Our Team
Brian Montgomery – Partner
Founding Partner, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Federal Housing Commissioner, Assistant Secretary of Housing, U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development
Acting Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
A universally respected veteran of four presidential administrations (both Republican and Democrat), Montgomery most recently served as Deputy Secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. He is the only person to be confirmed to lead the FHA twice where he served as Assistant Secretary for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner for a total of 6.5 years under three different presidents. Montgomery possesses a unique understanding of Executive Branch operations and focuses on working with clients to strategically position them for growth opportunities. Montgomery was a co-founder of the Collingwood Group in 2009.
Keith Becker – Partner
Founding Partner, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Deputy Assistant Secretary and Chief Risk Officer
Federal Housing Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Chief Credit Officer, Single Family Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation
(Freddie Mac)
With more than 37 years in the mortgage industry, Becker recently served as Chief Risk Officer for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), responsible for implementing the agency’s comprehensive risk governance infrastructure and the independent monitoring and reporting of FHA’s financial, mortgage credit, counterparty credit, and operational risks. Becker’s leadership established effective strategies and procedures that enabled FHA to mitigate the current and emerging risks of its $1.3 trillion single-family and commercial portfolio. Prior to his service at FHA, Becker spent 26 years at Freddie Mac where he completed his tenure as the Chief Credit Officer of their Single Family division.
Dror Oppenheimer – Partner
Founding Partner, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Senior Advisor, Federal Housing Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Senior Vice President, Credit Default Operations, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Senior Vice President, National Underwriting Center, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Over 35 years working in the mortgage industry, Oppenheimer recently served as Senior Advisor to the FHA Commissioner, where he was responsible for advising the Commissioner on updating FHA’s Single Family servicing policies to support sustainable homeownership, aligning FHA with industry best practices for Single Family servicing, and supporting FHA’s technology modernization initiative, FHACatalyst. In 2020, Oppenheimer advised the FHA Commissioner on FHA’s servicing policy response to COVID-19. Prior to joining HUD, Oppenheimer was with Fannie Mae for over 30 years, including as Senior Vice President of Credit Default Operations and Senior Vice President of Fannie Mae’s National Underwriting Center where he was responsible for ensuring lenders’ compliance with the agency’s underwriting policies.
Hunter Kurtz – Partner
Founding Partner, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Assistant Secretary, Public and Indian Housing, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Deputy Director, Department of Housing and Revitalization, City of Detroit
Considered a leading expert in both Public Housing and Community Development programs, Kurtz has spent his professional career working in the affordable housing industry at the state, local, and federal levels. Most recently, Kurtz served as the Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing (PIH) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), where he was responsible for ensuring safe, decent, and affordable housing for the roughly 3.5 million families participating in HUD’s public housing and Native American housing programs. As the head of PIH during the COVID-19 pandemic, he led the industry through one of its most challenging and consequential times. Kurtz has held several other roles at HUD, including Community Planning and Development Specialist, Senior Advisor, and Deputy Chief of Staff to the Secretary. He served as the Deputy Chief of Staff at the Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, and, in addition to his federal service, the Deputy Director of the City of Detroit’s Department of Housing and Revitalization, playing a key role in the rebirth of a great American city.
Michael Marshall – Partner
Founding Partner, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Acting Assistant Secretary, Policy Development and Research, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Senior Advisor, Federal Housing Administration, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Marshall recently served as Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) at HUD, advising the Secretary and Deputy Secretary on policy matters, research and demonstrations, economic information, innovation, international programs, and philanthropic initiatives. He held various leadership roles within HUD, including Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary and Senior Advisor to the Federal Housing Commissioner where he assisted the development of the agency’s historic IT modernization and the policy development and communications related to the management of the $1.3 trillion FHA mortgage insurance portfolio and the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Prior to joining HUD, Marshall served at the White House, a top advisor to Senator Bob Dole, and a Vice President at JPMorgan.
Dain Ehring – Senior Advisor
Senior Advisor, Gate House Strategies, LLC
FinTech Growth Strategy Lead, Tavant
Outbound Technology Lead, CoreLogic
CEO, Dorado
Executive, Sun Microsystems
Technology Modernization Lead, US National Reconnaissance Office
Ehring has over 30 years of executive level leadership, primarily in Fintech. In 1998, he founded Dorado, a leading SaaS company in consumer finance and a residential lending network. He holds several patents in middleware workflow. As CEO he lead the company from 1998 to 2011 and orchestrated a successful merger with CoreLogic [CLGX]. At its height Dorado managed 40% of all residential lending transactions in the US with 10 of the top 10 banks and non-bank lenders. While at CoreLogic he led the company’s outbound technology strategy. Most recently he led Tavant’s FinTech growth strategy, multiplying the company’s transactions by 100x in two years. Before founding Dorado he was an executive at Sun Microsystems [JAVA]. He was part of a team leading Java product growth and enterprise internet acceptance under Eric Schmidt. Prior, he led Lighthouse Design’s market and business development and helped orchestrate a successful acquisition by Sun Microsystems. He led the technology modernization effort at the] US National Reconnaissance Office, a 60,000 staff highly classified mission critical defense organization, he was recruited by Steve Jobs to manage government business relationships at NeXT Computers. Currently Mr. Ehring is very active in the technology community working with several Dallas and Austin accelerators and venture capital companies. He is on the board of several startups and philanthropic organizations. He has lectured around the country in many fields such as finance, technology, and entrepreneurship, In addition he is authoring several books on corporate mindfulness as a means of productivity growth. He holds a Masters in Astrophysics from UCLA and looks to pursue a PhD in Philosophy.
Sherry Walton – Senior Consultant
Senior Consultant, Gate House Strategies, LLC
President, SLW Consulting
Director, Strategic Business Initiatives, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Senior Account Manager, National Property Disposition Center, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Sherry Walton is a Senior Consultant with Gate House Strategies. She brings extensive experience and expertise in the areas of Multi-Family and Single-Family risk and default management, portfolio management, servicing operations, REO dispositions, asset management, and development of new servicing initiatives. With over 30 years as a senior mortgage professional and industry subject matter expert, Sherry provides strong and broad experience in mortgage lending including the development and implementation of strategic business strategies, operational expansion, technology solution expansion, and oversight for Fannie Mae’s innovative corporate strategies to provide liquidity to the mortgage and capital markets.
During Ms. Walton’s time as the Director of Fannie Mae’s Single-Family Strategic Business Initiatives and Servicing Strategies organizations, Ms. Walton developed and implemented several programs and products to meet the needs of the mortgage market. The Bifurcation of Selling and Servicing Representations and Warranties innovative servicing solution, Best Efforts servicing option, and Capital Markets technology system development are a few strategic programs that Ms. Walton developed from concept, development, implementation, and operations.
During her time managing Freddie Mac’s REO Disposition and Small Income Property departments, Ms. Walton provided leadership and oversight of the daily performance management for third-party REO customer accounts. She was responsible for the development and implementation of a state-of-the-art technology system, sales, closings, appraisals, and REO disposition and asset management. Additionally, Ms. Walton developed policies and procedures for the Multi-Family department as she was responsible for the leadership, management, and development of a 20+-person staff.
Tom Wells – Senior Consultant
Senior Consultant, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Senior Director, Client Credit Management, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
Director of Credit, Client Credit Management, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
Senior Director, Customer Performance Management, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac)
Asset Manager, Capital Reality Investors
Tom Wells is a Senior Consultant with Gate House Strategies. He served as Senior Director of Client Credit Management with Freddie Mac before retiring from Freddie Mac, where he was responsible for all front-line credit risk management of over 1,000 lenders with sales over $300 billion, which included negotiating credit terms different than standard industry terms, performance management (models/scorecards, defaults, quality control, lender processes), writing mortgage credit policy, and client credit relationship management. Tom has served in a number of other senior roles throughout his 30- year tenure with Freddie Mac including Senior Director, Customer Performance Management; Director of Credit, Customer Credit Implementation; and Director of Credit, Regional and Community Lending.
With over 30 years as a senior mortgage finance professional, Tom provides strong leadership, client relationship and excellent credit risk management skills. His outstanding track record of success understanding and solving credit risk problems, and innovating and negotiating with mortgage financial institutions large and small, has made him a sought after thought leader in the industry, public speaker at conferences and seminars, and key advisor for market leading clients.
Tom has a BS Finance from the University of Maryland, MBA from George Washington University, and executive leadership training from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.
Gerald Flood – Senior Consultant
Senior Consultant, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Director, Strategic Planning, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Director, Competitive and Industry Analysis, Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)
Gerry Flood is a Senior Consultant with Gate House Strategies. He brings extensive mortgage industry experience in the areas of Strategic Planning, Business Development, and Market Research.
As a Director at Fannie Mae, Mr. Flood was responsible for leading project teams in corporate strategic planning, business line enhancement, and business plan execution. His contributions included increases in mortgage acquisition volume and customer satisfaction, expansion of the customer base, reduction in interest expense (>$100 million), and reduction in business transaction cycle times. He was responsible for tracking U.S. mortgage market activity and assessing market trends and developments. Mr. Flood also led efforts to define a value chain of the U.S. mortgage finance system and estimate the economics of its functions and participants.
Victoria Propheter – Associate
Associate, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Junior Associate, Gate House Strategies, LLC
Intern, University of Virginia Center for Politics
Victoria Propheter is a Junior Associate with Gate House Strategies. She is a 2021 graduate of the University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Government and a minor in Urban and Environmental Planning. Before joining Gate House Strategies, Victoria interned at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, an organization that strives to educate and inspire citizens about practical politics and civic engagement. At Gate House Strategies, Victoria assists with the daily operations, including researching and writing materials for the partners and clients.
