Senior Strategic Advisor

Raj Seshadri is a senior strategic advisor to the CEO at Mastercard. In this role, she supports key customer relationships and partnerships, select M&A initiatives and emerging strategic priorities.

Previously, Raj served as Mastercard's chief commercial payments officer, where she built the Commercial & New Payment Flows business unit globally. This business spans commercial cards, B2B payables and receivables, bill payments, and money movement, focused on small businesses, middle market companies, multinational corporates, and governments. Under her leadership, the business delivered significant growth and innovation, setting it up as a key driver for the company today and tomorrow. 

Prior to leading Commercial & New Payment Flows, Raj was president of Data & Services, where she helped make services Mastercard’s fastest growing business and a substantial contributor to the company. The Services business provides a unique range of information, analytical, consulting, advisory, innovation, marketing and loyalty services, focused on companies across the financial, consumer packaged goods, consumer, retail, e-commerce, data and technology industries. In this role she was also responsible for enterprise-wide strategy, innovation and governance across data and AI. Raj joined Mastercard as president of U.S. Issuers, leading growth across payments and services with banks and credit unions.

Earlier in her career, Raj led BlackRock's U.S. iShares business and served as global chief marketing officer for iShares. She also held leadership roles at Citigroup in global strategy and CitiBusiness Banking, as well as at U.S. Trust, McKinsey & Company and Bell Laboratories.

Raj serves on the board of directors of Raymond James Financial, the board of trustees of Mount Holyoke College, the board of the New York Philharmonic, and the global board of the American India Foundation. She holds a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics from Mount Holyoke College, an MBA from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University.