Witad Awards 2020: Vendor professional of the year (data and operations)—Julie Armstrong, ChartIQ

Julie Armstrong is from a small town in northeast Kentucky called Ashland, which has a population of 20,000 or so. Upon graduating, Julie and her mother took a trip to Europe. While in Paris, she told her mom that she would one day work in the City of Lights. “I called my mom from France [years later] on a business trip and I said that I did it. I had just conducted my first meeting in French and it was a powerful moment for me,” she recalls.

Since joining the capital markets in 2002, the best advice she can give to up-and-comers is to “believe in yourself.” It’s that belief in herself that has driven her entrepreneurial spirit. At CME Group, she created the first market technology sales team and the first commercial offering for third-party alternative data distribution, and she co-founded the Women’s Network Group within the exchange. Prior to that, at RealTick (post-Lehman Brothers acquisition), she established a company multi-broker software model that was both innovative and in many ways served as a precursor to today’s application interoperability movement.

Armstrong, who was named vendor professional of the year for data and operations, likes to create and build. After almost eight years at CME Group—and after a pitstop at a software-as-a-service (Saas)-based technology vendor called Uptake—she joined ChartIQ last year. Armstrong was already serving on the charting company’s board as an independent member, and the time seemed right to help ChartIQ grow an ambitious new project: Finsemble, its desktop application integration platform.

“I got to a point in my career where I really wanted to be working at a company that was building the tech specifically to disrupt a marketplace,” she says. “I was enticed to go from corporate to a smaller shop and really be a presence while working at a company that was building a new trend in technology.”

Finsemble’s aim is to bring efficiencies to the desktop workspace, allowing multiple applications from vendors and/or internal sources to come together on the desktop and “talk” to each other. In her new role, Armstrong, ChartIQ’s chief commercial officer, wants to help the vendor find its market presence and help with market research.

“One of my jobs is to help the marketplace realize the potential of our products, and [explain to clients] how a company like ChartIQ can help them move more nimbly and work more efficiently, and to help the world of finance visualize all the data that’s out there in new ways,” she says.