No Limits
President // Signature Bank-Bentonville
In a lot of ways, Melody Martens’ skill set mirrors that of many other successful bankers. An excellent communicator with an engaging personality, she has built an impressive career in the industry, one that led her to become president of Signature Bank-Bentonville.
The path she took to get there, however, is an increasingly rare journey. Not only did she excel in what was at the time the prohibitively male-dominated world of banking, but she did it without the usual precursor academic chits many of her peers had.
In short, she did it her way and on her terms by outdoing the competition in work ethic and servicing the customer and never allowing herself or others to regard her as less than.
“I found banking early and was fortunate enough to find a career that was a natural fit with me,” she said. “I’ve been in a lot of boardrooms where the majority of people there were men. It was a man’s world for sure back then, but I didn’t even really notice it. I think I just felt like I had a purpose, and with a lot of hard work and determination, I continued to find opportunities and make the most of them.”
Born in Bruno, she was raised until the fifth grade in Chicago, where her father worked for Kodak. Her considerable drive developed early, for which she credited her father as an important early catalyst. She also pointed to her desire to play basketball in high school, a goal she reached with distinction despite being severely undersized.
“My dad always said, ‘You can do whatever you want to do. If you have a desire and you want to do it right, do it,’” she said. “Well, when I was in high school, I wanted to play basketball. I’m 5-2, and that’s usually not a good thing if you want to make the main team, but I was determined.
“Probably in seventh or eighth grade, I had a coach tell me, ‘Melody, you are fast, but you need to be faster. You can dribble amazingly with your right hand, but you’ve got to be just as good with your left. You’re going to get fouled a lot, so you’ve got to master your free throws.’ That was so impactful for my life at that time, and I ended up playing on the main team in high school. To this day, I just don’t see obstacles.”
Martens took that attitude headlong into banking, first at Superior Federal in Harrison and then Community First Bank, which would become Signature Bank, in 2002. She finally landed in Bentonville in 2013. Over her career, she has soaked up industry acumen like a sponge, excelling across a variety of departments and roles, including marketing, mortgage lending, business development and, ultimately, being tasked with opening the bank’s Pea Ridge location.
Along the way, she has received many accolades, notably being named to Arkansas Money & Politics’ “Power Women” in 2019 and twice to AMP‘s “Women in Banking” in 2020 and 2021.
She has been in her current role in Bentonville since 2013, and while she is as connected to her community as she has ever been, she also derives great pleasure in taking the opportunity to mentor others in their own banking career.
“The easiest thing about this business, to me, has always been the personal side,” she said. “I love relationships. I love developing people. I have tellers who I can’t wait to get them into other areas of the bank, just see where their interest is like I got to do. I love showing people different lanes they can occupy and watching them discover where they fit best. The relationships side of things has always been what I love most about what I do.”
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