The Team

Rosalie Berg
Founder and President
Rosalie Berg founded Strategic Vantage in 2002. She has over 15 years of marketing and public relations experience serving companies in a wide range of industries.

Over the past 11 years she has developed a specialty in financial services with a focus on the mortgage industry, while she continues to also manage accounts in a wide range of other industries.

Rosalie personally manages and supervises many of the agency’s clients, creating and executing public relations and marketing campaigns from inception through completion.

Prior to founding Strategic Vantage, Rosalie worked as Vice President of Marketing for mortgage technology provider OpenClose Technologies. She has had executive marketing positions at Oracle® consulting firm Dataforce Corporation and packaged software provider Expert Software (now Activision®). At Publicis Sanchez & Levitan Advertising & Public Relations, her clients included Absolut Vodka, Lennar Homes, Marshalls and Seagram’s. Rosalie also worked at Mercer Management Consulting doing analysis for Fortune 500 companies.

Rosalie received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Brown University. She was born in Argentina and has also lived in Guatemala and France, and now resides in Miami, Florida.

James Hennessy
Managing Director
As Managing Director of Strategic Vantage, Jim Hennessy actively manages the accounts of selected clients in the mortgage industry. A prolific writer and public speaker, he has authored over 200 articles and white papers published in Mortgage Originator Magazine (he was their longest-running author), Mortgage Banking, Secondary Marketing Executive, Equity, Mortgage Technology and other publications. He has spoken before domestic and international audiences on topics from e-commerce to business transformation and enhanced production performance. He is also an award-winning published author and produced screenwriter, with two novels and nine feature films to his credit. A trivia fan, he was also a contestant on TV’s Jeopardy!.

Jim has over 25 years of experience in the mortgage industry in senior production management roles with large national firms, including Security Pacific/Bank of America, Advanta/Chase, Norwest/Wells Fargo and PMI Mortgage Insurance Company. He gained international experience in the global credit and real estate consulting practice of EDS (Electronic Data Systems) in Western Europe and Asia, and was part of the founding management team of Capsilon Financial Systems Group.

Jim was born in the San Francisco Bay area, the son of a navy captain, and was raised in military locations around the country. He received his B.A. in History and Speech from The University of San Diego and lives in San Diego, California.

Jeri Yoshida
Account Director
Jeri Yoshida oversees and manages accounts in the mortgage and consumer finance industries, as well as for the general market. She has been working for the agency since 2005.

Jeri began her career as a mortgage loan officer, and has worked for a Los Angeles brokerage, Bank of America and American Savings Bank (now Washington Mutual/JP Morgan), where she was recognized as Loan Agent of the Month within four months of entering the industry. She brings strong knowledge of the each phase of the mortgage cycle and over 15 years of writing and media relations experience.

Throughout her career, Jeri has authored articles for both the consumer and trade press, including Entrepreneur, Westways and Fit Pregnancy magazines. Prior to her work with Strategic Vantage, she was a writer for Entrepreneur magazine and was the editor of Club Success, a trade journal for the health club industry.

Jeri attended the University of Southern California, where she received both a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and a Master’s degree in Professional Writing.

Warren Lutz
Senior Account Executive
Warren Lutz actively manages the accounts of selected clients in the mortgage and technology industries.

Prior to joining the agency, Warren was a professional journalist and writer, authoring hundreds of general interest, business and technology articles for consumer and trade publications, newsletters and websites, including Realtor.com, Commercial Investment Real Estate, Urban Land, Banking Strategies, SNL Financial and Property Protection Report. He is a frequent contributor to Mortgage Banking Magazine and a licensed Realtor in California.

Warren is a former Managing Editor at Inman News Features, a nationally syndicated real estate news service, where he edited the work of nationally-syndicated real estate columnists and penned his own column that ran in news outlets such as The Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal Online. He began his career as a newspaper reporter and has won several statewide and national reporting awards covering business, health, government, legal and social issues, and the environment.

A graduate of San Francisco State University, Warren lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Marshall Taylor
Account Director
A veteran journalist of more than 20 years, Marshall Taylor brings extensive experience to Strategic Vantage to manage accounts for mortgage services and technology companies.

Marshall has spent the bulk of his career covering economic policy and mortgage finance, both residential and commercial. Prior to joining Strategic Vantage he was Washington Bureau Chief for Canadian Economic Press, a real-time financial and business newswire headquartered in Montreal, where he directed coverage of economic indicators and Federal Reserve monetary policy.
Marshall also served as Editor-in-Chief of Real Estate Finance Today (REFT), once the Mortgage Bankers Association flagship weekly newspaper. There he managed a reportorial and editorial staff focusing on legislative and regulatory issues affecting the mortgage industry. Under his leadership REFT also expanded coverage of mortgage company operations and technology.

Previously Marshall also was the European Correspondent for Commercial Mortgage News and developed the leading American trade press coverage of British and European property companies and their deals.

An avid sailor, Marshall resides on Chesapeake Bay in Annapolis, Maryland along with his 35-foot sloop. He has a B.A. in Political Economy from Hillsdale College.

Mary McGarity
Senior Account Executive
Mary McGarity has more than 20 years of experience serving the mortgage and financial services industry. Prior to joining Strategic Vantage, she was a longtime contributor to Mortgage Banking magazine, authoring articles on a wide range of topics. Prior to that, she worked for several years as a senior reporter at the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Mary began her career on Wall Street covering futures markets for a large investment bank. She later worked in New York as an energy reporter for Telerate Inc., a Dow Jones company, and has served as the Washington correspondent for a Dealers Digest newsletter, covering mortgage securities.

She has completed the Commodities Futures Trading Commission certification course, and graduated with a BA in English from the State University of New York at Albany.

Henry Drennan
Media Relations Specialist
As Media Relations Specialist, Henry Drennan focuses on identifying interesting story ideas and hot news angles for reporters to cover. He began his career in the mortgage and financial services industry as co-owner of a commercial brokerage company dealing with small business loans. He later switched to originating residential mortgages, including all types of conventional and government loans. During this time, he became nationally registered as a mortgage loan officer, and holds four individual state licenses as well. Henry has extensive experience with FHA, conventional, streamline, and VA loans in addition to being an accomplished writer.

Henry received a Bachelor of Science in Mass Communications and Psychology from Middle Tennessee State University. His minors include English and Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Henry resides in Nashville, Tennessee.

Mike Murray
Senior Account Executive
Mike Murray has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services and mortgage industry, broadcasting and writing. Prior to joining Strategic Vantage, he spent more than 12 years working for the Mortgage Bankers Association as editorial manager of online communications and as writer for MBA NewsLink and Real Estate Finance Today. Mike also contributed articles to Mortgage Banking magazine and hosted a public affairs program, This Month in Housing, heard on local Washington, D.C. radio stations.

Prior to working at the MBA, he worked in loan production and loan counseling positions for Navy Federal Credit Union, Pentagon Federal Credit Union and ComNet Mortgage, a branch of First Commonwealth Bank. Mike has also been a producer for Gannett’s USA Today Sky Radio.

Mike graduated with a BA in English from the College of William and Mary. He had a play performed in the college’s “Second Season” premiere theater and continued to write plays performed in community theaters.