Inside American Express Phoenix: An Evening of Networking

As SVP Enterprise Data Governance & Platforms, Danielle leads program and product development teams focused on improving customer experience and driving business growth through enabling a data-driven culture, enhancing our data governance and data management program and tools, developing data platforms that provide insightful customer relationships and allowing users to leverage enterprise-wide data services and capabilities to meet their application, reporting and analytical needs.
Prior to this role, Danielle led the Loyalty and Benefits Platforms where software product and engineering teams were combined into the Enterprise Platforms Center of Excellence to drive critical transformational change that will enable speed of innovation and new experiences for our customers. Danielle helped to bring disparate teams and applications together working to deliver top priorities like Norway market launch, Express Company China, International Amazon SBS, Hilton Japan on a new global, composable, real-time application, R42, which will support emerging loyalty needs such as flexible point pricing, benefit content management, loyalty banking experiences and holistic membership level loyalty experiences.

During her 20+ years with the company, Danielle has held a variety of roles across lines of business including leading product development teams for Global Accounts Receivables, US Insurance and Global Benefits software platforms. These platforms are core to the card issuing business, supporting the strategic priorities of lending growth, key partnerships, and core customer value generation where she learned the importance of software product management. She also led Enterprise Digital & Analytics International Point of Sale Capabilities, Global Fraud Risk Management and Performance Engineering Merchant Services. She has gained industry experience with network products such as 3DSecure, ApplePay, EMV/Contactless and how they work across the globe. She has stood up new teams, expanded products in innovative ways and worked on various patents for American Express.
Danielle graduated from Arizona State University with Bachelor of Science & Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Master of Business Administration in Global Leadership.
Danielle represents AMEX, serving on the board for UMOM, an Arizona charitable organization that works to end homelessness for women and families in the greater Phoenix area.

Salina has been with at Amex for 16+ years in Finance, global IT strategy, lean portfolio management and product delivery. With extensive experience driving large scale programs, supporting platform transformation, and launching software products leveraging Agile methodologies.
Salina is Vice President, AMP Program Management in the Credit & Fraud Risk (CFR) organization. I am responsible for leading the transformation office for the strategic Authorization Modernization Program (AMP) to modernize AXP’s authorization business process and platforms.
She joined CFR from AXP Technology, where she was Director Assistant to Miles Farrel, SVP Enterprise Platforms (EP). In addition to managing the Executive Office, Salina collaborated with EP Product and Engineering leaders to set strategic direction and support growth, digital transformation, and platform health initiatives. She also influenced the evolution of the EP Talent strategy to attract, onboard, grow and retain diverse product and engineering colleagues through skill-building and leadership development.
Salina earned an MBA from Thunderbird School of Global Management and a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She lives in Peoria, AZ with her husband and children, and enjoys spending time with family, hiking, and traveling.

Hired into American Express as a Vice President and Audit Leader, Darren was responsible for all company and regulatory audit reviews, which included Amex’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) program. These reviews are conducted on an annual basis and global in nature, verifying compliance with the BSA, USA PATRIOT ACT, OFAC Sanctions programs as well as other applicable international financial crime laws and regulations. Darren was also responsible for developing and maintaining the audit plan for AML based on the risk assessment methodology designed to quantify the AML risk across the enterprise to determine the frequency of the AML reviews.
After a few years, he moved into the Line of Business Compliance Officer (LOBCO) space, providing compliance oversight to both the Global Services Group (GSG) and Credit and Fraud Risk (CFR) functions.

Currently, he heads up the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) as a part of the Global Financial Crime Compliance function. His team is responsible for the end-to-end suspicious activity reporting process which entails monitoring for, investigating, and when appropriate, reporting suspicious activity. The FIU develops processes designed to identify activity potentially indicative of criminal behavior; investigates potentially suspicious financial activity; files suspicious activity reports (SARs) with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN); and/or refers matters to compliance partners for review & reporting globally.
Prior to joining American Express, Darren spent more than a decade in Financial Services, working in Internal Audit, Compliance and Professional Development.

Meena is a Vice President in Global Network Services Technology at American Express. In this capacity, she is responsible for technology delivery and support of the modernized Network platforms and new strategic payment capabilities such as Debit and Multi Rail products. As an accomplished technology leader, Meena has an excellent grasp of the Network and Payment domain, a successful track record of driving innovation and change, forging a strong engineering culture and leading teams in a global environment.
Meena joined American Express in 2008 and has over 25 years of technical experience delivering large programs. Previously, as Director for the Network Modernization program, Meena led the technology teams through the transformational effort for Authorization, Clearing and Pricing platforms from inception through launch, supporting seamless migration of partners to the new Network. In her prior roles, she has led many successful transformational initiatives and modern technology adoption to drive efficiency and reduce cost and time to market.

Prior to joining American Express, Meena held multiple technology roles at Cognizant, Planetasia and Wipro in areas spanning from IT strategy consulting, process re-engineering and program managing end-to-end global technical delivery in the Financial Services and Healthcare industry.
Meena holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Bangalore University in India. She is also a U.S. patent holder and a recent winner of the distinguished Edward P. Gilligan Award for Innovation and her contributions to NeMo. She lives in Phoenix, with her husband and their two sons. In her spare time, she enjoys running, hiking and practicing hot yoga.

Simi has been with American Express since 2005. In her 18 years with Amex, she has worked in customer servicing, finance, business transformation and product management.
She currently is Vice President - Fraud Servicing, Resolution and Network Policy, responsible for managing fraud-related servicing strategies and capabilities for global proprietary-issued Card Members, designing best-in-class dispute strategies, building the next generation of capabilities.
In her 18-year tenure, at American Express, she has led multiple transformational projects driving revenue growth and expense reduction for the Blue Box. Prior to American Express, she worked with GE Industrial Systems and Whirlpool Home Appliances.
Simi has a Bachelor’s in Engineering. She resides in Phoenix, AZ with her husband and two children. In her spare time, she loves to cook, spend time with friends, hike during winters and binge watch baking shows.