Leadership transition puts proven operator Geri Farr at the helm while allowing Kortas to focus on growth, innovation and NEXA’s highest earned level of leadership
PHOENIX, Sept. 8, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NEXA Lending today announced that Geri Farr has been named Chief Executive Officer, marking the next evolution of a leadership structure designed to separate the responsibility of operating the company from the responsibility of imagining what the company becomes next.
Mike Kortas will transition from CEO into the role of Executive Partner, NEXA’s highest earned level of leadership.
For Kortas, the move is not about stepping away from NEXA. It is about stepping fully into the role he has been playing all along.
“I have never cared about being called CEO, I care about growth, I care about winning, and most importantly, I care about finding new ways for our loan officers to make more money,” Kortas said. “Geri is better equipped to run this company day to day than I am, and my ego is not big enough to pretend otherwise. The best thing I can do for our loan officers is put the right person in the CEO seat and go spend my time creating what comes next.”
The relationship between Farr and Kortas reaches back nearly two decades. Long before Farr joined NEXA, and long before Kortas built the company into the organization it is today, Farr was his manager at NOVA Home Loans.
Now, the relationship has come full circle.
“I knew Mike before NEXA, I knew him before the scale, before the platform and before the thousands of loan officers,” Farr said. “What has never changed is how his mind works. He sees opportunities other people do not see, and once he sees one, he becomes relentless about making it real. My responsibility as CEO is to make sure NEXA has the leadership, discipline, infrastructure and execution necessary to support where Mike and our Executive Partners want to take us next.”
Farr continued, “Putting Mike behind a desk managing the day-to-day business is simply not the highest and best use of Mike Kortas. Let him build, let him challenge assumptions, let him chase the ideas everyone else says are impossible. My job is to make sure the organization can execute when those ideas become reality.”
A CEO Built for NEXA’s Next Chapter
Farr joined NEXA in 2025 after a career spent leading organizations through growth, transition and scale. Her experience across wholesale and distributed retail gives her a perspective that aligns directly with NEXA’s continued evolution and its mission to create better economics, greater optionality and more opportunity for loan officers.
Her elevation to CEO also reflects the leadership team NEXA has intentionally assembled around her. Chief Administrative Officer Rana Mortensen, NEXA’s first employee, has spent the past year working closely alongside Farr and remains one of the organization’s most cherished leaders. Chief Operating Officer Jason duPont, who was elevated into NEXA’s C-suite in 2025 after years inside the organization, continues to lead operations, as well as one of our Executive Partners alongside Mike. Chief Strategy Officer Tammy Richards shares a longstanding professional relationship with Farr that predates their time at NEXA, while Chief Financial Officer Von Maharaj joined the organization following a rigorous due diligence process in which Farr played an important role.
Together, the structure gives Farr an experienced executive team responsible for operating NEXA while creating something equally important above it: room for NEXA’s Executive Partners to think beyond the day-to-day business.
Executive Partner Is Earned
At NEXA, Executive Partner is not another C-suite title, it is intentionally bigger than one.
Executive Partners are proven builders who have earned the ability to help shape the future of the organization. They work alongside the executive leadership team, develop new business concepts, identify acquisitions and partnerships, challenge existing models and create new opportunities designed to increase the economics available to NEXA loan officers.
That distinction is central to Kortas’ decision.
“Too many founders build companies around themselves because they are afraid that giving up a title means giving up importance,” Kortas said. “That is ego. If I tell loan officers every day to make decisions based on what is best for their business, then I have to be willing to do exactly the same thing. Geri becoming CEO makes NEXA stronger, and me focusing on the Executive Partner role and those who serve it alongside me makes NEXA stronger. That is the only scoreboard I care about.”
Executive Partner Anthony Casa believes the structure represents something larger than a traditional corporate hierarchy.
“The Executive Partner role is powerful because you are not being asked to spend your life managing the machinery,” Casa said. “You are being asked to help build the future. Mike and I can be in the market, talking to loan officers, talking to mortgage company owners, looking for opportunities, challenging each other and coming up with ideas that can materially change the economics of this business. Then you have an incredible CEO and executive team capable of turning those ideas into reality. That is a very different way to build a mortgage company.”
A Different Path for Mortgage Company Owners
NEXA believes that structure can also become a model for other successful mortgage company owners.
For decades, owners have often faced two choices: continue carrying the operational burden of running an independent mortgage company or sell, merge or transition into another organization and risk losing their identity, influence and economic opportunity.
NEXA is building a third option; proven owners and leaders can potentially earn their way into the Executive Partner structure, allowing them to relinquish much of the day-to-day operational burden while continuing to recruit, innovate, build teams, create businesses and influence the future of one of the largest mortgage organizations in the country.
“It should not be considered a loss when an entrepreneur gets to stop worrying about every operational detail and starts spending more time doing the things that made them exceptional in the first place,” Kortas said. “Imagine what some of the best mortgage owners in America could create if they did not have to spend their day worrying about payroll, compliance, licensing, accounting, operations and infrastructure. That is what I want people to understand about Executive Partner.”
And at NEXA, the designation is meant to feel earned because the Executive Partner structure is designed to provide extraordinary economics and benefits commensurate with extraordinary contribution, including opportunities for seven-figure income, access to NEXA’s private physician and longevity resources for leaders operating at the highest level, and distinctive cultural traditions reserved for those who reach the position.
Among them is perhaps the most uniquely NEXA symbol of all: a rocking chair at Midnight Canyon, NEXA’s ranch. It represents something much bigger than a perk, it represents a permanent seat at the table.
Growth Without Ego
The leadership transition comes as NEXA continues expanding its platform, compensation models, technology, servicing opportunities, strategic partnerships and ability to bring established mortgage organizations into its ecosystem.
Farr will now be responsible for ensuring the organization has the operational strength to support that growth while Kortas and NEXA’s Executive Partners will be responsible for creating more of it.
“We are building a company where the CEO does not have to be the loudest person in the room, the founder does not have to protect a title, and incredibly successful entrepreneurs do not have to disappear when they become part of something bigger,” Farr said. “Everybody should be operating where they create the most value. That is what this structure accomplishes.”
For Kortas, that philosophy ultimately comes back to the same constituency around which NEXA has built nearly every major decision: the loan officer.
“If removing my title helps us grow faster, I will remove the title,” Kortas said. “If putting Geri in the CEO seat makes NEXA better, she gets the seat. If partnering with somebody who used to compete with me creates more opportunity for our loan officers, I will drop my ego and partner with them, none of this is supposed to be about us, it is supposed to be about the loan officer.”
With Farr leading NEXA’s execution and its Executive Partners focused on innovation, acquisition, expansion and new economic opportunities, NEXA is not simply changing who holds the CEO title, it is defining what leadership looks like for the company’s next era of growth.
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SOURCE NEXA Lending
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