Small Business News
June 2005 | Online Edition | Member Profile
Cathy Brogan ‘Ace’ of NorthStar Alliance Inc.
By Sheryl-Ann Wong Senior VP, NorthStar Alliance Inc.
An “Ace” is what some people call Catrina (Cathy) Brogan, the President and CEO of NorthStar Alliance Inc. and NorthStar Enterprises, Inc. A native of New Jersey, she and her husband, George, came to Hawaii in 1989 and were swept away by the “aloha” that only Hawaii could offer. It was a fresh relief from the fast paced, stressed life of the East Coast, and she knew they had found their home.
This feeling of “Helping you find your way home” is the motto of her company and remains deep in her heart. With the desire to help others, she decided to create her own mortgage company back in June of 2000, known as NorthStar Alliance (fka Summit Lending of Hawaii), the only “woman” owned privately held mortgage bank in Hawaii, located in downtown, Honolulu, in the Harbor Court Building.
Cathy started in the mortgage industry as a loan opener, working her way up to a processor, underwriter, operations manager, branch manager, then to regional manager of the Honolulu division of U.S. Bancorp. Mellon Bank acquired the company at the end of 1994. Cathy formed the Hawaii wholesale branch of New America Financial, and when they wanted to pull out of Hawaii, created her own company. Since then, Cathy has been named in the top 12 out of 25 “Women owned businesses” in 2004 by PBN.
NorthStar Alliance is currently licensed to do business in Hawaii, California, Nevada, and soon to be in New Jersey, Oregon, Arizona, and Washington. Her firm handles all aspects of the mortgage process locally right here in Hawaii, from loan origination to funding. Cathy’s ultimate mission is to minimize costs and maximize the efficiency of loan production, and is positioned to accommodate increasingly rapid changes in the industry, by expanding and diversifying into different income streams.
As one of her plans to diversify, Cathy was approached by the State of Hawaii to be part of a focus group for a pilot program called the SEE program (Supporting Employment Empowerment), managed by the Department of Human Services. She immediately had the vision to recognize that this program was a win-win for the State and the employer, where the State supplies candidates with suitable backgrounds for consideration to be trained and employed by the employer, and the employer takes on the tasks of training individuals that are in the state assistance living program, using their own resources, for employment. She knew that this program could successfully fill much needed job positions, but more importantly fill them with candidates that were molded by her company’s leaders, within her company’s corporate culture, thereby creating a new wave of workers with technical skills and the right attitude. Today, Cathy’s company has successfully graduated two classes in a beginning Level 1 six week training program, have employed qualified candidates and offered them positions in the mortgage bank, and have enrolled them into an advanced Level 2 training module for an additional six weeks. She has customized the name of her SEE program to “ACES” – Achievement, Communication, Excellence, and Success, and this program has become an instrumental part of the overall remolding of NorthStar Alliance.
Cathy is now on her way to being inducted as the incoming President of the Young Entrepreneur Organization, an elite group of business owners, and also serves as an advisory member of the Honolulu chapter of the Salvation Army. She manages to do all of this, and give the best of herself to her loving daughter “Kaile” and her husband “George. Cathy continually exemplifies her commitment to helping people find their way home. Truly an “ACE” in any book.
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