The MBA leads MISMO, which is comprised of MBA members, technology companies and industry groups such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. MISMO is a year and a half old and added work on e-mortgage standardization to its goal of addressing e-commerce issues in the mortgage industry in January of this year. There are now 120 people working on the project, which has been subdivided to focus on specific aspects of e-mortgage. Gardner will help oversee the entire effort.

"Because of the tremendous growth within the MISMO e-Mortgage work group,"says Gabe Minton, MBA senior director of industry technology, who overseesMISMO's overall activities, "we felt it necessary to provide more managementoversight for this important technology area. Hiring Harry helps MBA maintain its leadership role in facilitating standardization for this pioneering new way of doing business."

Gardner has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia. He was director of custom integration with Ultraprise Corp., a business-to-business technology firm. He also has more than 20 years of experience managing technology endeavors in areas such as vertical software development, e-commerce, government contract management and systems integration, procurement systems and network systems support. He has also worked for CACI International, W.J. Culver Consulting, CSDC, Delta Electronics, Litton Systems and Teledyne Avionics. He is a certified engineer in Ariba (ACE) and Novell systems.