From Babies To Mortgages, She Delivers

Aside from delivering babies, Noble and her midwife partner ran an art gallery in Honolulu where they sold plaster sculptures created by expectant mothers — known as belly casts — as well as other works by local artists. One evening in 2003, two young men sauntered into the gallery and threw down over $10,000 on several pieces. As it turns out, they were LOs.

“They appeared to be in their early twenties and I was surprised to see them pay cash for these expensive pieces,” Noble recalled. “I asked what they did for work and one of them looked at me and said, ‘You would be great at my job.’ As a single mother of three little girls at the time, I was definitely interested in creating more income and stability for my family.”

Watch it on The Interest: From Delivering Babies to Mortgages

She traded her regular artsy attire for borrowed businesswear from one of her birth moms for a job interview at AmeriQuest, where the LOs worked, and was hired on the spot. Rallying behind her were the birth moms, midwives, and artists she calls friends, and Noble grew to become one of the company’s top-producing LOs fairly quickly.

“My community really helped me to get my bearings as a loan officer by caring for my children so I could work long hours, loaning me professional clothes, a decent car to get to and from work, and rent money for three months,” she told NMP. “I had the honor of rising to the top of the nation by the year’s end.”

From Doula To Down Payment

After AmeriQuest closed its doors, she earned her real estate license. Her former AmeriQuest colleagues went on to form First Capital Group, which would later become Hawaii Mortgage Experts. She was an LO there and at MasonMac for a while, before becoming an AE at Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions in January 2023 and then onboarding at NewFi Wholesale more than a year later.

“A wonderful leader — John Wise — recruited me,” said Noble, referring to the EVP of Sales — National Production for Newfi Lending.

She battled breast cancer during the career transition but is now settling well into her new home.

“In a business dictated by the numbers,” Wise told NMP this June, “how many likes did you get on social media, how many units did you close, what was your volume last month … Dawn Alba Noble has always been focused on the heart of the matter.”

Each loan represents an individual borrower with a unique situation, Wise added, and Noble recognizes this fact. “Maybe they have been turned down by another lender. Maybe they are trying to buy their forever home. Maybe they are doing everything they can to create a future for someone else. Either way, she is always a reminder that this business is really not about the numbers, but about the people who work for Newfi and the individual borrowers and brokers we serve.”

When loan processor Emily Daley transferred from Maine to Hawaii with Ameriquest Mortgage, she found an instant and lifelong friend in Noble.

“Her and I clicked from the beginning; she was very welcoming, [and] confident,” Daley recalled.

She was particularly impressed by the way Noble conducted herself as a single mom and a successful business professional.

“Most people that work in an industry like this don’t know how to necessarily balance home and family life with business, and she is able to do that,” Daley remarked. “She is an exemplary example of what a mom is capable of doing on her own.”

When Daley was expecting her first child, Noble was there to guide her through every step of the pregnancy. “She’s just wonderful in so many ways.”

Reflections

Whether securing a home loan or bringing a baby into the world, Noble loves to help people define their human experience by guiding them through these milestone moments. She is proud and humbled to have been a part of both occasions for a special few.

“I feel my success (in mortgage) is due to the level of intimacy I was used to working with as a midwife,” she said. “I equated the confidence, privacy, and expertise between the journey of conception, pregnancy, labor, birth, and postpartum — the most precious experience in one’s life — to the journey of homeownership, as it is for most, the largest purchase ever made in life and highly emotional.”

Getting a mortgage doesn’t have to be an intimate experience, but Noble makes it a priority to connect with her clients, whether it’s exchanging photographs of their children and grandchildren, or sharing memories and laughs.

Reflecting on young desires to save the environment and choices made that led her to here and now, Noble realizes it’s been her spirit driving all along.

“I was and I still am a very natural, organic person,” she said. “I really understand how to care for a family and emotion being the root of all things. We all have our own paths, our own journeys and it’s okay. It’s not right or wrong or good or bad. It just helps to have awareness about what you’re going through.”

She recalls the branches that grew from a connection made at a showing. A realtor recommended Noble to her best friend who was buying a house.

“We started talking, and she’d had a very difficult time in between her first and second child — she’d lost children. So we actually prayed together and just had a lot of consciousness around her pregnancy up until she gave birth. The day their mortgage closed I was there for the signing and brought a quilt I had made for her and the new baby.”

Theirs blossomed into a beautiful friendship. Noble was able to help the family refinance their home several times over the years, and they referred her services as an LO to family and friends.

“It really all had to do with that connection we shared,” she says. “I think the main thing that makes a person successful in the long-term in this industry is integrity. It’s honoring your word. I do my very best to under-promise and over-deliver. I don’t want to let anybody down. I like to be totally transparent. I really feel like that is something that goes hand in hand with my personal heart calling of delivering babies.”

If she hadn’t become a midwife she would “probably have 22 babies by now,” Noble says, adding, “I have really amazing children. I think that is the thing I’m the most proud of in my life.”

She can remember sleeping in front of the door of their apartment when her daughters were young and making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their dinner.

“I was just trying to find a way to meet all needs, including my own. I feel like the mortgage industry these past years has sustained me in meeting those needs. I’m looking forward to being in a transformational place in my position and in my finances, to really, really rise.”