Ken Reed

Managing Partner, Naarden + Hawthorne

Ken launched Naarden + Hawthorne in 2022. He works with clients on strategy, organizational positioning, and message and reputation management.

Ken spent a number of years as a senior vice president at one of the world's largest banks, with $85 billion in annual revenue and a presence in more than 180 countries. Working out of the firm's global headquarters in New York, he developed and directed programs across its institutional businesses, including markets, banking, wealth, and treasury and securities services, and worked closely with the bank's senior leadership team.

Ken also served as managing director and global head of communications for a New York-based trade and lobbying organization focused on the U.S. commercial real estate finance and CMBS markets, a sector with $5.9 trillion in outstanding volume. The organization advocates for legislative and regulatory relief, sets industry standards, and counts among its members balance-sheet and securitized lenders, loan and bond investors, private equity firms, and rating agencies, with a membership base that extends across European institutions.

Earlier in his career, Ken was a director at a New York rating agency, where he led external affairs across the firm's securities and banking, insurance, sovereign, covered bonds, and Latin America sectors. Those practices cover more than 3,500 rated entities and account for 45% of the agency's total fees. He held several similar roles before that, in New York and Washington, D.C., working for government-sponsored enterprises and professional services firms.

A former journalist, Ken began his career as a financial reporter and covered the U.S. regulatory agencies and the national banks from Washington, D.C., his hometown.