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Stockton Mortgage recently announced that it has appointed Christy Soukhamneut as its new chief strategy and innovation officer.
Soukhamneut brings more than 20 years of executive leadership experience across independent mortgage banks, banks and credit unions — including prior roles with University Federal Credit Union, Texas Capital Bank and Flagstar Bank.
She continues to serve as principal and senior advisor with STRATMOR Group, where she advises mortgage and technology companies on strategic growth, operational transformation and innovation. Soukhamneut also serves on the board of directors for the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association and helps develop future leaders through the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Residential Future Leaders Program.
In her new role, Soukhamneut will “partner with leaders across Stockton Mortgage to strengthen collaboration, simplify processes, improve efficiency, and drive innovation that supports the company’s long-term growth,” the company told HousingWire.
In an interview with HousingWire, Soukhamneut said she found Stockton through a recruiter. She had taken a sabbatical from her last position to think about “where the industry was headed,” and the people and companies that were aligned around that.
“We are in what is arguably the fastest pace of change the industry has faced in maybe the entire time I’ve been in this industry. We’re seeing regulatory changes. We’re seeing changes with AI. We’re facing the lock-in effect … and you hear a lot of companies talk about these things. They can say the buzzwords, but they’re not actually doing anything about it,” Soukhamneut said.
“And when you look at David [Stockton] and his team, one of the benefits they have is that it’s a sole owner who has a lot of life and energy left, and has invested wisely and saved wisely, and the company’s in a great place to be able to take advantage and make the right investments.”
Soukhamneut said her first mission in her new role is to look at the company’s “underlying assumptions” of how and why it operates, explore data-driven decisions and take a “methodical” approach with vendors.
“[We’re] really reimagining just what some of the old problems were and what some of the old decisions were, and what, with things that have happened in the industry in the last year or two, allows us to make different decisions today to better serve our customers,” she said.
She’s also taking lessons from her STRATMOR advisory role and bringing them to Stockton.
“There’s an extra seat at every meeting, and that person is your avatar for the customer. It can be an external customer or an internal customer, or sometimes both, depending on the scope of the project. And you want to always have that person have a seat at the table,” Soukhamneut said. “They’re not necessarily in the room with you, but you want to think about what their perspective is every time. And if you’re constantly going back to that with every small decision that you make, every question that you ask, you end up making good decisions overall.”
“You see a lot of loan officers who are good producers, and a lot of them are looking for a place that really listens to them [and] that really thinks about these things. And I think that’s one of the differentiators of this organization — how they serve the folks who bring in the business,” she added.
