Pricing Analyst, Lockheed Martin
Owego, New York
When Tom Hungerford joined Lockheed Martin right after graduation, he did so with a distinct advantage: he brought with him an Ithaca College business education.
A finance major, Hungerford was immediately put to work as a financial control analyst in the technology giant's systems integration division. His high level of performance opened the door to a quick promotion, and he now works on a team that establishes pricing for multimillion-dollar technology contracts.
"We're the ones who put the price tag on our proposals," he explains. "We work with the technical teams, consolidate the cost data, help analyze projects, conduct risk assessment, and come up with a price."
His company just landed a major project: coordinating the U.S. Postal Service's widespread telecommunications infrastructure -- voice, two-way radio, LAN, Internet, data nets, and more -- potentially through 2022. Hungerford's skill in financial modeling and analysis helped make it all possible, and he gives the credit to Ithaca College.
"My experience at Ithaca definitely gave me an advantage," he says. "In our classes we really took a hands-on approach. It wasn't just theory, or number crunching, or the mechanical process. Ithaca stressed the analytical side. We looked at current events, we analyzed actual businesses, and we debated real-world issues in class. We really learned to think things through."
Hungerford also appreciated applying classroom learning to actual practice: An internship at Emerson Power Transmission and the codirectorship of the College's Center for Trading and Analysis of Financial Instruments gave him a lot of experience in modeling, assessing risk, and making presentations to different types of people. "Those are skills I now use every day," he notes.
Hungerford works alongside several other Ithaca alumni, and he sees their common abilities, all grounded in the hands-on experience the College provides. "What's important," he says, "is the analytical side: how you approach the problem, how you analyze the risks and rewards. Those are the skills you really use on the job, and that's Ithaca's strength. People from Ithaca start with a better base."
