Martin Lyons followed the money. Then came the power.

Before Martin Lyons asked people to give money to United Way, he had examined its books. In an earlier accounting career, he audited the organization. Years later, as chair of its 2023 Greater St. Louis campaign, he remembered seeing how carefully contributions were handled. His enthusiasm had an accountant’s origin: he had followed the dollars.

It is a useful place to begin with Lyons, whom Ameren colleagues and interviewers call Marty. He leads a business whose promises eventually arrive as figures on somebody else’s bill. Electricity must be available, investment must be financed, and customers must be able to afford the result. A utility executive can talk about the future for hours. The meter continues running throughout.

Lyons became Ameren’s president and chief executive officer on January 1, 2022, then added the chairmanship on November 2, 2023. His preparation stretched across accounting, corporate finance, shared services and the presidency of Ameren Missouri. That long route matters. The person now making decisions about tomorrow’s energy system spent years learning how its obligations fit together.

The education of an accountant

His professional story begins in St. Louis classrooms. In 1988, Lyons earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with an accountancy major, from Saint Louis University. He joined Price Waterhouse that year. In 1997, he earned his MBA from Washington University. He became a partner in 1999, when the firm was PricewaterhouseCoopers.

His work included auditing and consulting, with a focus on utility clients. It was an introduction to the industry through its records and financial decisions. Before he held responsibility for the whole enterprise, he worked in a profession built around examining whether its accounts could withstand questions. He was also a certified public accountant licensed in Missouri.

In October 2001, he moved to Ameren as controller. The early career record is refreshingly resistant to mythology: qualifications, responsibilities, promotions. Vice president followed in 2003; senior vice president and principal accounting officer followed in 2008. There is no need to supply a thunderbolt of inspiration. A sequence of increasingly demanding jobs explains quite a lot.

When the numbers acquired a power plant

Lyons became chief financial officer in 2009. By 2013, he was executive vice president and CFO. The remit included corporate planning, treasury, tax, investor relations, internal audit and risk management. These are jobs that reward attention to consequences: where money comes from, where it goes, and what happens if a reassuring assumption proves expensive.

A consequential example came in 2013, when Ameren repositioned itself around regulated utilities. Lyons helped execute the sale of its merchant generation business. The distinction can sound like a technicality until one considers the exposure involved. Selling power into competitive markets and operating a regulated utility put different demands on management, financing and risk.

He subsequently led Ameren Services, adding shared business functions to his experience. A 2019 description of his responsibilities included information technology, supply chain, environmental services, and nuclear and project oversight alongside finance and strategy. The accountancy foundation remained, but the working field had widened considerably. A balance sheet was now connected to equipment, systems and people charged with keeping them working.

In December 2019, he became chairman and president of Ameren Missouri. This placed him in charge of an operating utility. During that tenure, he publicly backed expanded community solar and the construction of another community solar facility in Montgomery County. Renewable energy was becoming a matter of projects, customer subscriptions and regulatory approvals, each with its own practical demands.

A succession with a long overlap

When Ameren announced his appointment as CEO in October 2021, Warner Baxter had worked with him for more than twenty years. Baxter moved to executive chairman as Lyons assumed the chief executive role. The arrangement gave the succession an overlap rather than a single ceremonial handoff. Lyons inherited a strategy and a leadership team he already knew.

The second handoff came in November 2023, when Baxter retired and Lyons became chairman too. Lyons described their working relationship in unusually personal terms: “The opportunity to work with Warner has been a highlight of my career.” It is a short sentence, and it says more about the connection than another inventory of executive responsibilities could.

There is continuity in the career pattern as well. Both executives had served as Ameren CFO and president of Ameren Missouri before becoming CEO. That pattern helps explain the company’s choice: experience with financing and operations had been accumulated inside the same organization. By the time Lyons reached the top job, the unfamiliar part was its breadth.

“Community is central to who we are as a company.”

Martin Lyons · 2022 Tree of Lights interview

The lights beyond the balance sheet

In 2022, Lyons co-chaired the Salvation Army’s 75th Tree of Lights campaign with Cardinals broadcaster Rick Horton. The campaign brought together two familiar St. Louis institutions, baseball and the local utility, around a holiday tradition. Its regional fundraising goals were specific: $6.2 million for Greater St. Louis and $12 million across the Midland Division.

Lyons also pointed to the people doing the unglamorous work. Ameren volunteers from the downtown operating center had helped set up the Kiener Plaza tree for twenty years. It is an appealing detail in a story about an electricity company: somewhere behind the illuminated symbol, somebody has to organize the setup. The tree requires both goodwill and a work crew.

United Way gave him another way to describe the relationship between employer and place. His earlier audit had shown him the organization’s thrift; later, he learned that Ameren colleagues had themselves benefited from agencies it supported. When he chaired the 2023 campaign, the beneficiaries included people within his own working world. The appeal came with a recognition of proximity.

A quieter commitment leads back to his first professional qualification. In 2018, he established the Lyons Scholarship in Accounting at Saint Louis University, supporting an undergraduate accounting student with financial need. In 2026, the university named him an Alumni Merit Award recipient for its business school. The scholarship gives that return to campus a concrete purpose: helping another student enter the profession.

The future has a monthly bill

The next chapter of Lyons’s career is being shaped by electricity demand. In a November 2024 interview, he spoke enthusiastically about manufacturing opportunities and data center interest in Missouri and Illinois. He described thousands of megawatts of potential new demand. After years of familiarity, the industry was confronting the prospect of substantial new customers with substantial appetites.

Potential is a consequential word. Interest in electricity does not itself build a facility or guarantee that a proposed customer will materialize. Lyons’s financial background is relevant to precisely this kind of decision: how much infrastructure to prepare, how soon to commit money, and which promises are firm enough to support that commitment. Enthusiasm needs a construction schedule and a contract.

The public questions are just as concrete. On October 15, 2025, Senator Josh Hawley wrote to Lyons seeking answers about rate increases, disconnections and data center arrangements. Hawley questioned whether households could end up subsidizing corporate projects. Those were the senator’s concerns, rather than a regulatory finding, but they placed affordability directly in front of Ameren’s chief executive.

That scrutiny belongs in Lyons’s story alongside the fundraising campaigns. A utility serves customers whose financial circumstances differ enormously. Plans that appear promising to investors must also survive questions from people who will pay monthly bills. Reliability, investment and affordability meet in the same household, even when the corporate presentations discuss them on separate slides.

Within Ameren, preparing other leaders has also meant changing their assignments. A leadership rotation announced for January 2026 made Michael Moehn group president of Ameren Utilities and Leonard Singh chief financial officer. Both continued reporting to Lyons. The company described the rotation as part of its approach to continuous improvement. There is a familiar shape to that decision: Lyons himself had moved across financial and operating responsibilities before becoming CEO. The assignments widened the experience of executives around him, much as earlier assignments had widened his own.

The work that keeps returning

Ameren’s July 2026 results offered a less glamorous view of the energy future. Infrastructure investments contributed to earnings, while increased tree trimming and energy center maintenance contributed to higher operating expenses. For all the discussion of changing technology, branches still grow near lines and equipment still needs attention. The future retains a maintenance department.

In that update, Lyons emphasized a diverse energy portfolio, stronger grid reliability and regional economic growth. The language describes objectives rather than completed victories. His task is to turn those objectives into service customers can depend on while controlling costs. An accountant can recognize a tradeoff; a chief executive must decide what to do about it.

On October 14, 2026, Ameren announced an additional $10 million to replenish customer assistance programs in Missouri and Illinois. The programs included help for eligible households, small businesses, nonprofits and military customers. The company said customers had received more than $107 million in total energy assistance through September. That broader assistance figure should be read separately from the new commitment.

Lyons’s career has moved from checking accounts to accepting responsibility for decisions that will be checked by others: regulators, investors, elected officials and customers. The most revealing continuity is the attention paid to where money ends up. Early on, he followed charitable donations through an audit. Today, the questions reach across a power system and return, insistently, to the people receiving the bill.