Redondo Beach, Calif.-based Civic Financial Services has announced four new additions to its team. Both Ali Elwakeel (pictured far left) and Summer Martinez (second from left) join Civic Financial as senior account executives, Serena Yang (second from right) has been named director of marketing for Civic Financial Services, and Sophie Kim (far right) as director of learning and development at Wedgewood Inc. & CIVIC Financial Services.
Prior to joining Civic Financial, Elwakeel was senior originator at Colony American Finance, where he originated business for both the acquisition lines of credit as well term financing for stabilized rental portfolios. Prior to Colony, El Wakeel was at Auction.com in early 2008 and held different roles through his six-year tenure, including escalation specialist, escalation manager and senior product specialist. In 2012, Auction.com started Auction Finance, where he was a part of the founding team in establishing the platform and responsible for originations of $165 million-portfolio of acquisition lines secured by single family homes in less than two years.
Martinez started in the real estate finance industry more than 12 years ago at First Franklin and LendingTree, where she held multiple positions from customer service management to loan processing. Martinez was later recruited to work as a product specialist in investment finance at Auction.com. After a record-breaking year for Martinez at Auction Finance, she joined Colony American Finance in December 2014 as a relationship manager. Martinez is currently at Civic to develop their line of credit program.
“I feel this product will be very competitive, offer better rates and terms, the process is streamlined to make the lending experience more efficient,” said Martinez.
Martinez and Elwakeel were part of the sales team that funded $1 billion in loans within 18 months and are acquisition line of credit experts.
Yang brings more than a decade of real estate and finance marketing experience to Civic. Prior to joining Civic, Serena was director of marketing at Colony American Finance, a subsidiary of Colony Capital. Yang was head of marketing and responsible for all the marketing initiatives at Colony American Finance, making the company recognized as one of the top private lenders in the SFR commercial loan market, resulting in the funding of $1 billion in loans in 2015.
Kim brings more than a decade of origination experience with reputable direct lending organizations, and recently served as vice president of learning and development for loanDepot.com, where she built, managed and evolved many impactful training programs on compliance and best practices training for sales and operations.
Managing Director Shea Pallante is thrilled to welcome the new additions aboard during this exciting period of growth for the company.
“We are pleased to have the wealth of experience and industry knowledge of these new key additions to Civic and the Wedgwood family,” said Pallante.
