Head of Partner Engagement & Strategy, Managing Director

Citi’s mission is to serve as a trusted partner to its clients and communities by responsibly providing financial services that enable growth and economic progress. Citi is a trusted brand with over 200 years of helping to lead the way in the continuously evolving financial services sector.

Citi has made it a priority to foster a culture where the best people want to work and where opportunities to develop are widely available to all. We are guided by our leadership standards, a common set of skills and expected behaviours that illustrate how our employees should work every day to be successful and strengthens our ability to execute against our strategic priorities.

U.S. Consumer Cards offers branded cards, retail private label cards, payment, credit and unsecured lending solutions to consumers and small businesses, with over 100 million customer accounts in North America. With a wide range of proprietary, co-brand and private label cards with leading brands and innovative lending solutions, we have a full spectrum of client-centric payment and lending products and features.

We are focused on evolving with today’s consumer and continue to launch new and innovative card products, evolve our value propositions and reward offerings, extend to new partnerships and provide new digital capabilities to make purchases faster, convenient, and more rewarding.

USCC already has a range of partnerships across a broad spectrum delivering commercial and strategic customer focused outcomes – typically, either to improve product distribution or enhance product capabilities, often with a view towards future industry developments to seize relevant opportunities or protect against emergent risks.

These partnerships include over 35 mainstream retailers and e-tailers, hospitality and travel partners; beyond this, Citi has partnerships with large tech industry players, payment providers of various stripes, as well as with specific capability providers; sometimes, these are also in the context of industry coalitions, where Citi often plays a leading role.

To continue this mission, we are seeking to hire the Head of Partner Engagement & Strategy for the Partnership Cards and Development organization (PCD). This critical leadership role will work closely with the Head of PCD and the senior leadership team across USCC to set the vision and strategy for the partnership business, renew existing partnerships and optimize portfolios in alignment with the USCC strategy.

This role will also drive the work with key stakeholders to enhance capabilities across cobrand and private label products and working closely with portfolio general managers to prioritize and drive a consistent approach on partner engagement.

This role will lead a team of professionals with direct responsibility to support new partnerships programs to deliver against USCC’s mission and goals, across all the above partner sets. The role will require an in-depth understanding of consumer banking products and services industry and competitive product and service offerings, juxtaposed against Citi’s strengths and capability gaps.

A good understanding of the payments industry and digital commerce is vital, as is a grasp of mid-large sized private label and co-brand partnership programs. The successful candidate for this high impact role requires expertise in negotiation, relationship management, strategic thinking, people leadership, strong financial acumen and an entrepreneurial mindset.

Approaching this space with a One-Citi mindset is key. The successful candidate will demonstrate curiosity beyond USCC. The role will require regular engagement with senior C-suite leaders within and throughout Citi, so communications skills and conviction on deal stance are important attributes.

Responsibilities Include: Partner with the USCC businesses to identify and implement strategic and tactical initiatives that provide Citi with a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace- include supporting potential partnerships, defining partnership constructs and negotiating and executing agreements.

Support or lead transactions from beginning to closing (client sourcing, pitching, M&A process, valuation analyses, due diligence, negotiations, closing) Evaluate potential transactions and business cases from a strategic, operational, and financial perspective.

Lead or assist in client meetings and pitches, providing strategic advice and proposals. Establish the strategy and direct resources to develop, negotiate and secure manage existing partner contract negotiations. Integrates Citigroup product offerings as part of a robust financial solutions package as part of the new business and merger/acquisitions activity.

Assist in evaluating the internal and external business environment to develop a long-term overall vision and strategy for the organization. Oversee key analysis and support for negotiations while working closely with internal and external partners to structure and execute transactions.

Manage internal and external processes for sourcing, evaluating, winning, and closing new partner programs and retention of existing relationships. Analyze prospects by gathering information about growth, competitors, and market share possibilities.

Appropriately assess risk when business decisions are made, keeping as priority the firm's reputation and safeguarding Citi’s clients and assets. Drives compliance with applicable laws, rules and regulations, adhering to Policy, applying sound ethical judgment regarding personal behavior, conduct and business practices, and escalating, managing and reporting control issues with transparency, as well as effectively supervising the activity of others and create accountability with those who fail to maintain these standards.

The key characteristics of the ideal candidate for the position are: Strategic thinking, financial acumen, and an entrepreneurial mindset. Excellent stakeholder management skills to ensure alignment and buy-in across the organization. Superior negotiating proficiency Continuously challenging the status quo Strong leadership who leads a high performing organization, focuses on building talent and organizational depth.

Executive communication skills. Ability to synthesize complex and multiple source data into fact based and nuanced solutions. Ability to build highly credible, influential, and trusting relationships across the firm and with key external partners.

Influential and high track record of followership with demonstrated experience gaining consensus and alignment in a highly matrixed environment. Ability to set priorities and ‘triage’ in a fast paced, highly matrix, dynamic environment. Self-motivated, highly adaptive, and able to work well in high stress.

High ethical standards and mature risk tolerance who structures deal with balancing risk and reward