Koren Maranca on Leading Through Uncertainty

When Koren Maranca, named a MAKER in the Innovator category, talks about innovation, she doesn’t start with technology. She starts with decision-making. “I’m much more concerned with not making progress than I am with making a decision that might have to change. Forward momentum is critical,” she says.

It’s a practical philosophy, shaped by the reality of her day-to-day work. As the leader of AI efforts within Morgan Stanley’s Wealth Management business, Maranca operates in a space where the ground is constantly shifting. What feels clear at 9:00 a.m. can change by 10:00 a.m.

“Innovation means you have to be nimble,” she says. “You have to be ready to pivot, sometimes minute by minute.”

That mindset has become essential. But it didn’t start with AI.

An Unexpected Path

Growing up, Maranca planned to become a doctor. It was a straightforward ambition — one that fit both her interests and her instincts. She was drawn to the combination of science and people, the balance of technical expertise and human judgment. Then, in college, that plan started to shift.

“I realized it meant another decade of school and training, and I wanted to find a path where I could move a little faster,” she says, laughing. A conversation with her roommate’s sister, who studied economics, nudged her in a different direction. It wasn’t a grand pivot so much as a practical one. She changed course, graduated and found her way to Morgan Stanley, where she has spent nearly two decades. “I like to say I’ve had a lot of different careers — just all within the same four walls.”

A Different Kind of MD

At Morgan Stanley, Maranca, now a Managing Director, began on the institutional side, moved into wealth management after the financial crisis and worked across a range of roles before landing in a position focused on analytics, data and innovation. Each move required learning something new, often without a clear roadmap.

Then, in 2022, before ChatGPT had launched and before generative AI entered the mainstream, Morgan Stanley encouraged an early OpenAI demo and arranged a meeting. What they saw was compelling enough that the team stayed for hours, clearing the rest of their schedules.

“At the time, this wasn’t what it is now,” she says. “It wasn’t clear where the technology was going.”

The risk was real. Moving into an emerging area could accelerate her career — or stall it if the technology failed to deliver. She remembers asking a mentor a direct question: If it were his career, what would he do?

“He said, ‘I’d try it.’” So, she did. The technology was evolving quickly, and there was no established roadmap for how to learn it. And what followed was a period of immersion. “It was like drinking from a fire hose,” she says.

At first, she tried to understand everything — how the models were trained, how they processed inputs, how they generated outputs. But that approach quickly led to burnout. Instead, she shifted her focus to using the tools, testing them in real scenarios, evaluating outputs and learning through iteration.

That shift was reinforced by what she learned from the field itself. While these systems are engineered and rigorously tested, their inner workings aren’t fully transparent — even to the people building them. They can explain how the models are trained and how they perform, but not always why a specific output appears.

She realized the goal was not to decode every layer of complexity before acting. It was to understand the technology well enough to apply it thoughtfully, test it rigorously and keep learning.

That approach now defines how Maranca operates more broadly. Disciplined progress matters more than waiting for perfect certainty. “There’s no perfect trajectory,” she says. “You move forward, and sometimes you change direction. But you keep moving.”

Being Okay with Ambition

Earlier in her career, Maranca sometimes wondered whether wanting more was something she needed to justify. Why push for more? Why not be satisfied with what she had already achieved?

“I think there’s a version of the story you grow up with,” she says. There’s often a defined idea of what success is supposed to look like — and ambition doesn’t always fit neatly into that.”

A mentor reframed it for her. He said, “Why are you beating yourself up over wanting more? You want more. Accept it, celebrate it and go get it.”

That decision — to stop questioning and start acting — now runs through how Maranca approaches leadership today. She is intentional about mentoring others, particularly women, navigating similar questions about career and ambition.

As a single mother of two, Maranca is candid about the reality of balancing a demanding career with motherhood: Some days, it can feel impossible. The adjustment, over time, has been less about finding balance and more about redefining expectations. Before having children, she was used to finishing most everything she set out to do in a day. That changed quickly.

“You have to get clear on where perfection matters — and where progress matters more,” she says.

 A Changing of the Guard

Over the course of her career, Maranca has seen the culture around her shift. Early in her career, she was often the only woman in the room. Today, that is rarely the case. It’s a change she values, and one she has contributed to through mentorship and sponsorship. “Most decisions are made before you even know about them,” she says. “You need people who will advocate for you in the rooms where decisions are being made.”

Those relationships, she believes, shape careers in ways that are not always obvious in the moment. Looking back, Maranca’s path is not defined by a single decision, but by a pattern: stepping into uncertainty, making the best decision available and adjusting as she goes.

That pattern is now embedded in the work itself. In a field where the technology changes constantly, waiting for clarity is not an option. “If you wait until everything is perfect,” she says, “you’ll be waiting forever.”