News

This is the third time we’ve recognized young leaders in our Rising Stars program, and the list just keeps getting better. Following the proud tradition of earlier winners, these leaders have overachieved in lending, servicing, investing and real estate (making the rest of us question what we’re doing with our lives in the process).

For example:

Our youngest Rising Star, Nicole Allison, is 27 and started working in lending to put herself through law school, but fell in love with the industry instead. A senior loan consultant at Caliber Home Loans, Allison grew business 23% year over year and more than 97% of her clients would refer her to family and friends.

Serving as executive vice president at ValuAmerica is impressive enough, but Shawn Murphy has also served as a special agent for the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General in criminal investigations. That’s some serious compliance cred.

Melody Jones, 37, became one of the youngest partners in McCalla Raymer’s history, and assumed the foreclosure and title clearance group — the largest in the firm.

Nate Johnson is the chief marketing officer at Move, Inc/realtor.com, and his resume, which includes management roles at Google, Apple, LinkenIn and Path, makes you wonder how he did all that before he was 40.

And then there’s Ori Zohar, our cover subject, who co-founded Sindeo and serves as its senior vice president of marketing. The 29-year-old partnered with Nick Stamos to disrupt the mortgage industry by applying Silicon Valley principals to lending. The two have secured more than $15 million in funding and set the company on the path to hit $1 billion in loan originations by the end of this year. Our senior art director, Rosangel Torres, met with Zohar and photographer Nico Oved in San Francisco for a photo shoot that captured the essence of a Bay area startup.

Read these stories and more, here, including the habits that help our winners succeed, the best advice they’ve received and what they would tell a younger version of themselves.