Meet Geno Paluso–Sagent’s Chief Executive Officer

MBA NewsLink recently interviewed Geno Paluso, who joined Sagent in February as Chief Executive Officer. Paluso spent 25 years as a Naval Special Warfare (SEAL) Officer, Commandant of Cadets at The Citadel and a Vice President at BAE Systems Inc. before joining the FinTech firm.

MBA NewsLink: You’ve had an interesting career. Twenty-five years in the U.S. Navy, Commandant of Cadets at your alma mater, The Citadel, and now leading Sagent, a large FinTech. Any thoughts about transitioning to the private sector after 25 years as a Navy SEAL?

Geno Paluso: I was lucky, and probably had a better transition leaving the military than most people do. I was fortunate, because I first transitioned from active duty military to The Citadel, a military college. Although I was retired, I was still in uniform. Just in a different role with a different mission.

The Commandant of Cadets is like the Dean of Students in other universities. Leadership training was my main focus there, teaching 18- to 22-year-olds and giving them the knowledge, skills and tools to see what kind of leader they want to become.

The transition to FinTech for me started at BAE Systems Inc. and quite honestly has been more challenging. FinTech is a different industry, so every day is a vertical learning curve for me. Fortunately, I have great teammates at Sagent who have been instrumental in my journey to date. This role is no less important though leadership-wise, than any other that I have held throughout my life, just in a different industry.

What I’ve learned throughout is this: there are great people everywhere, and great leaders everywhere; but the leadership principles are the same, again it’s just a different mission.

MBA NewsLink: Sagent has announced a multi-year strategic plan to build the future of mortgage servicing. Phase One was to move Sagent platforms to the cloud, build relationships with large mortgage servicers and begin building a new platform. Phase Two was hiring you to enact the next step in the strategic plan. Can you talk more about that?

Geno Paluso: Sure. I was approached to help execute that strategy and operationalize the platform that we’re building to change the future of mortgage servicing. That platform is called Dara.

I compare Dara to a GPS made specifically for the mortgage servicing industry. The invention and use of GPS has changed not only military operations, but the entire world and everything we do. This is what Dara is going to do for the mortgage servicing industry. Right now, much of the servicing world is on mainframes, using old complicated code, and we’re modernizing that with Dara. Dara is going to be the first end-to-end servicing platform that will be linked to real-time data in one single system for servicers and borrowers. It will improve the capability and efficiency for servicers, consumers, investors and regulators.

I’m seven months into this role, and I’m continuously learning, especially in this industry, because it is a different world for me. It’s very exciting. It’s not easy. But you know, if it was easy, it would have been done by now.

MBA NewsLink: Sagent is active at MBA Annual, Servicing Solutions, Secondary and Capital Markets, MISMO, and Independent Mortgage Bankers conferences. Have you had a chance to attend any MBA conferences yet?

Geno Paluso: My very first week at Sagent was the week of the Servicing Solutions conference in February, so that was definitely a “drink from the firehose” event for me. It helped me start to understand the complexity of this industry and who the players are. We’ll certainly be at MBA Annual in force as well. Both are great events.

Our team gets excited about MBA conferences because of the opportunity to show what we’re doing and how we’re doing it to the industry at large. We spend a lot of time preparing for them because they are great opportunities to update everybody and showcase Sagent.

MBA NewsLink: Speaking of MBA conferences, you likely know that Adm. William McRaven spoke at MBA conferences in 2019 and 2021. Do you want to share any thoughts on leadership that you learned from the admiral or from your time in the military?

Geno Paluso: First, what a phenomenal individual and tremendous leader Adm. McRaven is. Throughout my career in the Navy, I was very blessed with being able to learn from great leaders like him. Leaders such as Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. Scott Miller, Adm. Michael Mullin and many others. They taught me a lot about life, leadership and about being accountable and responsible as a leader.

Leadership and attitude are the key to everything, especially when leading high-performing teams like we have at Sagent. Good leadership is crucial to the success of any organization. I often say that I don’t think there’s any such thing as a bad team, only bad leadership. That’s one of the things that I learned through my military career.

And granted, this might sound a little arrogant, but I think I was associated with and learned from some of the most high-performing teams on the face of the planet for 25 years. Being able to bring that out of the military and into what I’ve done post-military, all the way here to Sagent has been pretty importantto me.

MBA NewsLink: Any professional or personal goals for the next year that you’d like to talk about?

Geno Paluso: Well, my main professional goal is the success of theSagent team, of course. We will continue to take care of our customer base, improve the company’s position in the industry, and get Dara out to the industry so we can make things better for everybody. That’s the number one professional goal.

The number one goal personally is to continue to learn in this position and improve how I do things as the CEO, as well as to improve my associate’s job satisfaction with what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

In the military, you get asked this question all the time: what’s more important, the people or the mission? And the answer is “Yes.” Because if you don’t have the people base, they’re not engaged or don’t understand the mission, or understand the intent of what we’re trying to do, then you’re not going to accomplish your mission.

So for me, continuing to improve as a leader and ensuring I’m doing everything I possibly can, day in and day out, to take care of the people that are working to accomplish our mission as a company, that’s really important to me.

(Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect policies of the Mortgage Bankers Association, nor do they connote an MBA endorsement of a specific company, product or service. MBA NewsLink welcomes submissions from member firms. Inquiries can be sent to Editor Michael Tucker or Editorial Manager Anneliese Mahoney.)