Tag Archive for: American Express

Mover & Shaker: Inna Jackson, Vice President & Senior Counsel, Digital & Data Partnerships, American Express

Inna JacksonInna Jackson’s biggest learning moment came immediately after completing a very large and intense project—one that didn’t pan out the way she had envisioned, an unexpected outcome given her successful career to date.

“I was forced to take a large step back to reconsider the work I’d done. I realized that while I had worked very hard for a prolonged period of time, I had focused on a level of details that, from a longer-term vantage point, were insignificant,” she says.

That one experience gave her a larger lesson as a way to consider how you spend your time. “We all like to say how busy we are; being busy makes us feel valued, needed, grounded. But my big focus has become being busy with the right things that will actually create lasting value.”

Finding Her Passion in Legal Work

Her career mirrors that aspiration. Jackson began as a corporate and M&A attorney in private practice, working with a range of clients on cross-border, M&A, private equity and other transactions across a wide variety of industries that included media, telecommunications and real estate.

One of her most exciting projects came when she was selected to serve as assistant outside general counsel and transactional attorney for a multinational multi-billion investment fund in its acquisitions of 17 hotels in Mexico and the Dominican Republic. She cites this role, which spanned four years, as one of the highlights of her law firm experience due to the meaningful work, but also because of how interesting it was culturally as she routinely worked with partners, advisors and investors in Spain, Latin America, the Netherlands and Abu Dhabi.

Halfway through her career, she moved in-house to work at American Express. For her first assignment, she lawyered American Express’ Business Insights (data analytics and reporting business) from the ground up, spearheading a foundational privacy and regulatory legal analysis, creating baseline processes and agreements and negotiating a number of cutting-edge data analytics and data license partnerships. She also supported the Global Merchant Services organization on a range of strategic negotiations, marketing and product build initiatives.

But she discovered her passion for digital work when she was asked to join the core team negotiating and building American Express’ relationship with Apple for Apple Pay, one of the Company’s first strategic mobile wallet partnerships. Jackson then moved on to support the digital team full time, playing a core role in the Google Pay and Samsung Pay negotiations, and leading many other initiatives involving issues of first impression, including partnerships for Amazon Alexa, Amex’s bot on Facebook Messenger and the more recent partnership with PayPal and Venmo, among many others.

“This work has been particularly exciting because it sits at the cross-section of what other lines of business do, but with layers of innovative issues and considerations,” Jackson says. She notes that to do her job well, it is essential to take a practical approach as a partner to the business team, rather than solely as a legal advisor, and to constantly seek the bigger picture by connecting the dots for considerations and priorities across the organization.

Growing Her Expertise—And Her Brand

Throughout her time at American Express, Jackson has earned a reputation as a key thought leader in enterprise data strategy and third-party data sharing frameworks, the professional achievement of which she’s very proud. “When I started my career at American Express, I knew very little about data or privacy, but throughout my eight years here, data considerations have been a consistent focal point,” she says. “I’ve served as a principal architect of numerous arrangements with savvy counterparties, including Amazon, Google and Apple, and I’ve progressively built on these learnings in partner negotiations as well as funneled them into the enterprise principles and approach.”

Along the way, she’s rethought the notion of what it means to be a “women lawyer,” moving away from her first impression that she had to fit a cookie cutter stereotype. “It’s not that I had a particular human in mind, but rather the idea of a corporate individual as a machine—centered around a logical core, extremely efficient, neat and trim, working around the clock, showing limited emotion,” she says, imagining that everything that made her unique must be put aside during the workday, almost like an extracurricular project.

Fortunately, she realized that real life is far more nuanced, and while some elements of the stereotype may have truth, they are not as radical. “As individuals, we have a lot of control around how we shape our own brand and the culture we inhabit and want to inhabit,” she says. In fact, she’s found that the leaders she has most admired are those who are comfortable sharing aspects of their unique personalities and being appropriately vulnerable while retaining the corporate persona.

Over her career, she’s had several sponsors and has been loyal to them—possibly to a fault, she says. She has appreciated that her sponsors have given her opportunities that she didn’t even recognize she was capable of handling; for example being asked to work on multi-pronged digital projects with no precedent. Each time, she rose to the occasion and spent days, including weekends, charting out a game plan, with a possible deal structure, issues and stakeholders. “It is through my sponsors’ belief in me that I’ve learned that no project or issue is unsolvable and that with curiosity, resilience and ultimately, the right team of people, there is always, eventually, a path forward,” Jackson says.

A Focus on Family

While Jackson has had many role models over the years to pick just one, it has to be her mom. She set an amazing example—switching professions mid-career when she immigrated to the United States and learning not only the English language but also the necessary skills to excel among people who started in her field years earlier.

It was through her mom that Jackson learned resiliency, recalling how maddening it was when her mom helped her with homework in middle school, and even after she was ready to give up, her mom would persevere until she understood the problem. Although she worked long hours with teams in India and others around the globe to turn around complex projects on very tight timelines, Jackson recalls that she made it look easy. “By being very present, not cutting corners and having an ultimate belief that even the most tangled issue could get figured out, she seemed like a superhero.”

And now Jackson is passing on those qualities to her three daughters, along with her love of travel and languages.
She is fluent in Russian and Spanish and can also speak French and Italian. And while her travel options were limited when her daughters were younger, they are now at fantastic ages to travel, and they have been planning trips to Europe and South Africa this year.

Throughout her career Jackson has been active in pro bono work—in law school, where she was chair of the pro bono committee, to private practice and now at Amex. Over the years, her work has ranged from helping 501c(3) corporations with bylaws and other corporate matters to helping with immigration and asylum matters for various clients, including through Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) and Catholic Charities Immigration and Refugee Services.

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Voice of Experience, Jessica Lieberman Quinn, Senior Vice President, Corporate Planning, American Express

rsz_jessica-headshot_whitebkg-159x240Fresh out of college with a dual degree — a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and a BA in History from the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania – Jessica Lieberman Quinn’s first position was an ideal avenue into the business world. Working at a small investment banking firm, she was privy to a wide variety of deals, from M&A to IPOs across a variety of industries.

“Even as a more junior person, I was fortunate to spend time with clients who were CEOs. They were running small to mid-sized businesses, and I was able to have a look through their eyes at what was important in running and growing a business. These early experiences taught me to view business in a big-picture framework.”

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Voice of Experience: Katrina Roberts, Vice President, Acting Head of Global Network and International Consumer Technology, American Express

Katrina Roberts never envisioned herself having a career in IT, but now, after joining American Express over twenty years ago, she could never imagine herself anywhere else. Originally, Roberts planned on entering the hospitality business as a hotel manager, but after gaining some hands on experience in the industry while she was still a student, Roberts determined that was not the perfect career fit for her.

Although Roberts was still unsure of her exact career trajectory leaving college, she knew that she had a strong interest in travel and tourism. With some encouragement from her father, a Kodak employee, Roberts applied to work at American Express.

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Movers and Shakers: Suzanne McAndrew, Vice President of Talent Management, American Express

women sales“By not telling your story, you might run the risk of creating barriers for yourself at work,” said Suzanne McAndrew, vice president of Talent Management at American Express.

“That being said, you need to find the right outlets to tell your story and feel comfortable that it will then become part of what you are known for at the same time–and this can be challenging,” she continued.

Currently, McAndrew works to identify high potential talent within American Express and facilitates pathways to their success. For LGBT professionals, she advocates bringing their whole self to work, but also encourages them to define a personal brand that extends beyond their sexual orientation. “Regardless of whether you are gay or straight, you still possess skills, knowledge, and talents that make you a leader who is worthy of attention,” she explained.

Career Story
As McAndrew looks back at her career, she can separate her professional journey into three different chapters that blend the areas of service, communications and change management and talent. She started her career in retail, working in HR for Saks Fifth Avenue where she really had the opportunity to develop depth and breadth of knowledge in the area.

“I was fortunate to have a sponsor who brought me to New York to lead the corporate communications group before becoming the HR Director for Saks Off Fifth, the outlet store division of the company,” said McAndrew, who led the initiative of opening new outlet stores all over the country during her time in this role.

Before moving on to what McAndrew considers the second chapter of her career, she continued to develop her communications experience at Macy’s where she was charged with building a strong corporate communications group in addition to bolstering the company’s internal programming for employees.

Continuing to focus on communications, McAndrew took her career in a different direction when she accepted a consulting role at Towers Perrin, which later became Towers Watson. “I started as a communications consultant, but my role evolved over time to include work in the talent space and thought leadership,” she said. It was here that her relationship with American Express began as she spent eight years providing communications consulting services for the company.

“An opportunity opened up in the talent management group at American Express which involved executive talent planning, development, and assessment for the top 1,500 employees at the firm. And this is the third and current chapter in my career story,” McAndrew explained.

She is spending a lot of time right now thinking about the employee of the future and what that profile looks like. “What does the next generation of leaders look like? What motivates and drives them? How do we build a diverse talent pipeline and build inclusion into our everyday? These are ongoing questions that we have to consider while managing our current talent pool and bringing on new talent as well,” said McAndrew.

“I take a lot of pride in developing people and helping them discover and reach their full potential,” she continued. “It is rewarding to see others grow and succeed.”

Advice for Achieving Professional Fulfillment
According to McAndrew, her personal definition of success centered around the notion of finding her purpose, although this is not something she figured out until later in her career. “I wish I had been more in tune to the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ aspects of my professional development,” McAndrew noted. “I learned that having a purposeful career did not necessarily mean finding the quickest path to the top, but rather being clear on what I am aiming to achieve overall for myself, my family and the company I work for.”

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Movers and Shakers: Lei Chen, Vice President and Head of Enterprise Growth Risk and Information Management, American Express

Lei Chen Lei Chen, Vice President and Head of Enterprise Growth Risk and Information Management for American Express, is very passionate about talent development. This is why she makes it a priority to be actively involved in many of the mentoring, leadership training, and networking programs available to executives at American Express.

“One of the things I am most proud of in my career at American Express is my involvement with the Executive Women’s Interest Network,” said Chen, who led the employee network, and has been instrumental in building it up as a critical platform to help advance and retain women talent through various activities including workshops, guest speaker series, roundtable discussions, mentoring programs and networking events.

“I think it is so important to reach out and help others develop their potential,” added Chen, “and one of the most effective ways to do this is by gathering together, sharing our experiences, learning best practices, and paying it forward.”

Career at American Express
After graduating from Michigan State University with a Ph.D. in Statistics, Chen joined the Risk and Information Management group at American Express where she had the opportunity to develop expertise in almost all areas of Risk Management and across multiple business units.

Currently, Chen serves as Vice President and Head of Enterprise Growth Risk and Information Management where her primary role is to develop risk management strategies and drive growth in the area of non-traditional payment products.

“One of the most rewarding aspects of my job is that I am directly involved in redefining our company’s brand by making our products more accessible and inclusive,” said Chen. “Enterprise Growth group is like a start up inside of American Express. With the launch of Bluebird, a checking & debit alternative, we use emerging technologies to expand our customer segment beyond our premium base, and to enable “financial inclusion” for the underserved population by traditional financial services.”

One of the challenges Chen acknowledged is delivering the brand’s promise for world class customer experience, trust, and security while achieving industry best risk performance.

According to Chen, the leadership support she has received from American Express has played a key role in her personal career development. One of the most notable programs Chen was selected to participate in was the Compass 45 Leadership Program, of which she was a participant in 2006. This was a twelve month program designed to help high potential and high performing leaders further develop their leadership skills through focused training and working on real projects that solve real business problems within the company.

“In addition to strengthening my leadership skills, I built strong connections and network among my peers,” explained Chen. She continued, “Before the program, I used to be a workaholic. Hearing and observing how my peers balanced their work and life, I had my ‘aha moment.’ I was inspired and realized that I can also have it all.”

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