Before Mark Mason became one of the few first Black executives on Wall Street, he was learning about the virtues of hard work from his grandfather. Born in Queens, New York, and raised by his mother in a single-parent household, Mason showed an early knack for making money. One of his first jobs was working for his grandfather, who owned a landscaping business, and was not happy one day when Mason messed up one of the yards. "My grandfather yelled, 'That's the family name on the truck. If you mess up, it reflects on all of us,'" Mason recalled in a recent interview. "That's where I got my work ethic. Every job I've had since, I still think about my name being on the truck."
Soon the enterprising young man moved on from manual labor to selling candy from a black Samsonite briefcase he carried every day in high school. Instilled with a strong work ethic, Mason later graduated from Howard University with honors, which led to his acceptance into Harvard's prestigious MBA program.
Today, all of that hard work has paid off for Mason, who has served as Citi’s CFO since February 2019. In this position, he is responsible for the financial management of the company and also spearheads Citi’s Expense Management and Citi Ventures iInitiatives.
Since joining Citi over 20 years ago, Mason has held several senior operational, strategic, and financial executive positions, including CEO of Citi Private Bank, CEO of Citi Holdings, and CFO and Head of Strategy and M&A for Citi’s Global Wealth Management Division.
His career milestones include being instrumental in the formation and development of the client-focused strategy of Citigroup Alternative Investments, where Mason served as the head of strategy, planning, and analysis, among several other positions. Furthermore, Mason served as CFO and COO for Citigroup Real Estate Investments and was responsible for restructuring the business.
Prior to CItigroup, Mason spent three years at Lucent Technologies. He also spent several years as a strategy consultant with Marakon Associates and has experience in investment banking with Goldman Sachs.
During his distinguished career, he's received numerous honors, including being named one of the 100 Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America by Black Enterprise in 2009; and in 2008 he was recognized on Crain's New York Business’s 40 Under 40 list. In 2013, Mason was named Corporate Executive of the Year by Black Enterprise magazine.