When Linda Hyde arrived at the American Association of Private Lenders, she was determined to keep a low profile.
A decade later, she became its president.
In her previous career, Hyde held a highly visible management position overseeing more than 200 call center representatives. Burned out after two decades of long hours and a “straight-jacket” corporate leadership structure, Hyde was ready to prioritize her family. Further, her role as AAPL’s new member relations coordinator was intended to be temporary until the association’s then-parent company, Affinity Worldwide, launched its own call center.
“I was just going to hide in the corner and do my own thing [at AAPL]. I thought I would be able to work by myself, do my job, and go home,” Hyde told the Originate Report, “It didn’t work out that way. I got bored and started taking over.”
AAPL was founded in 2009 at a time of crisis for the finance industry at large: The federal government was spending billions to bail out banks, foreclosures had reached record highs, and the economy was deep in recession. The shift in the economic landscape created a gap between what borrowers needed and what banks were willing to lend.
AAPL stepped in and helped shape the emerging industry that would fill that gap—private lending.
For the first two weeks after onboarding in 2013, Hyde had no phone, no tasks, and no expectations set for her position. Quickly growing bored, she found a phone and started taking calls to get to know the association’s membership, which at the time barely numbered 100. But that number wasn’t yet documented. Hyde needed a baseline, so she began collecting performance indicators to benchmark the association and map where it could go.
Within a year she was promoted to director of operations and membership services.
Meanwhile, the association’s then-parent company, Affinity Worldwide, welcomed new leadership: Eddie Wilson joined as CEO in 2015. He soon made the unpleasant discovery that AAPL was bleeding more than $700,000 a year. Among the financial paperwork provided to him was a report detailing membership, profit and loss, and other key performance indicators.
“OK, well somebody has something going on here,” Wilson recalled in a 2023 speech at AAPL’s Annual Conference. “So, I went to the person who was leading the organization at that time, and I said, ‘Who put this report together?’”
The executive claimed credit for it. “I started asking questions and right off the bat it was very apparent that they did not put this report together,” Wilson said.
He asked again who created the report and this time was told it was Hyde – “this lady who sits in the back corner.” Had she been directed to compile the report? No, Wilson was told, she had just done it on her own.
Wilson walked out of the meeting to hunt for the “back corner.” That was the first time he met Hyde. Wilson would go on to promote Hyde to managing director within six months.
“Linda is a rare mixture of vision and operations. She leads by example and loves our members,” Wilson told the Originate Report. “AAPL’s success is directly related to her guidance and leadership.”
In 2023, and at the same conference where he told the story of how he and Hyde met, Wilson announced Hyde as AAPL’s president, describing her as someone who “pushed from the back and the bottom trying to make this association what it should be.”
Wilson also described the move as long overdue. “She’s served as the de-facto president for years,” he said. “It’s time she had the title to go with the job.”
Wilson stepped into a chairman role for the association with minority owner Anthony Geraci, CEO and partner of Geraci LLP, as vice chairman.
A home and a place to grow
In the decade since Hyde compiled that first KPI report, membership has grown from barely more than 100 to nearly 800. She credits it to building a team of like-minded individuals who share her drive and initiative.
One of Hyde’s major hires was Kat Hungerford, AAPL’s digital project manager. The position entails a broad range of responsibility: Apart from its annual conference, almost everything the association produces is digital, from myriad website resources to webinars and online courses. Hungerford is also the executive editor of AAPL’s flagship print and digital magazine, Private Lender, and is the go-to staffer for the association’s three advisory committees.
“We’ve got a small team, so our positions are very much a jack-of-all-trades,” Hungerford told the Originate Report.
Hungerford’s adaptability is how she ultimately found her way to the AAPL.
“I bounced around between [several Affinity Worldwide subsidiaries] as a quasi-problem-solver,” Hungerford said.
After a restructuring period in 2019, during which Affinity Worldwide sold off substantially all its assets, Wilson took ownership of two: AAPL and Think Realty, a media platform for real estate investors.He placed both companies under Hyde’s oversight. Amid the shuffle, Hyde had her pick of more than a hundred employees set to be downsized. She chose Hungerford after seeing her in action on a few association and related subsidiary projects.
“Linda not only gave me my first stable professional home since I joined Affinity Worldwide in 2015, but in contrast to a lot of other projects I worked on, she allowed me room to grow and expand my skill base,” Hungerford said. “Linda will tell you she has a vision for a project and then I get to execute it and make something impactful not only for the association but also the industry.”
Offering another perspective on Hyde’s development as a leader is Craig Johnson, one of her direct reports with AAPL’s sister company Think Realty. Johnson, her chief of staff, has a unique vantage point: He was her boss during their call center days and now is one of her employees.
“One of the most valuable contributions—but also a sacrifice—a leader can make is to be giving of her time. Linda takes the time to invest in her people,” Johnson said. “She believes in development both formally and informally. Often people in leadership roles do not understand that any time you spend with your direct reports is an opportunity for learning and development. She will coach and advise, but most importantly she will listen.”
‘We’re never really resting on our laurels’
Until 2022, Hyde and Hungerford were a two-woman team managing an association, including hosting its annual conference—while still keenly focused on expanding both membership and member benefits.
“Our philosophy is to always be adding. We’re never quite content with where things are,” Hungerford said. “We’re driven as people, and that helps the association. We’re always looking for the next thing that’s going to help our industry.”
AAPL has a history of launching big initiatives; you can check out their full timeline at aaplonline.com/what-we-do[KH1] .
Guided by three committees, the association has had some hallmark wins, even as outside naysayers questioned whether it would continue to exist with only two employees at the helm.
Its Government Relations Committee advocates for the interests of private lenders in state and federal legislatures and has notched more than 15 wins since its 2018 launch. In 2020, the SEC also cited AAPL in a rule expanding the definition of “accredited investor.” The ruling opened a new avenue to additional capital sources for the private lending industry.
Meanwhile, the Ethics Committee is charged with reviewing potential violations of the association’s published standards for ethical practice and produces additional guidance via the magazine and virtual workshops.
Finally, AAPL’s Education Committee oversees everything from ideating topics for the Annual Conference to leading the AAPL’s certification courses. (There are two: Certified Private Lender Associate and Certified Fund Manager.)
Between all committees, the association has hosted nearly 80 webinars, amassed over 800 educational articles in its online archive, and churned out more than 200 biweekly newsletters, in addition to its quarterly magazine, which is now in its 10th year.
Most recently, AAPL launched a new industry-specific online jobs board that allows both AAPL members and non-members to post and reply to positions. The association is also leading a new Borrower Fraud Steering Committee alongside its earlier forays into fraud defense, which include monitoring for cloned sites among its member websites and blocking bad actors’ use of AAPL’s trademarked logo to defraud the public.
AAPL’s marquee production is its Annual Conference at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which is celebrating its 15th anniversary (as is the association itself). Over the years, the conference has grown into a bonanza of courses, panels, roundtables, and vendor booths that blends networking and education—with some “classic Vegas fun” thrown in for good measure. Over the space of two days, AAPL typically packs in over 45 speakers and more than 65 vendors for an attendee roster that has surpassed 700.
Along with the association staffs’ hard work ethic and commitment to supporting members is a spirit of good cheer and levity. The statement of core values on the AAPL’s Who We Are page perhaps puts it best, listing integrity, morality, partnership, along with a fourth value—humor. “AAPL is a fun place to work … A positive and enthusiastic association will naturally work smarter and achieve more!” it states.
Women in private lending: ‘Nobody is going to give it to you’
As the association has grown, so has its staff. In the past two years, Hyde has made just as many hires. First was Shaylee Henning, the marketing manager and point person for AAPL’s social media channels. The two crossed paths at AAPL’s Annual Conference in 2021, which Henning’s friend attended for work while she tagged along for a chance to vacation in Las Vegas. Instead, she ended up pitching in as a volunteer at the conference.
When Hyde found out that Henning, who was in the radio industry, was looking for a change of pace, she snapped up the opportunity. “I hired her almost immediately, although we weren’t sure exactly what she was going to do at the time,” Hyde said.
The newest hire is Chrissy Spencer. The secretary at Hyde’s daughter’s school, Spencer had heard through the school gossip grapevine that Hyde was looking for an executive assistant. She called Hyde and asked for an interview.
“She came off as smart and a leader, and I appreciated the initiative in asking to meet,” recalled Hyde. “She’s a natural people person and has quickly found her place on the team.”
“I say we’re all like puzzle pieces. Everyone fits together,” Hyde added.
AAPL, with a predominantly female staff, is the exception for the industry it serves. Although specific demographic data for private lending is not well-researched, in general the finance industry has a deserved reputation as something of a boys’ club. According to a report from Deloitte Center for Financial Services, six out of 107 CEOs at S&P companies were women in 2019.
The number of women in the rank and file has increased to 52%, according to a 2021 McKinsey report. But the same report found that “their representation falls off at every step” on the corporate ladder. At the C-suite level, white women accounted for slightly less than a quarter—
23%. The disparity was even more drastic for women of color, who made up just 4% of financial services C-suite positions, according to the report.
AAPL’s nearly all-female staff is not by design, Hyde said. Her hiring philosophy is a simple one: Find the best person for the role. In the case of her staff, it just happened that women stood out as the best candidate each time.
“She understands the value of having the right people in the right seats as being critical to success,” Johnson noted of Hyde. “Allowing those people to lean on their strengths and providing the assistance or resources to assist their areas of opportunities are the reasons she has been so successful.”
The women at AAPL say their rise to positions of leadership is a story of self-empowerment. “Nobody is going to give it to you. Nobody is going to clear the way for you. But as a team, we can accomplish really great things because we trust each other and we allow each other room to grow,” Hungerford said.
As leader of the industry’s oldest and largest association for private lending, Hyde is in a position to do something about the lack of representation of women in finance. In her view, many well-intentioned efforts to promote women tend to single them out in a non-inclusive way, paradoxically only further marginalizing them.
Hyde offers the example of a submitted proposal for a panel at one of AAPL’s past conferences. In a nod to its attempt to prominently feature women, the panel title listed the topic with the added gender-defining appellation, “in heels.” Instead, Hyde is keen to ensure that women are represented across the board, rather than confined only to those venues or spaces explicitly reserved as women-only.
One way she makes good on this philosophy is AAPL’s magazine: In the archive of its early issues, it features a who’s who of male leaders. But about the same time Hyde took a leading role in the association, women start popping up on the covers. As of the time of this writing, its most recent four issues happen to be dominated by women.
Just by being visible in positions of leadership, whether on the cover of Private Lender or at AAPL itself, women can inspire others to reach higher on the corporate ladder. As the Deloitte report noted: “Our research for this series revealed a powerful multiplier effect: Each woman added to the C-suite of financial services firms resulted in a three-fold increase of women in senior leadership positions at these companies.”
Of course, there is a place for some gender-specific initiatives. AAPL supports the Women in Private Lending group, a separate organization that maintains its own ongoing rotation of events, webinars, and other activities, including a standing luncheon at the annual AAPL conference.
Women’s transformative potential in the workforce
Increasing the ranks of women in finance at all levels in corporate hierarchy isn’t just about equality and representation—as important as those principles are. It is also good business.
A 2022 report from the Boston Consulting Group touted the benefits women bring in terms of “innovation, resilience, and financial performance.” Another plus comes from work experience in other industries. Rather than signifying a lack of relevant experience, multidisciplinary backgrounds “potentially enhance[s] their abilities to lead enterprise-wide transformations.”
Another case in point is being a parent, Hyde said, which she believes can sharpen women’s skills as organizers and their willingness to be more demanding in terms of the standards they hold themselves and others to.
The same organizational skills also mean that women can be an active parent and a fully engaged member of the workforce. “I think we can balance both, and that’s what they’re finding out as women rise through the ranks of leadership,” said Hyde, herself a mother of a 13-year-old daughter.
“She’s my whole world. She’s why I do everything,” Hyde added.
Despite taking the reins as president, Hyde hasn’t given up on her original goal of keeping a low profile. “Most of you don’t normally hear from me because I hide in the background and let Eddie do all the talking,” she told a crowd of hundreds after being introduced as the new president at AAPL’s 2023 Annual Conference. “Things aren’t going to change—I’ll still be in the background.”
Hyde said her focus was instead on elevating AAPL’s members. “We’ve come really far together. This is only the beginning for us. Today is the next step in our continued growth and evolution as an association. I hope you guys are along for the ride,” Hyde said.
For more information about the American Association of Private Lenders, visit https://aaplonline.com/.
