gives me joy is these poor people I interview probably think I think we're best friends by the time I meet them.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: They've never met me before, but I've done so much research on them.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I'm like and I know your dog.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my gosh, what don't you know?
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: I want them all to be my friends.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, kind of you know the end will be all kind of lean into it and incorporate it into your world and then you know, you'll never guess where it might end up.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that's important for people just to realize the more aligned with their passion and purpose they are, the more successful they'll be in the higher impact they'll have on others.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: And the time that I feel doing research becomes a burden, it'll be the time for me not to be the leader of this amazing group the minute it stops bringing me joy and me wanting to give that joy back and right, because that means you've moved to a different place.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: It's not filling your cup the way that it used to.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, pay attention to the signs, don't avoid the flashing light, you know, get curious about it, understand it and make sure you're still aligned.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: I think that's really important to align with your joy, aligned with your purpose.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on the Bold Lounge, for sharing your journey.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: All the information about Marsha is below in the episode notes.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it Leigh.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to the Bold Lounge podcast.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Through the continuum of bold stories vulnerability to taking a leap you will meet more extraordinary people making a positive impact for others through their unique and important story.
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: By highlighting these stories, we hope to inspire others and share the journey of those with a bold mindset.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: We hope you've enjoyed this podcast and look forward to sharing the next bold journey.