Stephen M. Kearney was named senior vice president of Customer Relations in June 2008. He is responsible for the key customer communication, pricing and relationship activities of the Postal Service and reports to the Postmaster General. Reporting to him are the vice president of Business Customer Relations, the vice president and Consumer Advocate, the acting vice president of Corporate Communications and the vice president of Pricing. This is the fourth officer position Kearney has held. He previously headed treasury, corporate and business development, and pricing. Prior to joining the Postal Service, he served as an economist on the domestic finance staff in the Office of the Secretary of the Treasury.

In his previous position of vice president of Pricing and Classification, Kearney led the effort to transform postal pricing from being primarily cost-based to market-driven. He oversaw the omnibus rate cases of 2001, 2005 and 2006 and the 2008 price changes for Mailing and Shipping Services that were governed by a new regulatory process.

Kearney's group implemented the Postal Service's first-ever contract pricing for domestic mail in 2003 and followed with several more agreements, all using customized pricing to increase margins. They also designed several innovative pricing experiments, including the Priority Mail Flat-Rate Box, Premium Forwarding Service, Periodicals Co-Palletization, Parcel Return Service, and Repositionable Notes. Kearney focused on clarifying and making more consistent the use of complex pricing and classification standards by redesigning manuals, processes and his organization.

As treasurer, Kearney led numerous best-practice financial initiatives, implementing credit and debit card acceptance; streamlining borrowing and cash management practices; establishing short-term credit lines and callable debt structures; consolidating banking services from 5,000 to 25 banks; increasing the use of electronic payments by business customers; and designing a unified lockbox network for postage meter payments.

Kearney received the Postmaster General's Award for Executive Achievement in 1996 and 1999. Under his leadership, the Postal Service was honored six times with Treasury & Risk magazine's prestigious Alexander Hamilton Award. Kearney was named an Industry Influencer as a member of Folio magazine's Folio: 40 in April 2005.

Kearney earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. He holds an MBA in finance and investments from George Washington University, and a BA in economics with First Class Honours from McGill University. He attended the University of Michigan's Public Finance Institute and Corporate Financial Management programs and completed the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program.

July 2008