Maria Elena (Mel) Lagomasino

Chief Executive Officer & Managing Partner

Maria Elena (Mel) Lagomasino has worked with financially successful families for more than three decades. As CEO and Managing Partner of WE Family Offices, a global family office serving ultra high net worth families, she engages client families to build their wealth enterprise^®s and provide the support and control they need to manage their wealth as a successful business enterprise. She is a recognized leader in the wealth management industry, and is a founder of the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard.

Before founding WE, Mel served as CEO of GenSpring Family Offices, a wealth management firm. Prior to that, she served as chairman and chief executive officer of JP Morgan Private Bank, an institution with more than $300 billion in client assets under supervision. Her career in banking began in 1977 at Citibank. She joined the Chase Manhattan Private Bank in 1983 and was named head of Chase’s worldwide private banking business in 1997. Following the Chase-JP Morgan merger, she became chairman and chief executive officer of JP Morgan Private Bank.

Mel serves on the boards of The Walt Disney Company and The Coca-Cola Company. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and as of March 2019, she became a Trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

In August 2015 she was named one of the 50 most influential women in Wealth Management by Private Asset Management. In 2012, Mel was named one of the Directorship 100 by the National Association of Corporate Directors and was named by American Banker one of 2012’s Top 25 Women in Finance.  Mel was named “Women of the Year” by Hispanic Business Magazine in 2007. In September 2006, she was appointed by President Bush to help lead an effort to secure private sector funds to aid disaster victims in Central America and served on Secretary Rice’s Advisory Board on Transformational Diplomacy.

A graduate of Manhattanville College (B. A.), Mel also earned graduate degrees at Columbia University (M.S.) and Fordham University (M.B.A).