Richard J. Andreano, Jr., is the Practice Leader of Ballard Spahr's Mortgage Banking Group. He has devoted over 30 years of practice to financial services, mortgage banking, and consumer finance law.
Rich advises banks, lenders, brokers, home builders, title companies, insurance companies, real estate professionals, and other settlement providers on regulatory compliance and transactional matters, Federal Housing Administration (FHA) issues, and administrative examinations, enforcement actions and investigations, including fair lending matters. Rich is the principal contact for the firm in its role as federal consumer regulatory counsel to the Real Estate Services Providers Council, Inc. (RESPRO).
Nema Daghbandan is a Partner with Fortra Law. His legal practice encompasses all facets of real estate transactions, primarily representing mortgage lenders, brokers, and loan servicers. His expertise revolves around the preparation of business purpose mortgage loan documents and providing compliance advice to mortgage professionals related to nationwide commercial, residential, construction, and multi-family loan transactions.
Mr. Daghbandan has been recognized by his peers in the legal community as a Super Lawyers® Rising Star from 2016-2020. Only 2.5% of attorneys receive this distinction. He also received a perfect 10/10 rating from attorney review site AVVO®.
With more than 20 years as a mortgage industry leader, Paul Gigliotti steps into the role of CEO of the California MBA with a proven record of growing lending platforms and streamlining operations. Over the course of his career, he has held executive positions with multiple mortgage lenders and brought innovation and efficiency to both financial-services and technology organizations.
Paul’s leadership journey includes serving on the California MBA Board of Directors, leading organizations such as AXIS and Pinnacle, and advising mortgage technology firms including Prudent AI. A recognized thought leader, he has championed critical industry conversations at national events such as the Mortgage Innovators Conference and beyond.
Grounded in authenticity and shaped by his role as a husband and father, Paul believes the best leadership is built on trust, accountability, and genuine connection. With this perspective, he is committed to guiding the California MBA into the future and supporting its mission to serve members and the broader mortgage community.
I have over 21 years of experience in the financial services industry working with leading regional banks. My role has been to support their efforts to maintain and grow their businesses, by providing them with innovative and efficient lending technology solutions.
I have a strong background in business process automation, OCR, data management, and digital lending, which I developed and leveraged in my previous roles at Fiserv and Proformance. I have also co-authored a whitepaper and filed a patent for a loan completion system that uses a combination of these technologies. I enjoy complex problem solving and creating value-based partnerships that turn into relationships. My affinity for technology, people, and how both integrate into successful, meaningful solutions drives me to deliver results and make an impact in the industry.
Chris Hilliard is a FinTech/RegTech executive and the Chief Executive Officer and a Founder of Winnow (http://winnow.law).
He is a Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) and a Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP). He has over 20 years of industry experience in consumer, commercial, and residential mortgage lending and general banking. He has extensive experience managing all aspects of regulatory compliance, BSA/AML, Internal Audit, licensing, as well as legal functions including litigation management for both individual and class actions. His experience includes executive, senior management and mid-level management positions at major financial institutions and lenders.
Winnow is a powerful online application built on a comprehensive and dynamic database of state regulatory requirements. It enables your financial or lending institution to generate surveys and searches tailored to your specific business type and licensing, the financial products you offer, and where you offer those products.
Richard Horn is a former Senior Counsel & Special Advisor in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Regulations and a former Senior Attorney at the FDIC. Richard is currently Co-Managing Partner of Garris Horn LLP.
At the CFPB, Richard led the final rulemaking for the integrated disclosures under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule, also known as “TRID”). He also led the CFPB’s design of the integrated disclosures, as well as the qualitative and quantitative consumer testing of the disclosures. As a key architect of the TRID rulemaking, Richard is one of the foremost experts on the rule.
Bryan Jackson is a C-level Technology Executive with 20+ years of engineering experience specializing in transforming, modernizing, and accelerating growth through technology and M&A integrations for SaaS companies spanning Technology, FinTech, Logistics, Retail, Health & Wellness and the Public Sector.
He is a proven and highly collaborative leader with strong experience leading global teams of 60+ engineers to deliver rapid product-led growth while elevating customer experience and decreasing cost. As Chief Technology Officer at Gateless, Inc., Bryan developed and built their fully-automated AI mortgage technology and partner ecosystem to elevate Gateless as a industry leader with partners like Google Cloud, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae -- delivering next-level technology to the mortgage industry.
Michael heads the licensing and state law practice at Weiner Brodsky Kider PC. He also provides federal regulatory compliance advice to clients large and small, and represents companies in the financial services and mortgage industries nationwide in state and federal litigation and government investigations, including CFPB examinations and enforcement actions.
Michael regularly speaks to industry audiences about the CFPB, regulatory compliance, and cybersecurity. He previously served as law clerk to the Honorable James Lawrence King, Senior United States District Judge in the Southern District of Florida (Miami).
Based in Buchalter’s Denver office, Mike Kilgarriff is Co-Chair of the firm’s State Attorneys General (State AG) Practice and a national leader in defending companies facing investigations, enforcement actions, and litigation brought by State AG offices. His practice is focused exclusively on helping companies navigate high-stakes State AG enforcement—whether it’s a confidential single-state investigation, a multistate coalition inquiry, or parallel scrutiny from financial services and securities regulators.
Mike has worked directly with the state attorneys general of every U.S. state except Wyoming, as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. His State AG enforcement experience includes some of the largest multistate actions in the country, including a 39-state coalition enforcement action, as well as dozens of individual State AG lawsuits and investigations.
Mike’s clients include financial services companies, fintech platforms, cryptocurrency and digital asset businesses, and other highly regulated industries. He is known for bringing a defense-first, litigation-driven approach to State AG matters. His work includes responding to civil investigative demands (CIDs), subpoenas, and government audits, negotiating multistate resolutions, and defending companies in state and federal courts.
Mike’s practice is singularly focused on defense—he does not represent governments. He is fully committed to helping companies minimize risk, protect their businesses, and resolve State AG scrutiny with strategic, practical solutions.
In addition to State AG enforcement defense, Mike maintains an active commercial litigation practice for companies facing high-risk disputes tied to regulatory exposure, consumer claims, business torts, and complex contracts.
Mike is recognized as one of the few private-practice lawyers nationally whose State AG enforcement experience spans virtually every jurisdiction in the United States.
Pro Bono Commitment
Mike maintains an active pro bono practice focused on civil rights, immigration, and representing vulnerable populations. His work includes federal civil rights litigation, guardianship proceedings for at-risk children, and advocacy on behalf of displaced seniors and immigrant youth.
Kris Kully is a partner in Mayer Brown’s Washington DC office and a member of the Consumer Financial Services group. She concentrates her practice on federal and state regulatory compliance matters affecting providers of consumer financial products and services. Her practice includes advising clients on compliance with licensing, consumer protection and other practice requirements facing mortgage and consumer lenders/brokers, servicers and investors, as well as other participants in the real estate finance and consumer credit industries. She helps clients understand their obligations under all the authorities of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including TILA, RESPA, ECOA, HMDA, the SAFE Act, the Consumer Leasing Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and FDCPA, as well as similar state laws. She advises clients in connection with originating, purchasing and servicing all types of consumer finance products, including residential mortgage loans, consumer loans, credit cards, lease agreements and deposits. She also participates in regulatory compliance due diligence activities.
Kris is a former lawyer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In that role, she provided legal counsel to the department on the mission oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the interpretation of the RESPA and the implementation of the department’s various housing assistance and community development programs. She also worked in the financial services industry for a number of years.
Kris is a Past President and board member of the Women in Housing & Finance in Washington, DC. She is currently the President of the WHF Foundation. She attended Cornell Law School.
Mehul Madia, special counsel in the firm's Washington, D.C. office, provides deep consumer finance and fintech expertise to clients, leveraging more than 15 years’ of public and private sector experience.
Areas of Practice
Mehul counsels many of the nation’s banks and non-bank financial institutions, lenders, and fintech companies on sensitive regulatory, enforcement, and litigation matters. As a former senior attorney at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), he has extensive experience representing clients before federal and state government agencies. Mehul has substantial experience representing clients in government enforcement actions, internal investigations and class actions, as well as in regulatory compliance matters where he has guided clients through supervisory examinations. His practice focuses on helping clients successfully align their business strategies within the complex framework of federal and state regulatory requirements.
Mehul has an active enforcement and regulatory practice having represented companies and executives before a host of government agencies including the CFPB, the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Reserve Board (FRB), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), state attorneys general as well as state regulators such as New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), and the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation. He has counseled clients on matters involving unfair, deceptive or abusive acts or practices, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA), the Electronic Funds Transfer Act (EFTA), the Card Act, the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), as well as various state consumer protection laws.
From 2020-2022, Mehul served as a senior legal advisor to the Associate Director in the CFPB’s Supervision, Enforcement & Fair Lending office (SEFL). In that role, he advised the SEFL Associate Director as well as the CFPB Director on all enforcement and supervisory matters the Bureau undertook. He also advised on various legal and policy matters relating to student loan origination and servicing, mortgage servicing, auto finance, electronic and remittance transfers, debt collection, and short-term/small dollar lender.
Before joining Sheppard Mullin, Mehul spent several years in private practice, including at a national financial services law firm where he advised consumer financial services clients on enforcement, litigation and regulatory matters, and also served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney at the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.
After graduating law school, Mehul served as a law clerk for the Honorable Rhesa H. Barksdale for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is an active member of the South Asian Bar and National Asian Pacific American Bar associations and is a fellow of the Leadership Council for Legal Diversity.
Maria is a mortgage industry veteran with 25+ years of executive management and legal compliance experience and a proven record of driving new business as well as innovation while ensuring P&L success.
As CEO of Cloudvirga, Maria is leading the company’s strategic growth in building the preeminent digital mortgage automation company in the point-of-sale (POS) space where she is responsible for technology investments, new products, brand awareness, and enhancing the Stewart customer experience with end-to-end mortgage services and solutions.
She has also held executive positions at several TES (tech-enabled services) companies such as Covius where she served as General Counsel and Enterprise Compliance Officer and built and ran the Compliance Solutions division and specialty providers such as Statebridge and Murrayhill (Clayton).
In addition, Maria serves as Chair of California MBA’s Legal Issues Committee and is a member of MBA’s Technology Working Group. She also serves on the board of Women Leaders of Octane, a non-profit connecting people, resources and capital in the tech sector.
Yana Rusovski’s practice focuses on fair housing, financial services, and regulatory compliance matters. Yana is the co-lead of the Mortgage Regulatory Market Team at Spencer Fane. She counsels financial institutions, mortgage lenders, FinTech companies, housing providers, and government entities on regulatory compliance, products, investigations, and enforcement across a wide range of fair lending, housing, and consumer finance issues. Yana assists in guiding clients through the intersection of fair housing, fair lending, and AI, advising on how emerging technologies and algorithmic decision-making intersect with federal and state civil rights and consumer protection laws.
As a Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US), she employs her strong understanding of data protection frameworks to assist clients with data privacy challenges in the consumer finance and housing sectors. Within the real estate, finance, and government sectors, her practice includes a particular emphasis on assisting clients with regulatory compliance, preventative counseling, and defending against enforcement actions. She regularly helps clients identify and manage fair housing and fair lending risks and specializes in developing carefully tailored strategies to resolve disputes in ways that safeguard business goals, reputations, and relationships.
Prior to entering private practice, Yana worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, most recently as a compliance center director, where she led and managed investigations and compliance reviews of privately-owned multifamily housing providers, financial institutions, and hundreds of recipients of federal funding.
Additionally, she is widely recognized as an industry leader in negotiating HUD conciliation agreements. Her extensive knowledge has shaped fair housing and fair lending policies.
Yana also served as a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney litigating cases in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois and completed a detail at the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau, where she focused on ECOA matters. She is a current adjunct Professor at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
I have always loved thinking and problem-solving within a set of rules, the essence of litigation and regulatory compliance. As a boy, I wanted to be responsible for, of all things, airline operations. Practicing law is similar – I take extremely complex issues, distill them into actionable, concise questions, and suggest and implement effective solutions.
Sandy has been a licensed attorney in California for more than 35 years, and has litigated cases involving commercial law, real estate, and consumer financial services, focusing on mortgage-related issues, and offered regulatory and compliance advice to clients throughout the country.
Having handled more than 100 non-jury trials and numerous substantial jury trials in both state and federal courts, Sandy is an effective advocate no matter the course of litigation. With experience supervising litigation teams in the in-house and law firm context, Sandy evaluates and synthesizes complex issues, analyzes conflicting statutes and regulations to distill them to their essence, and implements practical solutions. In short, he knows what the case is about, how it should resolve, and develops effective trial themes to enhance jury and bench understanding.
Sandy also manages appellate cases, both for cases on which the firm has done underlying trial work and for matters other firms handled during the trial phase. He has worked on appeals in Florida and California at the state and federal levels.
In 1998, Sandy joined Countrywide Home Loans where he organized and established that company’s California In-House Litigation Group. Sandy focused on mortgage-related litigation and has tried numerous cases to verdict. In 2008, after Bank of America acquired Countrywide, he managed outside counsel on a pool of hundreds of litigation cases, and helped develop case resolution strategies.
With 25+ years in mortgage—from loan officer to General Counsel—I bring legal and compliance insight grounded in real-world lending operations. My early experience in processing, underwriting, and internal audit shaped the way I work with clients today: practical, clear, and focused on keeping your workflows moving.
Whether you’re navigating TILA, RESPA, ECOA, HMDA, Fair Lending, TCPA, or data privacy rules, I’ll help you spot risks early, prepare for reviews, and adapt with less disruption. My approach prioritizes what matters most to you: clarity, continuity, and credibility.
I also support lenders with contracts, governance, litigation oversight, and industry advocacy—always with your goals at the center.
Greg Young currently serves as the Senior Deputy Commissioner for Corporations and Financial Institutions within the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Greg was appointed to this role by Governor Gavin Newsom and joined DFPI on March 30, 2023.
Prior to this role, Greg was Community Lending Manager for Umpqua Bank where he was charged with building out the strategy and delivery of Umpqua’s Home Lending plan focused on increasing homeownership amongst underserved and under-resourced communities throughout Umpqua’s 5 state footprint in the West. Greg has over 25 year’s experience in a variety of sales and marketing leadership roles at American Express, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and New York Life. In 2008, Greg was a Founding Partner and Executive Coach with ThinkFeelKnow, an executive coaching and communications firm.
In the government sector, Greg spent time in Washington D.C. where he was Chief Legislative Clerk for Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Labor and Human Resources Committee. Locally where Greg resides in Martinez, CA, Greg has served on the Martinez Planning Commission, Library Commission, and the Contra Costa Library Commission. In 2004, Greg ran for Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors District 2.
He has been a guest lecturer on a variety of topics at U.C. Berkeley and Cal State East Bay. Greg was a guest lecturer at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, CA where he taught a non-profit financial management course in the School of Business and Management. Greg has served on several boards in his local community including the Diablo Valley College Foundation, Boys and Girls Club of Contra Costa County, Bay Area Development Company, and Juvenile Hall Auxiliary of Contra Costa County to name a few.
Greg holds a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communications from the University of California at Berkeley, a Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology from the University of San Francisco, and an Executive MBA from St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA.
