As assistant vice president of mortgage lending at Cornerstone Community Bank in Chattanooga, Karen Flores has the most important job of anyone who works there: come to the management meetings armed with a joke.
“They have to be PG rated,” she says, laughing. “They can’t have any bad words or suggestive scenarios, they just have to be funny.”
She offers a sample gag: “A construction worker accidentally cuts off one of his ears with an electric saw. He says to a guy walking on the street below, ‘Hey, do you see my ear?’ The guy picks up an ear and says, ‘Is this it?’ ‘No,’ replies the construction worker, ‘mine had a pencil behind it.’”
When Charlotte Lindeman, vice president of marketing at Cornerstone Bank, calls Flores “one of our greatest assets,” she’s not just referring to her knowledge and expertise as a mortgage loan specialist, she’s also talking about her ability to bring tears of laughter to the eyes of everyone at the meetings.
Flores is well-suited to the task. She’s outgoing, gregarious, and, by her own admission, loud. She also rarely meets someone who’s not immediately a friend. But her job skills don’t end there. She’s also a fastidious loan officer who won’t say “yes” until she’s sure a loan is in the borrower’s best interest.
“I believe if a customer is not well lent, then he’s not well served,” she says. “You’re not doing your customers any favors if you have to push something through.”
Flores says it’s never easy to say “no,” but it’s sometimes necessary. She never ends with those two disappointing letters, though; instead, she gives her applicants hope. “I’ll say, ‘We can’t do this now, but if you work on this credit issue, then maybe we’ll be able to do this in the future,’” she says.
Fortunately, there are also times when Flores is able to say “yes.” Her favorite news to deliver to a client involves appraisals that exceed expectations. She extends her pinky and thumb into a pretend phone and brings her hand to her face: “’Guess what? Your house appraised for much more than we thought it would! Woo hoo!’”
Flores was among Cornerstone’s original employees when it opened in 1996. She studied advertising at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, but couldn’t find work in her field, so she banked on her time working as a cashier at K-Mart while in college, and secured a job as a teller at InterFed Savings & Loan. The higher-ups at the bank quickly saw she wasn’t shy, and soon made her a new accounts secretary. While in that position, she typed loan documents for the branch manager. “It’s amazing how life prepares you for the future,” she says. “That taught me how to correctly securitize a mortgage loan, among other things. I then learned about setting up tax and insurance escrows.”
Flores took advantage of every opportunity to learn about the mortgage process, to the point of going to the courthouse to learn how to search public records. Through that process, she made valuable contacts on which she still relies today. “I can call Nina Boss at Century Title, or Bill Jones at Pioneer Title, or Barbara Tawater at Northgate Title Escrow because we’ve known each other forever. Establishing and maintaining those contacts has helped me to be successful at my job.”
In time, InterFed promoted Flores to head of its mortgage processing department. She later left InterFed to become a compliance officer at Union Planters, an important step in her development that didn’t win her any popularity contests. (“Who likes to get a phone call from their compliance person? I never called up just to ask about the wife and kids!” she says.) Flores next migrated to a mortgage processing position at Banker’s First. She eventually left that job to do similar work at Cornerstone.
Flores knew she’d found a place she could call home. “When Cornerstone opened its doors, we had no idea how hungry the community was for a local touch,” she says. “We had all of these big banks here, with their 800 numbers, and it was difficult to get the answers you needed because you had to call their headquarters in a different city.
“At Cornerstone, we have local people making local decisions using local service providers. It’s a great bank that does great things in the community, from lending to small businesses, to lending to people who want to buy a house in which to live, to lending to people who want to purchase rental properties,” she says.
When Flores’s supervisor quit the bank, she assumed his position. “I’ve been fortunate throughout my career to have worked with very knowledgeable people who took the time to train me in my current job. I certainly owe them,” she says.
A Knoxville native, Flores moved to the Scenic City when she was 27. She and her husband, Mike, met in college, and when he couldn’t find work in his field of study, either, he took a job at Corley Manufacturing Co. in Chattanooga. “My husband was a forestry major, which is cool until you go to look for work because there aren’t many Smokey the Bear positions open,” she says.
Over the years, Flores and her husband have come to realize how fortunate they are to be in Chattanooga. “In my opinion, political differences have kept surrounding cities from taking advantage of some great opportunities for growth and development,” she says. “Having seen what can happen when people pull together, we’re glad we wound up in Chattanooga, where differences can be set aside for the greater good and betterment of everyone. It’s inspiring.”
Flores believes in doing her part. Through Cornerstone, she’s been involved with the Homebuilders Association of Greater Chattanooga, the Greater Chattanooga Association of Realtors, the local chapters of the Women’s Council of Realtors, Habitat for Humanity, the United Way, and more. In addition, she’s devoted many hours over the years to the Boy Scouts troop and Cub Scout pack her husband founded.
Flores and Mike have two children – Matthew, who’s employed locally, and Lauren, who’s completing a finance internship at Disney Cruise Line in Florida.
Although Flores is devoted to her work at Cornerstone, she does have a second job: moonlighting as an Imperial officer in the Galactic Empire.
“Mike and I are members of the MidSouth Garrison of the 501st,” she says, referring to the Lucasfilm sanctioned “Star Wars” costuming organization. Flores dresses up as an Imperial officer, while her husband is a Tie Fighter pilot.
While the couple enjoys “cosplay” (costume play), it’s not a casual activity. To participate in the official Star Wars Weekend parades at Walt Disney World in May, Flores had to submit photos of her costume six times before parade officials accepted her. “It was a big, hairy ordeal,” she says, laughing again. “They didn’t like how my collar looked, and then they thought my belt buckle was upside down because a dot was on the right, but it was supposed to be on the left.”
The hassle was worth the effort, though; she was assigned to the first parade on the first day of Disney’s month-long “Star Wars” celebration. “What a thrill it was when they opened the gates, and we stepped out, and the crowd was taking our pictures,” she says. “But I couldn’t smile or wave at them. As an Imperial officer, my number one priority was focusing on the person in front of me. I had to stay in character.”
Marching in the “Star Wars” parade was not Flores’s only recent honor. This year, Mortgage Professional Magazine named her one of its Elite Women of the Year. Lindeman says the distinction was based not only on Flores’s knowledge and expertise but also her ability to help the bank’s customers make the best decisions for them. “We have great confidence in Karen’s abilities as mortgage loan specialist,” she says. “But she’s also a trusted advisor. That’s an important role for a banker. If someone is looking for a home loan, we send them to Karen because we know she’ll take care of them.”