Helping design the award was one thing. Standing on stage as the recipient is another.
That is where Julie Ransom found herself at the 2025 PaymentsEd Forum. Julie, the Forum’s marketing chair, helped create the Chairman’s Award, so being handed it was not part of the plan.
The Work Behind the Award
The award recognizes one member of the volunteer Board who went above the expectations of their role in service to the organization and its members. Julie’s year centered on how the Forum connects with the payments community: how the organization tells its story, how it brings people into the conversation, and how it shows up for the professionals who make the event worth attending.
None of that is a single deliverable you can point at. It looks like committee calls, drafts nobody outside the committee ever sees, and a willingness to keep asking whether the message is landing with actual merchants.
What the Nominations Said
The words from those who nominated her captured why. One called out a “natural ability to spark creativity and keep audiences engaged” that “transformed how the organization connects with its community.” Another noted that “though Julie has been an active leader with PaymentsEd for a short time, her impact has been both significant and far-reaching.” A third put it plainly: the recognition reflected “commitment to the payments community by generously sharing expertise and knowledge with colleagues across the industry.”
What she remembers from that day is the community rather than the trophy: the people, the conversations, and the willingness across this industry to share hard-won lessons openly.
What Happened Next
The marketing work did not stop with the award. In the year that followed, PaymentsEd picked up a documented voice system and brand kit, a blog program publishing twice a week from May through mid-July, custom outreach toolkits built for all 25 advisor companies, and a weekly board email that tracked registration against goal so nobody had to ask where things stood.
Most of that infrastructure now carries into 2027 rather than getting rebuilt from scratch, which is the part that outlasts any one volunteer.
About Julie Ransom
Julie is the Senior Payment Operations Manager at Ancestry, with more than 15 years of experience in payment strategy, fraud prevention, and risk management. She leads global payments work there: improving acceptance, removing friction from checkout, and keeping fraud in check.
Her day-to-day runs through chargebacks, network compliance, and payment vendor management, the unglamorous work that keeps transactions moving securely at scale. At PaymentsEd, she co-chairs the marketing committee.
How the Chairman’s Award Works
One award is presented each fiscal year to a member of the volunteer Board whose in-year work has served the upcoming Forum. Nominations are due ahead of the May board meeting, the full Board votes, and the winner is announced on stage at the Forum.
The Chairman’s Award was presented to Julie Ransom at the 2025 PaymentsEd Annual Forum. Julie is Senior Payment Operations Manager at Ancestry, a director on the PaymentsEd Merchant Board, and co-chair of the marketing committee.