American Express Company (NYSE:AXP) today announced Katrina Lane and David Yoo have joined the U.S. Consumer Services leadership team.
Katrina Lane will lead the company's Consumer Cards and Experiences team as Executive Vice President, managing the consumer cards products and services portfolio. Most recently, Ms. Lane served as Chief Technology Officer for Caesars Entertainment, an acknowledged leader in customer relationship management (CRM) with 50 properties on four continents and $8 billion in revenue. In her new role, Ms. Lane will create new offerings to enhance the Cardmember experience and oversee customer segmentation, retention and advocacy.
As Senior Vice President, David Yoo will lead the Commerce Innovation team where he will pioneer new applications and experiences that help American Express Cardmembers shop smarter - whenever and wherever they choose. Mr. Yoo joins American Express from Boku, a leading global mobile payments network that enables customers to purchase virtual goods using their mobile phone numbers. During his tenure as Senior Vice President of Strategy, Product and Marketing, Mr. Yoo helped Boku grow to 25 million-plus users in 66 countries through more than 240 carrier partners that connect to merchants such as Facebook, Disney and Zynga.
Background on Katrina Lane:
Ms. Lane joined Caesars in 2004 and was responsible for a range of technology and marketing activities including most recently oversight of the firm's IT application development, support, infrastructure, innovation, gaming, websites and security groups. While in the marketing department, she led CRM and loyalty program enhancements, media planning, marketing analysis, internet marketing, and call center operations.
Prior to Caesars, Ms. Lane was Senior Vice President of Marketing for AfterHours Formalwear, a division of May Department Stores. In this role, she oversaw all marketing activities for 330 stores in 27 states, which generated $200 million in sales. Earlier in her career, she served as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, working in their CRM practice to help consumer credit, banking, and other clients build leading CRM and membership marketing capabilities. Ms. Lane began her career as an academic earning her B.S. in Physics from Stanford and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Experimental Physics from Cornell University.
"It is very rare to find a person with such deep analytical academic training, marketing and technology experience; and to have led these functions in a best-in-class environment. In Katrina we have the benefit of all three," said Josh Silverman, President of the U.S. Consumer Services Businesses.
Background on David Yoo:
Prior to joining Boku, Mr. Yoo was Principal Product Manager at PayPal, where he led the $30 billion marketplace payments group and successfully launched eBay express and digital goods payment. He also led PayPal's product strategy, product management, and user adoption activities, and was responsible for increasing PayPal's user acquisition, activation and activity through new products and features. He then moved to Tellme, a speech recognition platform that allows consumer products, like cars and mobile devices, to speak to their owners. Tellme was acquired by Microsoft in 2007. Mr. Yoo also served as Chief Product Officer at AT&T Interactive where he focused on local media and advertising. Mr. Yoo holds a B.S. in Managerial Economics from University of California, Davis.
"David has a proven record of being someone who can 'see around corners' to anticipate where the market is going, and develop ingenious and pragmatic strategies to win," said Silverman. Moreover, he has demonstrated great skill translating those strategies into powerful digital consumer products with mass appeal. Combining American Express's assets with David's expertise will allow us to quickly bring digital solutions to market that create and expand our competitive advantage."