Laura M. Kenney joined Ginnie Mae in May 2023 to serve as the Senior Advisor for Strategic Operations and the interim Chief Operating Officer. In this role, Ms. Kenney is responsible for managing Ginnie Mae’s daily operations, including all MBS operations, counterparty relationships, contracting, budget and legislative initiatives. Additionally, Ms. Kenney is responsible for overall risk management of the organization through eight program Offices, including Office of the President. She brings more than 25 years of finance experience to Ginnie Mae. Across her career, Ms. Kenney has been responsible for creating strategic alignment of policy, data, operational capabilities, and technological infrastructure.
Prior to joining Ginnie Mae, Ms. Kenney was an Executive Director in the Digital Direct Chief Operating Office which is part of Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Management business. In this role, Ms. Kenney provided dynamic support to the retail brokerage business as it relates to running the business, portfolio oversight, project management and budget planning. Specifically, she partnered with technology, operations and business leaders to provide the executive management team transparency of technology and business projects including the conversion of the brokerage back-office systems. In support of Morgan Stanley’s acquisition of E*TRADE, Ms. Kenney led pre-closing merger activities for E*TRADE’s Finance organization encompassing oversight of integration workstreams, development and management of a governance framework and an escalation criteria.
Prior to Morgan Stanley’s acquisition of E*TRADE, Ms. Kenney led E*TRADE’s efforts to design and implement a future-state regulatory reporting platform. Specifically, she built a regulatory data warehouse and implemented a regulatory report automation system to improve accuracy and speed. Ms. Kenney redesigned reporting processes to support data and report automation based on Agile project management. Ms. Kenney established an operating model to inform an effective team organization structure.
Additionally, Ms. Kenney has over 15 years of experience in the housing finance industry having held leadership roles and JPMorgan Chase and Fannie Mae. Serving as a Vice President in JP Morgan Chase’s Consumer and Community Bank Risk Management team, Ms. Kenny developed and implemented the risk data management and reporting governance framework to ensure Basel III compliance. When at Fannie Mae, Ms. Kenney was a Director in the National Servicing Organization where she designed and deployed foreclosure alternatives for the institution’s portfolio of 18 million single-family mortgage loans at a time of rapid regulatory change, extreme financial pressure and public scrutiny.
Ms. Kenney received M.A. and B.A. degrees in Economics from the University of Virginia and an MBA in Finance from George Washington University.