A mortgage agent who used to write rate letters.

I've been a mortgage agent since 2017, but I started on the other side of the desk. CIBC first, then TD (back when it was still MBNA Mastercard). That's where I learned how renewal letters get drafted and why the rate on yours is rarely the bank's best one. The letter isn't written for you. It's written to be accepted.

Today I work as an agent with Mortgage Alliance while keeping a day job as a financial analyst at the Canada Border Services Agency. The two jobs sharpen each other. The day job keeps me close to the numbers; the agent work keeps me close to the people behind them. Every file I take on gets treated like a financial decision, not a sale.

I'm a Level 1 mortgage agent in Ontario, which means I work with institutional lenders — banks, credit unions, monolines, B-lenders. That covers the great majority of what people need. The files I can't help with directly (private mortgages, certain investor situations) get referred to a Level 2 colleague rather than forced into the wrong shape.

I live in Stittsville with my family. English and French are what I work in most days; I also speak Haitian Creole when it helps. A surprising number of my clients are federal employees, which makes sense. I'm one too, and the pension and benefits side of a federal file is a different conversation than what most agents are used to.

Outside of work, you'll mostly find me on a soccer pitch. I coach three teams at West Ottawa Soccer Club: a U8 and a U9 in our house program (about seventy-five kids between them), and an elite U17 development squad. Before I was anyone's coach, I played in the PREM division myself. The competitive side never quite leaves.

None of that has anything to do with mortgages. Except it kind of does. The same patience that runs an eight-year-old's soccer practice is the patience that walks a first-time buyer through their first pre-approval. The same focus on the numbers that pays the bills at CBSA is what keeps me from selling someone a product that doesn't fit them.