Director-PMO- 1st Line Of Defense Financial Crimes Risk Center Of Excellence

At American Express, our culture is built on a 175-year history of innovation, shared values and Leadership Behaviors, and an unwavering commitment to back our customers, communities, and colleagues. As part of Team Amex, you'll experience this powerful backing with comprehensive support for your holistic well-being and many opportunities to learn new skills, develop as a leader, and grow your career.

Here, your voice and ideas matter, your work makes an impact, and together, you will help us define the future of American Express.

How will you make an impact in this role?

The newly created First line of Defense Financial Crimes Risk & Controls Center of Excellence (1LOD FCRC COE) will provide a holistic, enterprise-wide approach to our financial crimes risk management (FCRM) activities and will reside within Global Servicing. 

This team will be responsible for establishing a robust control foundation for first line of defense FCRM activities across the company globally, including anti-money laundering, sanctions, payments controls, and anti-corruption. The team will partner closely with Technology to develop and deploy next generation capabilities that address key gaps and strengthen the first line’s ability to detect and prevent financial crimes across our lines of business. The team will work in coordination with the Global Financial Crimes Compliance (GFCC) team within the Global Risk & Compliance organization.

Job Responsibilities
The Director, PMO will be responsible for leading program management across deliverables and ensuring we seamlessly advance the 1LOD FCRC COE to an elevated governance and risk management model.

This individual will ensure the timely and structured management of a complex, multi-year project. The role involves critical coordination within the COE and across relevant business units (BUs), as well as extensive collaboration with partners in the first-, second-line, and third-line to ensure we maintain the highest levels of control, compliance and governance standards. The Director, PMO will report to the Vice President, Financial Crimes Risk & Controls Governance & Issue Management.

Key responsibilities include

• Oversee program governance, including by building and maintaining tracking and reporting system and tools (e.g., program dashboards) to provide a holistic view of progress across the various milestones and tasks, aggregating and pressuring test submissions from owners, and synthesizing in reports.
• Maintain thematic view across "Big Rocks" including identification of emerging issues, risks, and interdependencies; establish process to escalate high priority issues to impacted stakeholders (e.g., issue log).
• Support teams to proactively resolve issues and roadblocks early; enable course correction to ensure workstreams advance at pace, and prevent potential delays.
• Ensure clear communication of progress up to top level management; report on milestone progress, raise key decisions and issues for resolution where required.
• Serve as the program management function, acting as a conduit between the 1LOD FCRC COE and the critical workstreams delivering on project mandates. 
• Collaborate closely with external parties (i.e. consulting partners) and support all engagements to ensure key decisions are made and progress is achieved.
• Develop linkages and dependencies with stakeholders within and outside of 1LOD FCRC COE; interface with organization-wide committees and share insights (e.g., Community of Practice).

Minimum Qualifications:

• 7 plus