Manager, Finance – Strategic Initiatives & Chief of Staff

The Credit & Fraud Risk (CFR) Finance team partners with the Risk organization to drive analytics which support our risk activities and inform the Company’s credit outlook, including expectations for write-offs, CECL reserve levels and CCAR stress testing. The key objective is to drive profitable financial decisions and support credit-risk strategies while ensuring adherence to governance and controls. This Manager position will be part of the CFR Finance leadership team.

This Manager role is an amazing opportunity for someone to join the leadership team supporting CFR Finance. This position will directly support the Senior Vice President and partner closely with the broader leadership team, as well as across Corporate Planning teams, to support the organization in achieving both its near-term and long-term strategic objectives.

CFR Finance is a global team of approximately 80 colleagues across New York and Gurugram, India. This role will support leadership in tracking delivery against critical initiatives for the enterprise while also supporting colleague engagement and development.

The candidate will have the opportunity to influence how strategic decisions are made, including playing a leading role in CFR Finance’s Gen AI transformation strategy.  The candidate will provide recommendations on areas of improvement, including opportunities to increase organization effectiveness, while also leading ad-hoc, strategic projects. The role provides the opportunity for significant personal growth has high exposure to senior leadership within CFR Finance, Corporate Planning and the broader Finance organization.

This role will be based at the Amex Tower in New York City.

Qualifications

• Solid commercial acumen and understanding of how large organizations operate
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to tailor complex messages to executive audiences with brevity, simplicity and impact
• Ability to work under tight deadlines, continually prioritizing requests while being able to balance attention to detail and accuracy
• Exceptional relationship, leadership and collaboration skills and the ability to work in a highly matrixed environment
• Thought leadership and creativity in solving challenging, and potentially ambiguous, business problems
• Demonstrated aptitude in drawing relevant insights from data, including an ability to ‘step back’ and consider a recommendation or solution from multiple points of view
• Capacity to use judgment in handling highly confidential information
• Ability to build solid, trust-based relationships with cross-functional teams
• Minimum of 4 years of relevant work experience
• Undergraduate degree required. Finance, Accounting, or Risk discipline preferred
• Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.

Responsibilities

• Lead the strategy, development and execution of communications and talent management activities across the team globally, including the co-ordination of mid-year and year-end calibration processes
• Play a lead role in colleague development and engagement initiatives, creating linkages across our global team and with the broader Finance organization
• Manage and monitor the team’s overall operating expenses, including monthly forecasting and annual targets. Support rolling R&Os, as needed (ad-hoc basis)
• Drive Gen AI Strategy and Transformation by providing thought leadership on team objectives, key initiatives, milestone progress and facilitating training and learning opportunities across the team
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key partner teams, including but not limited to Risk, Finance LFOs, BU and Enterprise FP&A & Decision Sciences
• Develop agenda and create materials for CFR Finance town halls in addition to leadership team meetings, strategic planning, roundtables, and training sessions
• Communicate actionable recommendations, including being able to effectively communicate complex ideas and actively seek to drive strategy
• Partner with business leaders to ensure we are asking the ‘right’ questions, frame ad-hoc analyses, and rapidly drive analyses to a successful outcome to impact decisions
• Serve as the liaison between CFR Finance and business partners’ executive offices