Doreen Walsh, Dominion Lending Centres

Doreen Walsh, Dominion Lending Centres

Vice-president, network development

Dominion Lending Centres

At the height of the recession in the early 1990s, Doreen Walsh worked for several trust companies, including Confederation Trust, Financial Trust, Central Guarantee Trust and Sunlife Trust. “On a Friday you worked for one trust company, and Monday morning the banner changed, and you worked for another,” she says. “It was a time of change, but also a great time for adapting and learning.”

Walsh’s career experiences include managing powers of sale and foreclosures on residential and commercial portfolios; underwriting residential mortgages for branches, mortgage specialists and the CIBC broker Bid Centre; and working for a monoline lender for 17 years. Additionally, Walsh created and delivered a national underwriting training program for CIBC branches and spent nine years managing a residential sales team across Ontario and Atlantic Canada, administering a portfolio of $5.4 billion. In July 2019, she joined DLC as vice-president of network development.

Walsh was recognized by CMP in 2018 as a Woman of Influence and an Industry Icon. She has served as a director on the CMBA board and is considered “a champion of change in the mortgage broker training space,” a colleague says. “What separates her from other industry leaders is her commitment to building a streamlined, practical training program that will expedite the learning phase for new entrants to the mortgage broker industry. Doreen’s no-nonsense, positive approach, coupled with her innate ability to translate high-level processes to a novice level of understanding, makes her an exceptional educator.”