CHARLES M. CAWLEY

Best known as the co-founder and former president, CEO and chairman of credit card issuer MBNA. Cawley co-founded MBNA in 1982 and it went public in 1991. One of the ways he expanded the company was through affinity marketing, a customer-loyalty strategy that Cawley brought to the credit-card industry. His first affinity product was a credit card for Georgetown University alumni. He also employed credit analysts to help the company attract financially responsible cardholders.

Cawley was born in 1941 in New Jersey and graduated from Georgetown in 1962. He began his career with Maryland Bank National Association, where he worked for nearly 20 years before starting MBNA.