Divvy Homes Taps Blackstone's John Lee as COO and Promotes Lucia Franzese and Shirley Lin to Executive Leadership Team

Adena Hefets

 

 SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Jan.13, 2022 – Divvy Homes, a market leader in the proptech industry, announced today a number of new hires and promotions spurred on by significant financial backing and market opportunity.

 John Lee will join Divvy Homes as the company’s new chief operating officer, while two Divvy leaders are promoted to the executive leadership team and seven vice presidents have been added to the roster.

Lucia Franzese

John Lee joins Divvy following nearly eight years at Blackstone where he last served as a managing director in the private equity group.

 Prior to Blackstone, he worked at TPG and Merrill Lynch, and earned degrees from Harvard Business School and Stanford University.

Shirley Lin 

 Lee will oversee all operational functions of the business and provide strategic vision to the organization.

 Divvy Homes was incubated in Max Levchin's startup studio HVF and co-founded by Adena Hefets, Nick Clark, and Alex Klarfeld.

Max Levchin

As a member of the executive leadership team, Lee reports directly to chief executive officer Hefets.

 “This is the third time that John and I have worked together, and I am absolutely thrilled to have John join Divvy Homes as we begin this new chapter. Fueled by our Series D funding and debt financing, we’re poised for accelerated growth,” said Hefets, co-founder of Divvy Homes.

  "Our diverse, top-notch team is deeply experienced and committed to our mission of broadening access to homeownership.

 "We will continue to grow our team throughout the country so we can better serve our customers and agents.”

Nicholis (Nick) Clark

 Divvy Homes also announced that Lucia Franzese is promoted to chief revenue officer and Shirley Lin to chief product officer.

 Franzese joined Divvy in February 2019 with a focus on leading customer and agent acquisition.

 Under her leadership, the sales and marketing teams have grown the number of homes closed by 25x and have onboarded nearly 30,000 partner agents.

 Franzese’s team has grown to 75+ teammates and continues to prioritize driving revenue growth for Divvy. 

Molly Nelson

Lin joined Divvy as vice president, product in January 2021 to accelerate its next phase of product development.

 Since joining, she has designed and implemented proprietary capabilities in areas such as customer underwriting, property valuation, and conversion.

Torie Runzel

 For example, Lin revamped the product for Divvy’s nearly 30,000 agents and delivered a 40 percent increase in approval rates for self-employed customers.

 In her new role as chief product officer, Lin will lead a group of 11 across product and design who will focus on driving growth through automation and differentiated customer and agent experiences. 

Alex Kaufman

VP New Hires and Promotions since H2 2021:

 New senior hires and promotions across Marketing and Sales, Operations, Finance, and Data Science include: 

 Alex Kaufman - hired as Vice President, Data Science & Analytics

 

Bill Hoch - promoted to Vice President, Strategic Finance

Bill Hoch

 Kyle Zink - hired as Vice President, Marketing & Communications

 Molly Nelson - hired as Vice President, Sales

 Pete Nichols - hired as Vice President, Engineering

Spencer Thorp - promoted to Vice President, Home Operations

 

Torie Runzel - promoted to Vice President, People

 Divvy Homes’ 2021 Hiring 

 

Kyle Zink 

Led by VP of People Torie Runzel, the Divvy Homes team has tripled to more than 210 in the last 12 months, with more than a quarter of new hires coming from internal referrals.

 With an increased focus on diversity and inclusion team building in 2021, Divvy Homes doubled Black and Latinx representation from 9% to 18% and increased female representation from 35% to 42% across all levels, and more than doubled women in tech (product, engineering, data science, and design) to 25% representation. 

 Additional Hiring

Divvy Homes continues to look for additional senior leaders to add to its team as it searches for VPs of Corporate Development and Capital Markets.

Spencer Thorp

 Divvy Homes is also on the hunt for a Director of Product, Head of Talent Acquisition, and Head of Risk to continue to lead Divvy’s growth in 2022.

 Divvy has adopted a flexible work-from-anywhere policy so nearly all of Divvy’s positions are remote friendly outside of market-specific roles.

 

To learn more about Divvy Homes and open positions, please visit www.divvyhomes.com.

CONTACT:

 

Catherine Cuello-Fuente

 

Original Strategies

catherine@originalstrategies.com

917-545-8696