Meet Our Team

Chairman

Jim Mahoney has been involved in the development, design, marketing, origination, and servicing of home equity conversion loans (reverse mortgages) since 1990. He is the Chairman of Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corporation.

Prior to the formation of Financial Freedom Senior Funding Corporation, Jim was the President and CEO of Freedom Home Equity Partners, a home equity conversion originator that he helped develop from inception. Jim was responsible for product development, institutional and consumer marketing as well as the overall operations of the company. The company successfully marketed and originated loans representing $115 million in home value in its first 2 years of offering the program. Jim has been involved in both real estate development and construction industries since 1975. As President and Chief Executive Officer of the Stewart Company (a Southern California real estate development company), Jim directed the acquisition, development, construction and management of real estate assets throughout Southern California, Arizona and Colorado. Jim was responsible for management of the day-to-day operations of this $70 million company.

Jim holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California at Irvine. Jim is one of the leading authorities on reverse mortgage programs. He is a founding member of The National Reverse Mortgage Lender’s Association and currently serves as Co-Chairman. Jim is a member of the Sorin Society of the University of Notre Dame.

Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Michelle has recently been named co-CEO of Financial Freedom and will become its sole CEO January 1, 2007.  Financial Freedom is a wholly owned subsidiary of Indymac Bank and is the #1 reverse mortgage lender in the country. During Michelle's more than 11 years with Indymac, she has held a number of increasingly senior and strategic roles.  Michelle joined what was then Countrywide Credit Industries in March 1995 as Assistant Controller.  She rapidly moved to the profit center side of the business as the President of Warehouse Lending and, later, EVP and President of B2B Lending.  Her success in establishing operating standards and structure in B2B (Indymac's largest business line) while leading the business to sustained year-over-year market share and volume growth led her in 2004 to become head of the Centralized Mortgage Operations Unit (CMO).  The CMO unit is comprised of oversight and control departments that are responsible for standards, processes, systems and procedures relating to all aspects of mortgage lending operations across all business channels of Indymac Bank.  The functional areas within the CMO group include:  Internal Controls, Business Process Engineering, Risk Management, Workforce Management, CMO Finance, System Design and Automation, Off shoring and Centralized Operations.

Prior to joining Indymac, Michelle served as Controller at Cypress Financial Corporation where she was responsible for the profit and loss statements, balance sheet reporting and forecasting. Earlier, Michelle was the Assistant Treasurer at Shearson Lehman Mortgage Corporation where her responsibilities included managing the $900 million commercial paper program, and overseeing the warehouse lending operations with $500 million in average outstanding, cash management, asset management and budgeting. 

Michelle has Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara.