Dr. Vanessa Montañez, D.E.L, says that her now 28-year-long career in mortgage lending didn’t start glamorously. After attending San Diego-based National University with big business executive dreams, Montañez was plucked by a recruiter and shuffled into a call center role at Beneficial Home Loans. To put it bluntly, it wasn’t the career she had been dreaming of.

Montañez had taken her father’s advice to “chase the money and stability” in a business degree. Upon graduating and briefly working for Beneficial, the post-grad eventually moved to Countrywide Home Loans. But Montañez messed up. A lot. She mixed up different loans and wasn’t quite sure how to approach customers behind the phone. After being told to essentially get her act together, she described doing what she called “killing a lot of trees,” printing out all the information she could about different loan programs, and studying to keep her job. Amid countless hours pouring over guidelines, Montañez discovered that there was a whole other world out there of just affordable lending. “I knew there was free money out there, and I was determined to help my clients take part of that,” she said.

Montañez’s early roots are an extreme juxtaposition from where she is today. With almost three decades of experience in residential lending and sales and business development management tucked under her belt, Montañez’s latest adventure in lending is her role at Los Angeles-based City National Bank, working as the bank’s first community lending national sales manager.

Montañez’s father was right about chasing the money, but he wasn’t necessarily spot-on about the money Montañez would be chasing. Montañez’s mission is to focus on diverse segments and expand education about down payment assistance programs, not just in her native California, but nationwide.

Stepping Into Familiar Shoes

Montañez is now one year into her career at City National Bank, but the sentiment behind her career isn’t new. Montañez’s prior position was U.S. Bank’s vice president for the national strategic markets and diverse segments, in which she was responsible for tailoring market tactics to boost sales volume and market share for accessible lending solutions in the West. Montañez’s mentality has always been “What’s next?” After eventually securing a role at Countrywide Home Loans as a branch manager for San Fernando Valley, Montañez started working with primarily Hispanic buyers. She eventually went to work for Bank of America and Alterra Home Loans as a mortgage manager for the LA metro and as a sales manager, respectively. “There’s a whole other world out there in affordable lending. I started researching state DPA funds as well as funds that the city of Los Angeles had to offer, as well as nonprofits, grants … There’s a formula that I saw not as a roadblock, but as a solution,” she said. “This was back in the 1990s when prices and costs were much different, but I felt it was a privilege to help a first-time homebuyer, especially those who weren’t aware of special programs.”

Paving The Way

Now, those special programs have shaped Montañez’s career and led her to City National. The heavy investment in community lending comes in the wake of City National’s payment of $31 million in a redlining settlement — the DOJ’s largest ever — after refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominantly Black and Latino communities. Montañez said that before her position, she hadn’t considered City National as a place to work because “they didn’t have an affordable lending program.”

Montañez started working with a recruiter, who advised her to create a business plan to present to the bank. Montañez wrote a 14-page plan with an appendix, including the exact partnerships she would want, as well as procedures for sales, marketing, and third-party plans. When she presented her plan at the interview, she learned that she created exactly what City National Bank had in mind. She was hired immediately, becoming the Bank’s first-ever community lending national sales manager in the bank’s 70-year history.

Today, Montañez is the face behind City National Bank’s “Ladder Up” Program, a grant program for specific and qualifying geographies in Southern California, New Jersey, and New York, and works closely with the bank’s Community Reinvestment Act team. Per Montañez and Adrian Oliver, City National’s VP of community lending manager residential, Ladder Up provides borrowers with grant assistance, a mortgage program, and credit education to help them ascend the ladder of financial success and wealth-building. The Ladder Up program offers “a grant up to $20,000 or 3% of the loan amount that may be used for a down payment, closing costs, or buying down the rate. In addition, no mortgage insurance is required regardless of the down payment amount,” per a release from City National Bank.

“Vanessa built the program and pulled knowledge from her experience in the industry and in community lending, and she knew what other places were doing and was able to take inspiration from [those products] and fine-tune it,” Oliver said. “And it allows us to be competitive on rate, cuts out the mortgage insurance, and lets us better help those underserved communities.”

Now that the bank is repairing its damages, Montañez is offering a fresh approach to serving the underserved. “Education is forefront. In any community, you have to educate. And the best plan for me is teaming up with nonprofits that are well known in the community that are already doing the great work, that have workforce development, and are doing educational workshops on financial literacy and providing classes on how to buy a home,” she said. “As we’re creating projects and programs, I look to research and data to validate why we’re doing this. I look to the Urban Institute, Fannie and Freddie, McKinsey Institute, and HUD to validate why we create programs and why we have a high affordability cost … As a professional in any industry, it’s so important to understand the ‘why’ and the semantics of how something works so you can defend it.”

Early Roots

Even though creating a program from scratch wasn’t in Montañez’s wheelhouse, leadership was something she was familiar with. After a colleague suggested she reach for more management positions, Montañez opened Mi Casa Financial Services and operated as a broker shop, continuing to cater to Hispanic people for several years. “Eventually, we opened an insurance company with Farmers Insurance so we could be a one-stop shop,” Montañez explained. “Then, the mortgage meltdown hit and I closed up shop … so many of the lenders I worked with went under and I had no choice.”

After six years of being self-employed and, frankly, tired after the meltdown, Montañez pursued her MBA from Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., eventually graduating in 2014 from the program. In the meantime, she served on the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) as a national board member and a board director for the LA chapter between 2008 and 2010. This was Montañez’s definition of taking it easy. “What I discovered is that you want to be surrounded by like-minded professional individuals who believe in the mission of sustainable Hispanic homeownership,” she said. “Trade organizations who support your initiatives are also important.

Teacher's Pet

During her MBA program, Montañez went on to work for JPMorgan Chase as its Vice President and California Regional Business Development Manager but faced a layoff at the end of 2014. “In a career advancement, nobody thinks about the day they get laid off,” Montañez shared candidly. “It doesn't matter if you exceed expectations … the company I was at eliminated my position … it was a humbling experience after being on top of the world. I learned that everyone’s replaceable, and it’s hard to find the same position. The more you advance in your career the [fewer] opportunities you can come across.”

Montañez was given a choice: the opportunity to stay at Chase in a lower-paid position or take the severance package and bid adieu. Montañez took it as a sign to leave Chase and finish her MBA program. But following graduation, the positions Montañez desired weren’t coming around. She shuffled around between a job as East West Bank’s National Mortgage Business Development Manager and as an outside consultant with On Q Financial, Inc., a position she said was “short-lived.” After facing a layoff from East West Bank, Montañez decided to complete her academic accolades with a doctorate.

“I thought to myself, ‘How can I stay relevant but do something different?’,” she asked. “The severance package allowed me to take time and think of what I truly wanted to do.”

In 2017, Montañez enrolled in the Doctorate of Executive Leadership program at West Virginia-based University of Charleston. “I wanted to focus on what good executive leadership is because I remember how the mortgage meltdown cast the blame on the salespeople and loan officers,” she said. “In reality, it was the leaders who created derivatives, it’s not the low-hanging fruit that created these programs.”

Beyond The 9–5

Montañez graduated with honors and a 4.0 GPA in 2021, all while working at U.S. Bank as its Sales and Business Development Manager before landing her job at City National Bank.

But the buck doesn’t stop after Montañez’s 12-hour days working for the bank. Outside of the office, Montañez hosts LeadHER Talks, a podcast that she and her sister, Chantal Camarillo, created as “an open forum for women and those who support women to exchange ideas, network, empower, enrich, and educate the growth and development of women in business across all industries.” Montañez describes it as a passion project. “We were both in a rut during the pandemic and felt the need to elevate each other and others, even while in a bubble,” she said. And when the podcast mic is off, the work continues: she mentors five local women within the industry, continues to work with NAHREP’s Corporate Board of Governors for the Southwest Region, and works with a group called Rebuilding the City of Angels helping create safer homes for the elderly, veterans, and disabled citizens. One of Montañez’s mentees, Marlana Scott, the senior director of housing initiatives with CrossCountry Mortgage, says she asked Montañez to be her mentor in 2022 after meeting her at an industry conference. “Vanessa and I have known each other for several years. Her confidence, personality, and welcoming spirit stood out to me [when I met her] and I also found out she was working on her doctorate and a book, I was inspired!” the Pittsburgh-based mentee said. “Vanessa has been a blessing in helping me navigate my journey in the mortgage industry. During our mentoring sessions, she heard me and helped me outline the execution of my goals … she [reminds] me that all things are possible with a plan, a vision, and a supportive network.”

Oliver agrees, sharing that Montañez inspired him to work for City National Bank. “[She’s] a true role model for myself, which is why I left a successful 16-year career with Wells Fargo to join forces with her] at City National Bank,” Oliver gushed. “We’ve always been in the same realm, for at least a decade, and at nonprofit meetings or presentations, I’d see her and felt inspired every time. She’s a well-spoken, educated person who I’m honored to work with.”

Montañez says it all starts with showing up. “There’s a quote that says if you see her, you can be her. And that’s my approach to everything I do,” Montañez said. “I’m very much a behind-the-scenes worker but I make it a point to be out in the community, whether it’s going out and doing presentations, working with trades, helping LOs understand programs, and teaching people the things I wish I knew when I was in their spot.”