Margaret Keane

Thirty-six years ago, Keane began her career working as a collector at a call center. Today she is the CEO of ­Synchrony, a major consumer financial services company that is the largest provider of private-label credit cards in the U.S. If you’re not familiar with ­Synchrony, that’s ­because it fully split off from former parent GE only in ­November 2015—a process that Keane oversaw. As of the end of 2015 the company had almost $84 billion in assets, including $29.7 billion in direct deposits, an increase of 50.8% over 2014.