Connect with American Express’ Women Leaders in the USA & UK

As Vice President – Engineering, Global Risk & Compliance Technology, Divyangi is responsible for leading business value delivery for Global Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit and Privacy. She oversees core functionalities for Global Financial Crimes Compliance such as Sanctions Screening and Suspicious Activity Reporting, Privacy Choice, Right to Access and Portability, Data Deletion and Archival, Operational Risk, Know Your Customer Refresh, predictive analytics and rule development.

Previously, as Vice President of IT risk and information security at American Express, she was responsible for the strategic direction and delivery of the company’s global technology risk program. Prior to American Express, Divyangi served as Executive Director in the technology risk and controls office at JPMorgan Chase and Vice President in technology risk at Goldman Sachs.

Divyangi is passionate about women in technology and STEM issues, with a focus on recruiting, fostering and promoting the growth of technical women in the financial services industry. She has helped build and execute programs with the Urban Assembly School of Business for Young Women, and served as a mentor with Girls Who Code.

Divyangi holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stony Brook University, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Mumbai University.

As Vice President of Engineering, Karina is responsible for the customer information management enterprise platforms. She is mainly responsible for modernizing the customer relationship management landscape to centralize the data globally, without fragmentation , improved coverage, and improved accuracy. Karina has been with American Express for 11 years. Prior to this role, she held leadership positions within engineering over seeing delivery of acquisitions and credit and fraud risk technology. As well as she was an engineer on credit bureau integration platforms and servicing portal platforms for several years, implementing multi-market enhancements and streamlining components for ease of re- use in new customer journey implementations.

Karina holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Florida and a Master of Science in Information Technology and Engineering Management from Nova Southeastern University. She lives in Plantation, Fl with her husband Matthew, and one year old son, Liam.

Vanessa Hackett is VP of technology at American Express, looking after the company’s loyalty and benefits platforms. Vanessa’s engineering team enables seamless and secure digital customer experiences, along with loyalty products and services, using global APIs and core platform capabilities.

Vanessa joined Amex in 1998 as an executive assistant. She held various analytical and project management roles in technology, before becoming a delivery director. She is an avid supporter of Agile methods, DevOps and the developer experience. Vanessa is passionate about building diverse talent and fostering a culture of inclusivity. She is executive sponsor of Amex’s UK Women in Technology network.

As Vice President, Enterprise Big Data and Customer Engagement Technology, Tom Verutes is responsible for the global engineering practice for enterprise functions including Big Data and Analytics, Machine Learning, Business Intelligence, Database Engineering, Prospect and Customer Marketing, and Personalization. Tom is also responsible for Technology Data Management Strategy in close partnership with the Chief Data Office, and sits on the Amex Enterprise Data Committee.

Tom is an experienced information management and technology professional. In his 22 years with American Express he has held both product management and engineering leadership roles supporting all lines of business. Since joining the Technology organization in 2010, Tom has led the transformation and modernization of Amex’s digital marketing and personalization capabilities, connecting buyers and sellers by leveraging the power of AmEx’s closed-loop network and big data capabilities to drive cross-channel digital commerce. More recently Tom has taken on leadership for the engineering of the company’s enterprise big data platform, Cornerstone where he has been instrumental in modernizing AmEx’s large scale analytics and business intelligence capabilities.

Tom holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems from James Madison University. He lives in Rockville Centre, NY with his wife Janet, their daughter Anna, and son James.