With 27-years of service in the mortgage industry, John Vella, a former executive vice president at GMAC/Residential Capital (ResCap), will begin on April 26 as the new chief operating officer of Equator. Equator is a provider of automated default servicing, REO and short sale technology for the mortgage industry. Once there, Vella will be in charge of growing the company, as well as expanding the operations of the company’s EQ Workstation, a automated default servicing management tool, as well as the ecommerce forum, EQ Marketplace. In an interview with HousingWire, Vella said he felt that he would fit in perfectly at Equator. “I am very excited about the opportunity,” he said. “There’s a huge opportunity right now in our industry, and in this space especially, and we want to do our best to grow our services.” At GMAC/ResCap, Vella looked after the special servicing operations. Before that he was president and CEO of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) subsidiary, EMC Mortgage. Vella also spent time as director at Freddie Mac (FRE) as well as at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Los Angeles-based Equator is a short sale and REO specialist. It’s forum includes approximately 18,000 asset management vendors and 665,000 real estate agents.  The platform has processed more than $115bn in transactions and is banking on more business with the Vella hire. “We are very excited to bring John Vella on board because his values and drive are a good match for our company,” said Chris Saitta, CEO at Equator.  “His servicing industry experience and leadership will support many of our growth initiatives.” Write to Jacob Gaffney. The author holds no relevant investments.