Stacey Cunningham

Stacey Cunningham became president of the New York Stock Exchange in 2018, becoming the first woman to hold the position in the exchange's 226-year history. She oversaw NYSE through the COVID-19 pandemic period, including the temporary closure of the trading floor in March 2020 — the first physical closure of the floor in over a century. Cunningham has been an advocate for the hybrid market model that combines floor-based specialists with electronic trading, arguing that the human element provides meaningful price discovery benefits in volatile markets. Her NYSE tenure coincided with a historic surge in US equity listings, particularly in the SPAC and direct listing space, and she worked to modernize NYSE's listing standards and attract technology companies that had historically favored Nasdaq for their initial public offerings.