While uncertainty in the world’s financial markets has forced some industries into a decline, the mortgage and lending sectors are seeing a solid rise in demand for support services. As a Vice President in the Strategic Consulting Services Division of Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), Cecelia Raine ‘02 BBA works for the largest provider of mortgage technology in the mortgage servicing industry.

After going back for her degree when her children reached school-age, Raine took progressively larger responsibilities with Fannie Mae, approving mortgage bankers, working on compliance measures, and eventually managing a portfolio in Fannie Mae’s national servicing area. With her promotion to Portfolio Manager in Fannie Mae’s National Servicing Organization, Raine worked with mega-mortgage companies like Wells Fargo and Bank of America to monitor defaulted loans and credit losses on mortgage portfolios in excess of $100 billion.

Recruited by Florida-based LPS in mid-2008, Raine continues to work out of an office in Buffalo. With a heavy travel schedule, Raine says she “usually reads one book while on the road and one at home.” She has checked The Foreclosure of America, by Adam Michaelson, off her reading list, which gave insight into the role that a player in the mortgage industry may have played in the current foreclosure situation. At home, Raine is working through The One Year Bible, with The Big Idea, by Donny Deutsch, in her briefcase.

She has this advice to pass on to people looking to build up business from outside the area: “Don’t dis’ [Buffalo] when you come to visit a client here.” In her experience, the ones who have heeded that advice by not “making fun of our snow, sports teams and economy” have won clients over. Those who brought up “Super Bowl losses and ‘no goal’ have failed miserably in this town,” she offers.