Brian “Woody” White on diversity in today’s housing industry

Today’s HousingWire Daily interview features a crossover episode from HousingWire’s Housing News podcast.  In this episode, HomeBridge Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer Brian “Woody” White discusses practical ways to increase diversity in the housing finance industry.

Here is a small preview of the interview with White, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity:

Sarah Wheeler: You have a very impressive career in tech and initially, you were the chief information officer at HomeBridge. So, what prompted the change to becoming their chief diversity and inclusion officer?

Brian “Woody” White: Although there were conversations at HomeBridge a couple of years prior, we’re always going to throw the George Floyd incident into it because it drove many conversations. However, HomeBridge is like every other company, right? You’re doing business and you’re trying to make this pivot, but it’s just a lot of volume. At the time, I was running a diversity initiative, but I just couldn’t fully move into it. Then I finally had a really good conversation with our CEO and COO and I liked what they had to say, so we just decided to make it happen. And while it was a big change for all of us, I’ve been doing a number things in the community for a while, like speaking at churches, holding personal finance classes, and I also used to be a certified financial planner and other things like that. So, I worked on helping the community by teaching people about mortgages and helping them get homes, and all of that culminated into that conversation on diversity. And here we are.

To read the full interview, see here.

HousingWire Daily examines the most compelling articles reported from the HousingWire newsroom. Each afternoon, we provide our listeners with a deeper look into the stories coming across our newsroom that are helping Move Markets Forward. Hosted by the HW team and produced by Alcynna Lloyd and Victoria Wickham.