Our founding team
Dylan Hall
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
NMLS #1658740
Dylan's passion for improving mortgage lending stemmed out of his experience as a Teach for America math teacher in West side Chicago, where he witnessed how unscrupulous mortgage lending devasted the families of his students during the 2008 housing crisis. In business school, he became lead researcher for the book, House of Debt, shortlisted for Financial Times Book of the Year in 2014, detailing that crisis. Dylan previously founded and led technology development at Persee Ventures developing applications for institutions in finance, real estate and insurance and has been the CTO at a number of venture backed companies. He received his bachelor's in Computer Science from the University of lllinois Urbana-Champaign and his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dylan is currently a lecturer at the University of Chicago in the Masters Program for Computer Science.
Shima Rayej
Founder and Chief Product Officer
NMLS #1658741
Shima's passion for improving mortgage lending started during a Wall Street internship on Deutsche Bank's residential mortgage backed security desk after the housing crisis, where she learned about the widespread impact of poor lending practices on household wealth and how better, consumer-focused financial products and technology could help millions of homeowners. Prior to founding Safe Rate, Shima founded Persee Ventures with Dylan, where she led investment and product development. She started her career as a robotics engineer building path planning and obstacle avoidance algorithms for autonomous vehicles. Shima received her bachelor's in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.