Supreme Lending Southeastern Region has 220 employees in Florida, North Carolina, and Georgia and is continuing to hire. In metro Atlanta, the company has 165 employees, including loan officers Hudson Chow, 26, and Kimberly Nehiley Akins, 45, and marketing specialist Hannah Jarvis, 28. Here, these three employees discuss why they consider the company a great place to work.
Kimberley Nehiley Akins has known boss Pat Flood for 20 years. She worked with him previously at HomeBanc and joined him at Supreme Lending as a loan officer in 2012.
“I really enjoy helping people. I enjoy working at the company. It is amazing,” Akins said. “It really is like a family. It’s not just the people you work with. It’s people who you care about and who care about you. They care about your spouse, which is unique for a company, and will ask about him at the end of a conversation … We work together. We play together. We vacation together. It’s nice.”
“This year, which was an especially trying year with COVID and everything, it was like being in a marathon. Everybody’s on the side cheering you on and saying, ‘Go. Go. You can do it.’ It’s a really positive mental workspace. It really helped me keep a positive mental attitude. It’s uplifting mentally; it’s comforting family-wise. It’s the kind of place you want to go when you can go, and, when you can’t go, you keep in touch with everybody over Zoom.”
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Hannah Jarvis, a marketing specialist, joined Supreme in November 2019. She worked previously in marketing on a smaller scale for a management company.
“It’s definitely been a step up, not only career-wise but also the passion for serving others before self has been such a great fit,” Jarvis said. “I’m just very grateful to have gotten here before 2020. It’s been a ride for sure, but one I’m very thankful and blessed for.”
She said she’s a “very goal-oriented person” and appreciates when she wakes up to an inspirational email from the boss, Pat Flood. “That’s when I say: It’s time to get out of bed, put the makeup on, head to the living room, and start work. It’s very motivating.”
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Hudson Chow was working as director of operations at a Chick-fil-A in Alpharetta, and Pat Flood of Supreme Lending would show up once a month to pick up chicken biscuits for 45 of his employees.
“I used to serve him at the drive-through,” Chow said.
Then one day, Flood said he wanted Chow to consider coming to work at Supreme Lending.
“He told me: ‘I don’t normally do this. But I feel like the Lord put this on my heart to ask you,” Chow recalled.
In November 2019, only weeks after that conversation, Chow left Chick-fil-A for Supreme Lending.
He said when Flood approached him, he’d been thinking he needed to either have a Chick-fil-A franchise or settle in as director of operations.
“I didn’t see myself doing either at that point after a lot of praying and discussing with my wife,” Chow said.
Supreme, he said, has the culture he was looking for: one where employees are expected to give 100%. He said it is almost identical to the culture he admired at Chick-fil-A.
“That’s one of the things that drew me to (Supreme), besides Pat, obviously,” Chow said. “It’s been a huge blessing, for sure.”
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