Jackie Reses knows how things work. Whether it’s running a carnival game in Atlantic City as a child or understanding how a financial app really works, the New Jersey-bred Chief Executive Officer of Lead Bank is nobody’s fool. To wit: Yes, any company can create a nice-looking digital product, but Reses knows it’s what’s underneath that counts. It takes guts to do it well.
“One of the problems I’ve seen is that fintechs, over the last 10 to 15 years,” she said in a recent interview, “have put a beautiful sheen on the front end of an app to make financial services easier. And I think we’ve all felt that with fintech apps that we use; the infrastructure, however, is terrible.”
A seasoned veteran in the industry, Reses has been hustling since the word “go,” from her boardwalk adventures through boarding school and college, where she ran taxi and custom t-shirt businesses to flex her entrepreneurial muscle. It’s that moxie that led her to the Wharton School of Business and ultimately to the top of Wall Street with a position at Goldman Sachs. She spent seven years at the bank, setting a trajectory that ultimately landed her at Square (now Block), an experience that would set the stage for her big move in 2022.
“At Square,” she said, “our team understood the struggle of customers trying to work with banks in the industry. We felt such an extreme level of pain with partners that were out of sync with our execution, and who lacked agility and the agility to problem solve. We were so frustrated that we decided to take a completely different path, building a de novo bank to serve Block as its primary client.”
That’s when she bought a Kansas City, MO-based community bank and created Lead to serve fintech companies by offering their end consumers services, including lending products, credit and debit cards, depository accounts and virtual wallets, or money movement. In three years, the company has thrived thanks to Reses’s leadership and eye for detail, which she believes is the critical difference between success and failure in community banking. “Given the precision required in this business,” she said, “it’s a real challenge.”
Now the serial entrepreneur plows forward, as she always has, blazing a trail with her distinct blend of drive and allergy to nonsense. The same year she founded Lead, she co-authored a book (with former Square co-worker Lauren Weinberg) entitled Self-Made Boss: Advice, Hacks, and Lessons from Small Business Owners.
Our hack: Just follow her lead.
