Steve James

Steve James is Fannie Mae’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. Reporting to the President, Mr. James built a new, centralized Marketing & Communications function to serve Fannie Mae’s Single-Family and Multifamily business lines and support the enterprise across all key areas: capital markets, affordable housing, racial equity, environmental, social, and governance (ESG), and consumer education. Mr. James also oversees internal and external communications teams, including media relations, financial communications, and Fannie Mae’s thought leadership efforts.

Mr. James leads Fannie Mae’s brand strategy, defining positioning and value propositions for target audiences as well as bringing the brand to life across all digital and experiential touchpoints and overseeing Fannie Mae’s in-house creative team. He leads the corporation’s digital marketing strategy, including oversight of all Fannie Mae’s social media and web properties, the end-to-end marketing technology stack, and user experience design.

Previously, Mr. James was Fannie Mae’s Senior Vice President of Strategy, Insights, and Marketing for our Single-Family Mortgage Business, where he was charged with building out new functions around insight generation, marketing strategy development and execution, and piloting a UX/UI design thinking capability. Mr. James was a driving force behind Fannie Mae’s successful journey toward customer-centricity, leading Fannie Mae to achieve increased customer satisfaction and loyalty among lenders, servicers and investors as well as deliverer improved business outcomes for key products and services. In this role, Mr. James also led the affordable housing team responsible for delivering on annual housing goals and Duty to Serve initiatives. 

Before joining Fannie Mae in 2016, Mr. James was Senior Vice President – Marketing at TIAA, where he led advertising, brand strategy, and consumer marketing. Before that, he was Managing Vice President – Consumer Bank Marketing at Capital One. Earlier in his career, he held marketing and strategy roles at Toyota and Lexus.

Mr. James holds a bachelor of science in marketing from Virginia Tech and an MBA from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.