Synchrony CEO Margaret Keane will headline this year’s Fairfield Dolan Lecture on Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 7 p.m. in the Dolan Event Hall. The annual Dolan Lecture series brings highly accomplished, visionary, and internationally recognized business leaders to Fairfield. Keane will give a fireside chat entitled, “From the Call Center to the C-Suite: A Conversation with One of Fortune's Most Powerful Women.”

Keane set out to build a different kind of financial services company with Synchrony. 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 more than 16,500 Synchrony employees. She is instrumental in accelerating Synchrony’s growth, as she led the company’s successful initial public offering in 2014 and separation from GE in 2015. Following this, 2018 marked Synchrony’s most profitable year.

Keane’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 her to their “Businessperson of the Year” list in 2016 and 2019.

Prior to Synchrony’s founding, Keane 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. Keane spent the first sixteen years of her career at Citibank in various leadership roles.

As President of the Synchrony Foundation, Keane is dedicated to giving back to her community. She developed Synchrony’s citizenship platform, “Families That Work,” providing support to non-profits that help low and moderate-income working families. She also serves on the board and is passionately committed to the work of buildOn, among other organizations. Keane earned a bachelor’s degree and MBA from St. John’s University and is a member of the St. John’s University Board of Trustees. She is married with two children.