Director, Strategy & Analytics

Global Real Estate and Workplace Experience (GREWE) is a global team at American Express (Amex) responsible for the full lifecycle of planning, execution, and operations of Amex real estate. GREWE supports over 75,000 Amex colleagues and contractors in over eight million square feet of property located in 59 countries. Our real estate portfolio consists of large full-service campuses, office buildings, sales offices, airport lounges, and data centers. The global GREWE team is comprised of ~120 Amex full-time staff that leverage ~5,000 contractors and is part of the broader Enterprise Shared Services organization, which delivers shared business services to colleagues across the enterprise.

About the Role

GREWE Vision: Provide the world’s best workplace experience at a competitive cost for every colleague, at every site, every day.

GREWE Strategic Priorities:

• Portfolio: The right buildings, in the right places, at the right cost
• Design & Build: Inspiring spaces that bring together colleagues, customers, and our brand
• Operations: Operational excellence that drives performance, speed, and reliability while minimizing disruption and risk
• Hospitality: Seamless, high-quality colleague services at every site and every moment that matters

Responsibilities

The Director, Strategy and Analytics is a key GREWE leadership position, leading a team with the responsibility to understand business objectives, translate those into a holistic footprint strategy, standardize performance management systems for strategy execution, deliver standard/efficient business processes across GREWE, and create analytics-powered insights that drive differentiated building performance for our businesses. This role will report to VP, GREWE Workplace Experience & Americas Region Global Leadership and Governance.

Key responsibilities include:

• Leading with an enterprise mindset, delivering strategies that connect the requirements of various business units into a holistic, AMEX-wide, value-accretive plan.
• Leading the GREWE capabilities that are foundational to driving the GREWE and enterprise agenda, including strategy, long-range planning (LRP), and analytics.
• Building and developing relationships with senior leaders across the enterprise, leveraging data and insights to drive an integrated regional and global approach to GREWE’s strategic priorities.
• Ensuring continuous connection between GREWE and business segment strategies, identifying opportunities, dependencies, and risks to enable enterprise success.
• Leveraging enterprise relationships and data & insights to develop a clear, value-driven, and actionable strategy to drive business growth and deliver increased profitability.
• Leading annual development and evolution of the GREWE long-term and annual goals, long-range plan, and annual planning cycles.
• Leading the development (and tracking/maintenance) of annual GREWE Goals & Objectives (G&Os), performance dashboard and metrics, and their communication/cascade throughout the organization.
• Leveraging enterprise data, systems, and partner capabilities to enable strategic planning, decision-making, and execution across GREWE. Presenting strategic insights and recommendations to GREWE leadership.
• Developing and managing a multi-year digital analytics technology roadmap supporting our portfolio strategy.
• Integrating regional plans with global business direction through a seamless, simple, yet holistic approach deployed within the GREWE regional construct worldwide.

Executive Engagements

This role involves direct and frequent executive engagement with Amex leaders across all lines of business, especially their strategy leads. The Director is a member of the GREWE Global Leadership Team and is expected to frequently present to the GREWE Leadership Team, SVP of GREWE, President of Enterprise Shared Services, and executive committee leaders on occasion.

Major Duties & Responsibilities

• Strategy and Strategy Execution:
  • Owns the development, execution, and communication of GREWE's enterprise portfolio strategy, shaping business needs into a cohesive strategy that delivers measurable value to both GREWE and American Express business lines.
  • Establishes the operating cadence, governance, and decision framework to ensure successful execution and accountability.
  • Leads annual development and evolution of the GREWE long-term and annual goals, long-range plan, and annual planning cycles.
  • Serves as the strategic integrator across GREWE, ensuring GREWE priorities remain aligned with business segment strategies while identifying opportunities, dependencies, and risks that enable AMEX to win.
  • Connects externally to peer companies, industry associations, regulatory stakeholders, and thought leaders to identify emerging trends, benchmark performance, and shape future strategic direction.
• Insights and Analytics:
  • Leads insights generation for GREWE to fuel strategies, directing analytical capabilities to generate actionable insights that inform executive decision-making, strategic priorities, and investment choices.
  • Develops and manages multi-year digital analytics technology supporting the portfolio roadmap.
  • Coordinates closely with AET, EDDS, Digital Workplace, and other teams to support standards, processes, and tool/system/platform governance with efficiency and data validation.
  • Owns the evaluation and adoption of analytics and technology capabilities that improve automation, productivity, and strategic execution while optimizing cost, scalability, and business impact.
  • Ensures enterprise data, systems, and partner capabilities are leveraged effectively to enable strategic planning, decision-making, and operational performance across GREWE.
  • Promotes and facilitates the development of data management and analytic tools to advance data management, analytics, automation, and reporting solutions that provide transparent performance monitoring, strategic KPIs, and value realization.
• Reimagine GREWE Transformation:
  • Leads the strategic program to reimagine GREWE’s contribution to AMEX as LT sponsor.
  • Works alongside SVP, GREWE and the leadership team to identify differentiated value contributions to American Express business worldwide and sets the path to win.
  • Leads cross-functional teams and mobilizes talent across GREWE and the enterprise to accelerate strategic initiatives, remove barriers, and ensure successful delivery of transformation outcomes.
• Other Duties:
  • Presents often to the GREWE global leadership team.
  • Serves as a key contact to the strategy leaders and ecosystem across AMEX.
  • Rotating member of other councils as appropriate.
  • Establishes sound working relationships with the SVP, GREWE, and the GREWE leadership team.

Budget Responsibility

• Leads the creation of the Amex footprint strategy affecting 80+ buildings in 59 countries and over 7 million square feet.
• Drives optimization of $600+ million in annual spend for the corporation.
• Owns the analytics and digital strategic plan, expected to be $10 million over 5 years.

Requirements

• Minimum of 10+ years’ work experience in Business, Engineering, Real Estate, Facilities, and/or Risk Management.
• Minimum of 5+ years managing global teams/people leadership experience.
• Deep knowledge of real estate, facilities, and engineering capabilities.
• Outstanding collaboration, connection, influence, and shaping skills.
• Highly motivated self-starter who can provide strategic thought leadership.
• Strong qualitative and quantitative problem-solving skills (issue identification, problem structuring, analysis, development of recommendations).
• Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail.
• Ability to easily partner with and influence senior leaders across the Amex organization.
• Strong people leader; proven track record of followership and team development.
• This role requires 25% travel time, including both domestic and international travel.
• Leads a team of 4-5 direct reports and 10+ indirect reports.
• Requires key working relationships with internal partners like Finance, HR/CEG, Tech/ETS, Operations functions, and externally as a frequent Amex representative at CoreNet, IFMA, IAMC, and other trade organizations.
• University/Bachelor’s Degree required.
• Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for this position.

Benefits

• Competitive base salaries.
• Bonus incentives.
• 6% Company Match on retirement savings plan.
• Free financial coaching and financial well-being support.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life insurance, and disability benefits.
• Flexible working model with hybrid, onsite, or virtual arrangements depending on role and business need.
• 20+ weeks paid parental leave for all parents, regardless of gender, offered for pregnancy, adoption, or surrogacy.
• Free access to global on-site wellness centers staffed with nurses and doctors (depending on location).
• Free and confidential counseling support through the Healthy Minds program.
• Career development and training opportunities.