TitleBytes News & Happenings

Recap of the first MLTA Education Spring Summit

Apr 7, 2019

By: Debbie Wiley, NTP, CLTP, First American Title Insurance Company

The first ever MLTA Education Spring Summit was held at the Crown Plaza Lansing West on the afternoon of March 5th and all-day March 6th and was a great success! This new Summit was designed to replace the prior MLTA Spring Seminars that would be held in two separate locations in the past. The Summit was also designed to provide valuable tools and information for the middle management/supervisor sector of our membership group.

The Summit was kicked off the afternoon of March 5th with “The Michigan Economic Outlook” presented by Jim Stansell, Senior Economist – House Fiscal Agency, Michigan House of Representatives. Mr. Stansell discussed several Michigan related topics including Michigan employment growth, the Economic Activity Index and future home sales in Michigan.
Our second speaker of the afternoon was motivational speaker Jonathan Fanning who provided a very enlightening presentation on “Creative Leadership: Building a Culture of Innovation”. Jonathan taught us how to “Rethink how you do things” and that “Uncreative behavior can be learned”. He also discussed how to “Use curiosity to get the answer and interest you are looking for” and how to “Get the garden to weed itself”.

At the end of the first day afternoon session various MLTA Committee meetings were held before we all gathered back together for the evening Welcome Reception and Exhibitor Showcase where we all enjoyed amazing appetizers and a bit of good cheer while mingling with the exhibitors and each other.

Day two of the Summit began with our Lobbyist from Michigan Legislative Consultants, Cami Pendell. As always, Cami gave us an energy filled update as to current events within our Michigan Legislature.
Cami was followed by a panel of industry professionals that discussed “Wire Fraud – Ideas for Prevention and Management”. The panel consisted of Brian Roberts, VP & Chief Administration Officer at ATA National Title Group, as the moderator and panelists James Dick, Sales manager at The Merriam Insurance Agency; Debbie Haught, VP of Operations at Mt. Pleasant Abstract; Tom Lico, President of Capital Title and Lou Pontani, SVP Chief Administration Officer at First American Title Insurance Company.

Later in the morning our second motivational speaker for the Summit was Shawn Fair, CEO of Fair Consulting Group, who talked to us about “Building a Culture of Innovation”. Shawn’s enthusiastic presentation discussed managing through the generations – Baby Boomers, GenX, Millennials, and even the new GenZ generation. He outlined the “Five qualities of a good manager” and “The Leadership Experience”. We all walked away with some valuable leadership tools that we could take back to our companies to implement.

During the lunch break we enjoyed finding out who were the winners of the various Exhibitor Raffle Drawings and who were the highest bidders for the MLTA PAC silent Auction items.

The afternoon sessions on the second day consisted of a variety of Breakout Sessions with the first two session choices being: 1. “Nightmare on Bankruptcy Street” Presented by David Lerner, esq., Plunkett Cooney, P.C. and Lynn Sagar, Sr. Underwriting Counsel, First American Title Insurance Company – OR 2. “A Discussion on Digital Closings” Presented by John Bommarito, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary, ATA National Title Group and Cindy Immonen, VP, FNTG MI Agency.

After a quick break and room changes the second two session choices were: 1. “Legal Description Mistakes: The Impact on the Chain of Title” Presented by Brad Miller, VP title Production, Amrock, INC., Maura Snabes, Underwriting & Compliance Counsel, Corporate Settlement Solutions and Dana Zurvalec, Associate Corporate Counsel, Amrock, INC.
Follow up surveys revealed that membership felt this new Summit concept was a huge success and members are looking forward to what will be pulled together for next year’s Summit.

The MLTA would like to give applause to the MLTA Education committee and Summit sub-committee, for making this first Summit a reality and a success! As always, nothing would have happened without the hard work of our Executive Director, Marcy Lay (along with side-kick Brian Clark), who always works her magic to make certain everything comes through perfectly.

Last, but certainly not least, we want to give a big THANK YOU to our many presenters, sponsors and exhibitors that traveled from all over to help us make this Summit the success that it was. We look forward to seeing everyone again at the MLTA Spring Summit 2020!

MAR Stats

Search the Blog