In the News: Banking Innovation Brings Patent and Awards
Through her ability to make complex data understandable and useful for informing business decisions, Julie Fleener Hamrick ’81 is having a bold impact on the banking industry.
Co-founder and chief analyst of Ignite Sales Inc., Dallas, she pioneered patented analytical methods that are revolutionizing the ways retail banks interact with their customers.
Hamrick received the inaugural 2014 North Texas Women in Technology Award from Dallas Business Journal and TeXchange DFW. Her company received a Monarch Innovation Award from Barlow Research Associates, Inc. for innovation in the financial services industry.
Ignite captures information from bank customers and presents clients with the best products for their financial situation. The company also models data from sales using proprietary algorithms and visually display the data “so bankers can understand which customers and prospects represent the best opportunities for revenue growth,” says Hamrick. “Even our very large bank clients are always surprised by what we reveal from the data.”
Hamrick became a technology implementation engineer at U.S. Steel in Houston after receiving a degree in metallurgical engineering. Her work led to a 4 percent increase in production and a model replicated across the organization. Prior to Ignite, she managed process improvement for Aviall Inc., an $800 million aircraft services company.
“Two recurring themes in my career are modeling data and having an intrapreneurial spirit grow into an entrepreneurial one,” says Hamrick, who holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University.
At Lafayette, she was founding president of the College’s first sorority, Sigma Kappa. [The sorority closed in 1990.] “Dean Herm Kissiah was a great shepherd for helping students realize their goals within the boundaries of the college. He would let us dream big and at the same time keep us down to earth about what was realistic. I attribute that creative, collaborative process to me founding my own company,” she says.
“Even from as far away as Texas,” adds Hamrick, who recently stepped down as head of the Dallas–Fort Worth Alumni Chapter, “my best friends still are from Lafayette.”
—Kevin Gray