Growing up, Marianne Lake always wanted to be a movie star.
Well, the CEO of
Perhaps not surprising, since Lake—solo in her current role since early 2024—has stewarded a critical division through volatile times. It's a perch she rose to after more than a quarter century at the bank, with stints as CFO and CEO of Consumer Lending along the way.
She now helps oversee a division that serves 85 million consumers, and 7 million small businesses, via 5,000 physical branches—and recently assumed responsibilities for the overseas consumer business.
The secret sauce: To "obsess" over the customer, she said.
Among her marquee accomplishments for 2024? "One of the biggest things we've done this year was relaunching the Sapphire Reserve card, and introducing Sapphire Reserve for Business," she said.
It's already a card with something of a cult-like following. But while most credit cards tend to focus on a particular area like travel, or dining, or experiences, or shopping, "we set out to check the box on all of them in a big way," she said.
That's an example of not sitting back on one's heels, as the top banking brand in the U.S. After all, that position comes with its own set of challenges, since every other competitor is gunning directly for you.
Lake's response is to double down with even loftier goals. Among them a 15% share of deposits nationally (up from the current 11.3%), 20% of the card market (up from 17.3%), and $2 trillion in wealth management (from $1.1 trillion).
As she quipped at the firm's Investor Day: "We are not complacent. There is always more to do, and we are getting at it."
That's on top of personal responsibilities of being a mom of three (including twins), achieved with the help of surrogacy. That's a lot on anyone's plate, let alone one of the more powerful corporate executives in the country.
It's perhaps an unlikely path for the physics graduate from the U.K.'s University of Reading, who was actually born in Maryland to a British father and an American mother. Indeed, her ascent in the industry puzzles her own sibling: "It still surprises my sister," Lake once told the Financial Times.
But there is no denying the numbers. For the first quarter of 2025, client investment assets were up 7% year-over-year, debit and credit-card sales volume was up 7% over the same timeframe, and return-on-equity hummed along at a robust 31%. All of that is being bolstered with AI, which at the bank is "all systems go," Lake said.
From colleagues, Lake draws praise for not only managing the good times but coping with the unexpected.
"Marianne has many superpowers, but the most notable one is her ability to take the most complex, gnarly problem and not just help you think it through but explain the solution in a way that suddenly makes perfect sense to everyone in the room," said Kristin Lemkau, CEO of
"I had to call her recently when she was on vacation, because I had a few time-sensitive things I needed her steer on. One was on a test we tried that totally bombed. There was no shade and no judgment when I told her what the results were. She immediately drilled in on why she thought it didn't work, and what we should test next. That's a great boss."
Since Lake harbors big-screen aspirations, a typical Hollywood script might end with her in the biggest corner office of all. That particular act of the screenplay has yet to play out—but whatever real life has in store, she will continue to ply her knack for numbers that has helped her become one of the most powerful women on Wall Street.
"We're not big braggers," she told investors, teeing up some classic British understatement. "But we are proud of this performance."
