
mPower Session: Leveraging Executive Visibility for Strategic Advantage
In a relationship-driven and highly scrutinized industry, executive visibility is no longer optional, it is strategic leverage. Today’s mortgage and capital markets leaders are evaluated long before a deal call, board conversation, or recruiting discussion begins. This session explores how personal brand functions as reputation architecture in modern financial services; strengthening trust, accelerating relationships, and reinforcing institutional credibility. Leave with a clear framework for defining your executive positioning, communicating expertise, and leveraging LinkedIn as a controlled, compliant distribution channel for authority and influence. Sponsored by ICE Mortgage Technology.
Speakers
Introductions
Kerri Girouard is Vice President of Sales and Relationship Management at ICE Mortgage Technology, where she focuses on helping customers drive adoption, maximize technology investments, and achieve measurable business outcomes. With more than a decade at ICE, Girouard is widely recognized for her customer first mindset, strong leadership presence, and ability to translate strategy into results. She is known for building high performing teams, deep client partnerships, and a culture of mentorship across the organization.
Moderator
Laura Hopkins is Senior Vice President of Membership and Meetings at the Mortgage Bankers Association, where she leads the association’s Membership and Meetings departments. Since joining MBA in 2017 as Director of Membership, she has advanced through leadership roles and in 2025 assumed her current position. In this role, Hopkins oversees Member Services, Residential Membership, Associate Membership, and Commercial/Multifamily Membership functions, while also leading the strategic direction and management of MBA’s conferences and meetings, as well as mPower, MBA’s networking platform for women in the real estate finance industry. With a focus on developing, strengthening, and managing relationships with senior executives and their teams at member companies, Hopkins and her team are dedicated to maximizing the value of MBA membership, enhancing engagement, and fortifying member connections across the industry. With nearly two decades of sales, marketing, and management expertise in the mortgage banking sector, Hopkins has built a career centered on expanding business platforms through strategic recruiting, driving program and product utilization, and growing revenue. She is recognized for her unwavering commitment to delivering exceptional service and support to both MBA members and colleagues. A strong advocate for advancing women in the industry, Hopkins has been actively engaged with mPower since its inception and was honored in 2025 with HousingWire’s Women of Influence award. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and Merchandising from Florida State University.
Speakers
Stephanie Armstrong is the CEO of Moxie Creative Studios, a strategic branding and visibility firm advising executives and founders in high-trust, relationship-driven industries. With a foundation in behavioral psychology and extensive experience managing high-level brands and high-profile clients, Stephanie specializes in reputation architecture and executive positioning. She works with leaders to clarify their market stance, strengthen institutional credibility, and build structured visibility that reinforces trust long before critical conversations begin. Her work focuses on how executive presence, messaging precision, and controlled digital distribution influence deal flow, recruiting strength, and long-term authority in regulated environments. Stephanie advises leaders across finance, law, and business sectors on building Authority Equity, the compounding value of credibility established before the board meeting, the negotiation, or the deal call. She speaks nationally on executive visibility, positioning strategy, and the evolving role of digital presence in modern relationship-driven markets.