Define your brand or risk losing yourself

In a mortgage industry dominated by speed, performance, and burnout, Ruvani Henriques (pictured, above centre with team) is pushing leaders and professionals to define success through personal brand alignment.  

Mortgage professionals are chasing activities and goals handed down from legacy systems without questioning its purpose. They are risking burnout for low-impact results. Henriques believes this is avoidable, but it begins with awareness and reflection. Her approach, which she calls “branding as a compass,” starts with defining your vision, identifying your mission and values, and keeping yourself accountable to live in tune with them as a daily practice.  

As vice president of strategy, marketing and sales at Glasslake Funding and a speaker for this year’s Women in Mortgage Canada, Henriques pushes leaders to build a clear internal framework that acts as a guide. 

“You have to ask yourself how you want to make people feel in every moment – small and big,” she says. “Then ask how you’re making that a reality for your team, your customers and your company culture. Even more importantly, check in with yourself on what’s bringing purpose and fulfilment; not just box checking.” 

It's not about personal branding for show. It’s about avoiding the drift that happens when people stop making intentional choices aligned to their purpose. “Your brand is rooted when you take time to define your mission, vision, and values.” 

She sees burnout not as a personal failure, but the cost of never pausing. “You may be checking boxes, but you feel like you’re spinning your wheels on empty and not moving forward,” she says. Many are chasing goals they never set. “Success is a definition created by others versus yourself, because you haven’t decided what you stand for and what success is.” 

Putting pen to paper isn’t a productivity hack. It’s how Henriques builds leadership that holds up under pressure. “Challenge yourself to write and reflect on how you act in alignment with those ideals,” she says. Skip that step, and you risk ending up on autopilot, spending cycles in kind of low return moments from a fulfillment standpoint. Autopilot really is a form of survival that can lead us to an inability to be present. When we’re misaligned – we risk making decisions and curating a life that can become unrecognizable to us and what we truly want.  

Boundaries as a leadership skill 

Henriques doesn’t frame minimalism or boundary-setting as trendy self-care practices. She treats them as strategic imperatives.  

“Check in with yourself, set your limits before other people set them for you,” she says. “Understand that you’re valued even when you say no and make unpopular choices.”  

Too often, she says, professionals feel they “work too hard” - not because they’re striving, but because they’re unsure and unclear of what success is. “You can overwork, but at the expense of burnout,” she says. “You have to focus on what matters, share the light with your peers and teams, and work with intent and impact.”  

Her take on emotional bandwidth isn’t about indulging feelings. It’s about managing them with tactical precision. Visibility can quickly become tokenization if leaders don’t proactively define their worth within themselves.  

“Reflect on how you define your worth and importance in your role and in every aspect of your life,” she says. That’s not a suggestion—it’s a directive. 

Marketing as a model, not a department 

For Henriques, branding and marketing aren't just functions. They're models for vision, planning, process, communication, and alignment. Brand and Marketing functions are most successful when they are persistent and true to purpose and consistency with a constant iterative approach. Whether you’re leading work, leading a team, writing an email or setting company-wide goals, the method is the same.  

She advocates aligning the entire organization to a few key objectives or pillars. "Aligning our entire organization to key pillars has driven clarity and focus on how we win," she says. People stop doing “things” and spinning in reactive circles when they know what they're aiming at.  

"You're not just doing things to do things and create a job. You're doing things that have a ripple effect and impact." She's also explicit about the machinery behind good decision-making.  

"There are so many stages in the marketing process, and so much communication is required in every stage of the process," she says. The same goes for leadership, deal-making, and partnerships. Without clear communication along the way, progress is just movement. 

Build the muscle or lose it 

Henriques doesn’t romanticize any of this. Brand strategy, like leadership, isn’t accidental – it's intentional. “It takes commitment and conviction,” she says. “What you put to paper as your brand story is just going to continue to grow.” The paper is a token of your accountability. 

That narrative evolves with every experience, every failure, every win. And the stakes aren’t abstract. Leaders and professionals who don’t stop to reflect risk more than stress—they risk irrelevance.  

“If you don’t take the time to stop and reflect on your why,” she says. “You can sometimes get lost in making commitments to things that maybe don’t serve you or your purpose.” 

It’s a message that resonates deeply with the Women in Mortgage Canada community—an event where women across the industry come together not just to celebrate success, but to redefine it. Conversations about clarity, boundaries, and authentic leadership are not just welcomed, but expected.