The 44th floor of the American Express building offers a breathtaking view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. In 1885, 35-years after American Express was founded in Lower Manhattan, the Statue of Liberty was on her way to New York without a pedestal on which to stand. So the employees of American Express contributed their pennies to her future success. In 1983, American Express once again came to the aid of Lady Liberty, by helping restore her to her former glory in advance of her centennial celebration.
It seems fitting the corporate headquarters would watch over her as a reminder of the company’s 164-year history of supporting its communities. That legacy lives on, and nowhere is that more evident than with a 24-year veteran of American Express, Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly. Mary Ann has been a leading voice in the company’s efforts to help small businesses do more business, and has taken it as her own mission to help women entrepreneurs.
“I’M A WIDOW, AND A SINGLE MOTHER, SO… I FEEL MY GREATEST RESPONSIBILITY IS BEING A GOOD ROLE MODEL.”
“I led the team that focused on the American Express OPEN brand and defining what it meant. I’m really proud of my experience in OPEN. One of the opportunities we identified was helping women entrepreneurs. Research revealed that women owned businesses were growing at a rate of one and a half-times that of male businesses, yet a very small fraction of them were reaching the million dollars revenue mark. When we dove deeper, we learned that women do not dedicate enough time to growing their business. Instead, they focus on the day-to-day activities of running a business. In an effort to help, we created a women’s advocacy initiative called OPEN for Women: CEO Bootcamp, that teaches women how to work on their business instead of in their business.
“We developed a curriculum around the three C’s: confidence, competence and connections. We bring women together in different forums and working sessions and let them make connections with each other. We’ve created online forums so they can develop communities, either by geography, by industry, or by interest, and continue the conversation online. The women involved have found it very valuable, and the program will continue to be a big focus for 2014 and beyond.
“Now I’m in global advertising and brand management, focusing on developing and enhancing the position of the American Express brand in the marketplace and creating new ways to integrate customer insights into our enterprise-wide marketing initiatives. To achieve that, I lead the global marketplace insights team, which does all kinds of customer research: quantitative, qualitative, focus groups, one-on-one with customers, as well as listening when customers call us with issues and positive insights.
“We do social listening and competitive intelligence to understand what’s out there as alternative choices to American Express. We look at new technology and the customer’s end-to-end decision journey to understand how American Express is considered and how we can help our customers.”
Just as American Express supported the Statue of Liberty, Mary Ann Fitzmaurice Reilly supports and serves American Express’ customers.
