“A Truly Charismatic Leader”

Kathy Gregory, Founding President & CEO of Paradigm Quest, was the first female CEO in the Canadian Mortgage Industry. To the Paradigm family and its customers, Kathy's philosophy and message are that Paradigm identifies itself as an organization that enjoys great success and is equally focused on giving back where possible. Paradigm is proud to help Canadians purchase their homes, and every employee must recognize that this is a noble responsibility that should be viewed as an honorable vocation. Consequently, this sets the foundation for the organization and employees to continuously take stock of their success and give back to many communities and organizations across the country.

“Paradigm was founded in 2004 and was the first pure BPO dedicated to mortgages in Canada. Paradigm has consistently endeavored throughout the years to provide its clients with customizable cost-effective end to end business solutions that focus on enhancing the overall mortgage experience for our broker partners, institutional partners and homeowners.”

Kathy’s vision and leadership are shown in the way she manages her team - as a family. Her leadership style can be described as charismatic, inclusive, and infectious, which successfully attracts and retains top talent. She views her role as the CEO of the organization and the Chief Cultural Officer. Kathy and her leadership team have created an exceptionally successful and professional unit that recognizes that the Paradigm family is the organization's number one asset.

Kathy remains a strong and outspoken advocate for the advancement and representation of women in leadership positions in the Canadian workforce. She has personally mentored dozens of young professionals, especially women, and helped cultivate their career paths towards success. In her organization, Kathy is forthright about striving to ensure that at least 50% of her leadership team reflects this gender equity, and strong women leadership remains visible. Specifically, through their Paradigm Mentorship Program, Kathy has inspired and motivated young talented women in the organization to maximize every opportunity to learn and advance and generously give back by sharing their time and knowledge. Her advice is to diversify one’s skills and knowledge base and continue learning about a plethora of topics.

Being a successful business leader in a predominantly male industry, Kathy is no stranger to breaking new ground and traditional barriers. Before founding Paradigm, Kathy was a senior executive at a Schedule A bank responsible for a 100 billion dollar mortgage portfolio. It became increasingly evident there were participants in the industry who wanted to fund mortgages but did not have the capacity or interest in the administrative overhead. Her vision was to launch a fully Canadian outsourcing company to provide alternative onshore solutions to major Canadian financial institutions.

Paradigm’s growth year after year has become the fastest-growing mortgage organization in Canada’s history. Kathy’s consistent message across the organization of a constant focus on prudent expense management, innovation, and aggressive growth, while staying the course on their key core strategy translated to the organization breaking even in its very first year of operations.

Among Kathy's many philanthropic endeavors, she founded the Canadian Mortgage Industry Women’s Networking Golf Tournament in 2007 which has increased in participants every year since. She also founded the BC Women in Mortgages Leadership Summit in 2011 which enjoyed a successful resurgence in 2019. To date, these two events have raised over $300,000 to support The Canadian Women’s Foundation, Canada’s only national public foundation dedicated to improving the lives of women and children. Kathy was also appointed as an Honorary Chair for the 2018 and 2019 Princess Margaret Cancer Centre OneWalk campaign in recognition of Paradigm's impressive and outstanding fundraising efforts contributing to the advancement of cancer research in Ontario.

In addition to her many accolades, Kathy is most proud to be a mother of three amazing children, who are carving out their own success and philanthropic contributions. IEWL