Lawrence Flanagan is the president and CEO of AARP Services, Inc. (ASI) a wholly owned subsidiary of AARP founded in 1999. AARP Services manages the wide range of products and services that are offered as benefits to AARP’s members.
Flanagan founded New Tech Haven, LLC since January 2013 and was formerly the Executive Dean at the University of New Haven College of Business.
Flanagan has been recognized as one of the most accomplished global marketing leaders in the country. Prior to his career in academia, he spent nearly three decades in corporate America as an executive at MasterCard Worldwide, the Procter & Gamble Company and L’Oreal USA.
As the global chief marketing and communications officer at MasterCard, he managed a $1.5 billion budget, a staff of over 200 professionals, directed marketing strategies in more than 50 countries and helped launch the company’s hugely successful “Priceless” advertising campaign. He also established strategic partnerships with Major League Baseball, the PGA TOUR, numerous NFL teams, Champions League Soccer in Europe and the Rugby World Cup. He was also a member of the executive team that spearheaded MasterCard’s acquisition of Europay and highly successful initial public offering in 2006. Flanagan retired from MasterCard in 2010 after 14 years of service.
At L’Oreal he played a leading role in the company’s successful acquisition of the Maybelline cosmetics brand and, while at Procter & Gamble, he was an influential member of the Max Factor Company and Shulton, Inc. acquisition teams.
After earning his bachelor’s degree from the University of New Haven, Flanagan spent five years in New York City working at some of the world’s largest advertising agencies.
He earned six Effie awards from the American Marketing Association, the most prestigious honor among marketing professionals, and was recognized as one of the “25 Most Influential People in Sports” in 2004 by Sport Business International. In 2008 the NY Ad Club named Flanagan “Person of the Year”. In 2013 the University of New Haven awarded a Doctor of Business Administration honoris causa to Flanagan.
Flanagan, who is a former national co-chair of the CMO Collective, sat on Save The Children’s Newborn & Child Survival steering committee and serves on the University of New Haven Board of Governors and previously served on the ASI Board of Directors. He is on the advisory boards of New Tech Haven, Visitdays.com, NXT-ID and Fraud.net.