Charlotte Catalfo spent more than two decades in the mortgage industry, including executive roles at Vertice, Wachovia and Freddie Mac.
Catalfo is a member of Freddie Mac’s Senior Operating Committee, providing leadership and strategy on operational risks, including business resiliency, treasury operations and payment risks. Over the past year, Catalfo ramped up Freddie Mac’s business continuity/resiliency planning and testing program. She organized and oversaw an effort that engaged the entire company in preparing for various disaster scenarios. Her successes included a company-wide exercise simulating a technology issue at a partner company. Catalfo and her team took lessons from this exercise and drove refinements in planning down to individual departments. When the COVID-19 virus appeared in late 2019, Catalfo ramped up Freddie Mac’s planning and preparation for a pandemic, producing a multi-scenario plan tuned to the threat. The company deployed Catalfo’s plan beginning in February 2020 and was prepared with the infrastructure, personnel, strategy and communications that helped Freddie Mac manage the crisis. In the early stages of the pandemic, Freddie Mac moved more than 95% of its staff to remote work, managing a $2.2 trillion mortgage portfolio without significant disruption.