The founding and evolution of iEmergent is an interesting story. What began as a family-run, consulting firm-turned-think-tank is now one of the industry’s most innovative providers, growing our client list rapidly as lenders discover the value of data and diversity.
Early on in iEmergent’s history, founder Dennis Hedlund developed the models for our forecasts and supported clients with the help of his wife, Paula, and his daughters, Laird and Rachel. As iEmergent evolved, the family continued to build their industry knowledge and their dedication to the firm’s vision.
We have built upon the foundation Dennis laid—continuing our unique bottom-up forecasting methodology—and extended our focus on homeownership diversity.
Laird is at the helm of iEmergent. In a growing category of market intelligence providers, she has set iEmergent apart with its ability to provide lenders with a unique prism of historic-, current- and future-focused demographic, economic, housing and competitor data at both the macro- and micro-level. Laird has been with iEmergent on and off since 2005 and took the reins as CEO in 2014 to continue her father's opportunity-driven message that has been foundational to iEmergent’s advisory approach and product development efforts.
Laird's passion for housing equity and countless hours collaborating with housing affordability workgroups have made her one of the industry’s most sought-after speakers on serving diverse markets. She currently sits on two committees for the MBA’s CONVERGENCE-Columbus program and is a national partner with the MBA across its broader CONVERGENCE initiatives.
Laird's world outside of the office is closely managed by her children Julien and Lina. When she isn’t furthering iEmergent’s market growth, Nossuli enjoys running, dressage, gardening and spending time outdoors
Bernard Nossuli is COO at iEmergent where he oversees finance and operations and works closely with the analytics team to ensure clients receive optimal value from the firm’s MarketSmart market intelligence and forecasting platform. Having worked with the firm for over a decade, Bernard helped develop many of iEmergent’s original forecasting models and analytical tools.
His professional experience spans multiple industries, including Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, multiple years in the consulting practice at PriceWaterhouse Coopers, and seven years in finance at DuPont-Pioneer. Now he’s back at iEmergent, leveraging his management experience, an MBA from Georgetown, a Project Management Professional (PMP) designation, and his Six-Sigma Green Belt.
Like Laird, Bernard is also closely managed at home by his children, Julien and Lina. In his free time, he works toward a moonlighting career in stand-up comedy.
Chris Richey is chief analytics officer at iEmergent where he oversees the firm’s flagship market intelligence and forecasting platform, MarketSmart. A gifted quantitative data analyst, Richey continuously enriches Mortgage MarketSmart with new data sources and enhances its capabilities to help lenders identify gaps in sales coverage and effectively expand into diverse markets. Prior to joining iEmergent, Richey accumulated 15 years’ experience working with a Fortune 100 firm and consulting on high-profile federal government contracts. Richey is a graduate of Iowa State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and math and a master’s degree in economics.
Chris is the lead technical guy behind the Mortgage MarketSmart application. He works with Laird to map out features and functionality that add value for iEmergent clients and Mortgage MarketSmart users, and implements them in the application.
Chris is an Iowa Hawkeyes fan, a coffee connoisseur, and an avid runner—a skill he uses to keep up with his three boys.
Mark leads the forecasting program at iEmergent and ensures that our data and analytics remain relevant to the current and future lending environments. Mark has spent the last 20 years doing market and competitive analysis with major mortgage lenders. In fact, he was even an early iEmergent client. After earning his MBA from Claremont Graduate School, Mark joined Countrywide Financial Corp and soon evolved into a market research specialist. He was an early adopter of geographic information systems (GIS) software which was used extensively in Countrywide's mid-90's retail network expansion. Moreover, he was heavily involved in mortgage market forecasting at both Countrywide and Bank of America. His work encompassed strategic planning, product development, servicing risk analysis, business intelligence (BI) tool development, and many other facets of mortgage lending and analysis.
Mark has seen a lot of lenders come and go in the booms and busts of the past two decades. With his front-row seat on the mortgage industry rollercoaster, Mark brings a wealth of experience and perspective to the iEmergent team.
Megan Horn is chief marketing officer for iEmergent, a market intelligence and forecasting platform, where she oversees public relations, brand management and customer experience for the growing company. Leveraging her decade-plus experience implementing successful marketing strategies for B2B technology companies, Horn creates engaging content, builds brand awareness and effectively communicates iEmergent’s value proposition to lenders, partners and industry groups. Horn holds a bachelor’s in marketing and a Master's of Business Administration from the University of Northern Iowa.