Margaret Keane

Chief Executive Officer

Margaret Keane is Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors of Synchrony, one of the nation’s premier consumer financial services companies. She led the company’s successful initial public offering in 2014 and separation from GE in 2015.

With Synchrony, Margaret set out to build a very different kind of financial services company. Through her leadership and vision, she has created a culture of caring, inclusion and innovation at every level, while balancing the needs of all stakeholders – partners, customers, communities, shareholders and the more than 16,500 Synchrony employees. She is instrumental in accelerating Synchrony’s growth, with 2018 marking Synchrony’s most profitable year.

Margaret’s passion for emerging technology, innovation, and employee development has solidified her reputation as a top leader in financial services. She has been recognized as one of Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women” for the past five years and American Banker’s “Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance” for the past thirteen years. Fortune also named Margaret to their “Businessperson of the Year” list in 2016 and 2019.

Prior to Synchrony’s founding, Margaret had an eighteen-year career with GE Capital, where she led the retail card platform as President and CEO. She later expanded her responsibilities to become President and CEO of the GE Capital North American retail finance business. Earlier, she held leadership roles spanning consumer finance, vendor financial services, operations, and quality. Margaret spent the first sixteen years of her career at Citibank in various leadership roles.

Margaret is dedicated to giving back to the community. As President of the Synchrony Foundation, Margaret developed Synchrony’s citizenship platform, Families That Work, providing support to nonprofits that help low- and moderate-income working families move their lives forward. She also serves on the board and is passionately committed to the work of buildOn, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering urban youth to transform their neighborhoods.

Margaret serves on the Allstate Corporation Board of Directors, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center’s Boards of Overseers and Patient Care Committee, and the Board of Trustees for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society Connecticut Chapter.

Margaret earned a bachelor’s degree and an MBA from St. John’s University and is now a member of the St. John’s University Board of Trustees. She is married with two children.