Director, Payments Consulting Mexico

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. The Payments Consulting team delivers go-to-market strategies, deploying new and emerging payment solutions, and ensuring seamless transaction processing experience in over 20 markets globally. Payments Consulting colleagues are trusted advisors to internal and external partners, leaning in with technical payments expertise and insights from the acceptance channel to guide internal strategies, and working directly with merchants, processors, and partners to discover and implement solutions to meet their evolving needs. The Payments Consulting Director is responsible for leading the Mexico Payments Consulting team and serving as the primary liaison for key stakeholders and leaders, particularly within Global Merchant Services. **Key responsibilities include**: **Strategic Leadership** - Deliver against strategic business priorities at the market, regional, and global level. - Develop multi-year strategies to advance market adoption of AXP processing and product capabilities. - Actively manage business and operational risk, including oversight of operations, processes, and third party relationships. **Team Development** - Lead, manage, and develop a team of a high-performing colleagues, individually and collectively, to deliver on business goals. - Foster a culture of excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement - Proactively lead through highly ambiguous situations, manage escalations and related communication - Develop team to proficiently consult with merchants and partners to deliver on their payment processing, experience, and business goals. **Stakeholder Management & Collaboration** - Build and leverage positive relationships with key collaborators within AXP, including Global Merchant Services (client management), network, policy, product, legal, and control management teams. - Act as the primary liaison for senior-level customer and partner technical relationships, understanding their business objectives, unique considerations and needs. - Actively contribute to cross-functional initiatives, sharing insights and the voice of customers and partners, to advance product, policy, and specification development, and enterprise strategies. **Industry Engagement** - Build and maintain deep and current knowledge of the payments industry and its players, including market norms, emerging trends, technologies, regulations, and competitive dynamics. - Engage in relevant industry forums and cultivate relationships with customers and partners to bring external perspective to initiatives throughout the organization. - Anticipate and communicate trends to support strategic decision-making. **Qualifications**: - 10+ years of relevant experience, including 5+ years in people leadership and also in the payments industry. - Customer-first mindset with demonstrated track record of expert relationship building and collaboration skills with internal and external partners. - Evolved risk mindset with proven experience effectively managing business, process, and operational risk. - Deep knowledge of the Mexican payments ecosystem, its processes and players, including processors, payment facilitators, merchants, payment service providers, POS providers, bank acquirers, and issuers. - Demonstrated ability to anticipate needs, think strategically, solve complex problems, and lead through ambiguity to define clear paths to consistently deliver on business goals. - Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills, with fluency in both Spanish and English. - Ability to simplify complex issues for non-technical audiences and bridge business and technical discussions. - Proven facilitation and negotiation skills. - Proficient in managing highly escalated situations and related communication. - Ability to operate seamlessly and influence effectively in a global, matrixed environment. - Some travel required (