Michael Rivera Lives and Breathes Technology

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Michael Rivera’s passion for technology and his drive to excel in business stem from his upbringing. His father, who grew up “very poor,” owned a computer company that contracted with the US government. His mother owned multiple Message Envy locations.

“I had this tech-heavy, entrepreneurial background,” says Rivera, senior vice president of information technology at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices PenFed Realty, a full-service real estate company with two thousand professionals in seventy offices.

Rivera wrote his first computer program in the late ’80s, long before personal computers became ubiquitous in households and businesses. “For my dad’s company, I worked as a developer writing C and ColdFusion,” Rivera says. “We had this business vein running in our family, and it helped me develop the ability to assess risk very well.”

“My team is why I’m so successful. They just care about what they do, and they prove that every day with their work and ideas.”

Michael Rivera

At PenFed, Rivera leads the technology team, including two major departments. His IT operations and security department supports the roughly seventy sales offices PenFed operates. The product and development department that he leads comprises all PenFed developers and works with sales solutions, supporting all PenFed’s sales agents and the platforms they use.

“This is what I do for fun. I’m constantly reading articles, analyzing the micro and macro environments, and looking for the latest security threat,” Rivera says. “It’s fun and challenging.”

This past year, Rivera and his departments have completed the largest initiative they’ve undertaken since his arrival at PenFed nearly six years ago. “It was years in the making. We migrated over two thousand agent websites as well as all their CRMs, and we redesigned and recreated a new national website and new regional websites.”

The project involved consolidating multiple platforms to provide new features and services to PenFed customers. While Rivera and his departments focused on the unified architecture perspective, they kept their users top of mind. “We wanted to take care of our agents and their experience in the transition. From an adoption standpoint, they are very important to us,” Rivera explains. 

With the migration project behind him, Rivera is now implementing AI initiatives. One such effort, Gemini Advanced, is a trial in which PenFed employees are training on Google’s AI. “We are taking a look to see if whether or not we want to expand it to all of our agents,” Rivera says. Another AI initiative is a proof of concept of a custom-developed solution.

Outside AI, Rivera is revamping PenFed’s vacation rental website, which comes on the heels of PenFed’s acquisition of a property management company in Delaware. The goal is to increase the number of properties to include Florida’s Panhandle and Tennessee.

When Rivera is not heading up new projects and initiatives, he’s negotiating contracts and inking deals for PenFed. “We negotiate from a price perspective to even a service-level agreement perspective and a number of different angles,” he says.

Rivera has three direct reports and describes his leadership style as “shoulder-to-shoulder, a way to rally the troops and do what it takes to deliver a world-class experience.” Whether that involves team members working until two or three in the morning or having multiple team members across different departments come together to achieve a common goal, Rivera ensures the team feels unified and supported.

“My team is why I’m so successful,” he says. “They just care about what they do, and they prove that every day with their work and ideas.”

But it’s not just about the tactical. Rivera encourages his team to work peer-to-peer, collaborate, and create business cases that develop a real strategy, not just a prioritized roadmap. “It’s difficult, leveraging the unique DNA of your company and making investments that are necessary to create a wedge between you and your competitors,” Rivera says. “We’re placing a bet on the unknown so that we can realize asymmetric returns and build actual value for the company.”

One of the biggest challenges he’s faced of late is the recently settled National Association of Realtors lawsuit, which caused significant confusion among realtors throughout the industry. “It delayed projects. We had real estate contracts that we had to update as a result. We thought through potential outcomes to determine how quickly we could address those,” Rivera says.

Outside work, Rivera unwinds by playing ice hockey two nights a week and drums for a cover band. These activities alleviate the stress brought about by running two departments at a national realty company. “At band practice after we play our first song, I take a deep breath and I’m like, ‘Yes,’” Rivera says.

His work at PenFed informs his play on the ice and his interaction with his bandmates, and vice versa. “It’s about communication with team members and identifying risks and threats,” Rivera says. “Working with creative people can be different than working with highly technical people on a regular basis,” but the principles are the same.

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