The Erin Sheckler Story

After almost two decades in the industry Erin Sheckler’s resume includes almost every aspect of the title insurance industry. Her highest accomplishment, being named as the first female president of NexTitle, was just announced in March.

“I enjoy getting everybody motivated and moving in the same direction with a common goal,” she said. “It’s such an exciting time.”

Her journey began as a math major at Western Washington University. After finding a job in title insurance, she said she was on the job for about a year-and-a-half before she really knew what it was.

“I was really driven to succeed in college but I had no idea what I wanted to succeed at,” said Erin. “I had an affinity for math, so I started working toward a math degree. I really didn’t want to be a math professor, but I had enough math classes that I could parlay that into a business major. I started taking some finance classes and ended up getting a minor in finance while subsequently moving more towards marketing and public relations. I also wrote for my college paper and the campus magazine.”

Eventually she chose journalism and public relations, graduated and took a position in finance. After about a year, she said she didn’t really feel engaged with the industry and left to take a position in title insurance. She worked as an executive assistant at Chicago Title in downtown Seattle. It was a fun group of people and she said it was interesting and fast paced at the time.

It wasn’t until she read a brochure on “What is title insurance?” that she decided this is where she wanted to make her career, long-term.

“When I expressed my interest, my boss was such a great mentor to me,” Erin said. “He took me under his wing and taught me about the business. He had a great management style. He was really passionate about the industry, but more passionate about the people.”

She was still at Chicago Title in 2001 when Fidelity bought the company, and she reported directly to Randy Quirk. She was offered a job in California but wanted to remain in the Northwest with the man who eventually would become her husband. She accepted an offer at Washington Title, which became Ticor Title. Erin said she enjoyed going from a corporate environment to a ground-level operation. She said it was very interesting to see how corporate directives are decided and delivered at the corporate level prior to transitioning to an operations role where you can see how they are received and implemented.

She began attending law school at night. She wasn’t looking for a legal career, but knew the knowledge of the law would be valuable. The days were so long between working, the classes, commuting and studying, but she said “an education is an investment in yourself” and didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.

Once she graduated, she was charged with starting a national commercial division of a company that would close commercial deals out of Seattle.

“That’s when I became more involved in the commercial side of the business and found it fascinating,” Erin said. “It was so much fun to close these deals that shaped the skyline. I love to drive downtown and see the different projects that we worked on. At the time, we were so small, I was doing a little bit of everything. I was doing sales, escrow and underwriting. I was also working a lot of long days and traveling.”

Erin enjoyed the work, but she knew she had to reprioritize after she had her first child, so she took a step back and went into escrow.

“I’m one of those people that if I do a job, I want to learn it from the ground up and know everything that goes into it,” Erin said. “So even though I was an attorney at the time, I took a position as an escrow assistant. The manager said I was overqualified for it. I told her I didn’t plan to be there very long, I just wanted to know everything they do, so when I was in a closing position, I would know all the facets of the job. The escrow manager at the time offered her the opportunity to work for a very established commercial closer who was set to retire. He wanted someone to learn about his clients and take over. She assisted him for three months and then began closing deals when the market bottomed out.

“There wasn’t much work for one of us, let alone three of us,” said Erin. “The other two closers had been doing this for 20+ years. I was fairly new, just out law school, so I self-selected and went to work for RCOLegal, a mortgage banking law firm.”

It was a little chaotic. She hadn’t worked for a law firm before and was brand new to the actual practice of law. She was the only attorney sitting in the firm’s escrow department. The client wanted the firm to expand into closings, but the company didn’t have much experience and the department had some major struggles. Soon Erin was completely reorganizing the department. She said they took it one area at a time, but it was a monumental task to completely turnaround a practice area with no reprieve from the volume or the bank’s requirements.

“We put in some performance metrics for the staff,” she said. “There was a lot of turnover. There was a lot of process re-invention. We were having major public perception and customer service issues. We sat down with the listing brokers for our REO clients and asked what we could do better. There was no visibility or transparency about what the clients and GSEs required from escrow and listing agents and who was ultimately responsible for different parts of the process. They had implemented a process with too many choke points, and that doesn’t work. If you want a good closing, everyone has to communicate and collaborate.

“The process became a lot smoother for the buyers, banks and listing agents,” she continued. “It was fun to see the metamorphosis of the department and the feedback was so much more positive.”

Then in March 2013, she accepted a position from NexTitle as Washington State operations manager and was promoted to senior vice president, general counsel and western states regional director inside of two years. In March 2015 she was named president of the company.

“I’m still settling into it,” Erin said when asked about her new position. “I like being able to set the tone for an organization. I like getting really hands on with the people and the processes. I love creating a culture of hard work and collaboration and watching how it permeates throughout the organization. The soft skills people undervalue, that’s the fun part.”

Erin’s goal internally is to communicate, collaborate and execute. She said 2015 is going to be a breakout year for the company as it continues to focus on its residential resale growth.

When she is not achieving these goals, Erin describes herself as outdoorsy. She and her husband have an 18-acre parcel right on the trail system.

“For my 40th birthday I got a brand new bike so I just recently got back into mountain biking,” Erin said. “We love biking, hiking and playing on the trails on the property. A lot of our recreation in is in the backyard. But, we also really love international travel. We sailed through the Mediterranean and the Aegean in Turkey and Greece last summer.”

When asked what helped her succeed she said her perseverance.