Sarah Dodds-Brown currently serves as Executive Vice President & Deputy General Counsel of American Express. She has held a variety of roles over the course of her 18-year career with American Express and is an highly adaptable enterprise leader who fosters connection and collaboration across divisions and bridges issues relating to data, technology, innovation, risk management and core business verticals.
In her current role, she leads the Global Enterprise Services & U.S. Market legal teams focusing on ways to enhance the operation of the legal department and management of legal risk and serves as a member of the Company’s Enterprise Risk Management Committee. Her teams lead the support for many strategic, cross-functional initiatives and provide legal expertise and advice across a range of subject matter and regulatory areas, including corporate development, digital transactions, technology, cybersecurity, intellectual property, antitrust, bank regulatory, advertising and marketing, and privacy and data law. Sarah also serves as Executive Sponsor for the Company’s Exec BEN employee affinity group.
In her previous role, Sarah led the U.S. Business Legal Group which provided legal and regulatory support for the company’s U.S. Consumer, Commercial and Global Merchant and Network Services businesses. In 2019, these business divisions generated over $29B in revenue for American Express. Prior to that, Sarah led the Global Merchant & Network Services legal team in the wake of a 2015 District Court ruling against American Express and its merchant business in the Ohio v American Express Co antitrust case. Sarah and her team helped drive decisions that enabled growth and balanced the needs of customers and shareholders while navigating the implementation of a permanent injunction issued by the District Court, as well as its reversal several months later by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018, the Supreme Court ultimately affirmed the appellate court’s decision in a landmark decision in favor of American Express.
Sarah served as an independent director on the Board of Directors of Party City Holdco, Inc. as a member of its Audit Committee when it was a publicly traded company on the NYSE (PRTY) having been elected in 2020 as part of a board refreshment. She has also been active with educational and civic organizations since the beginning of her career serving in a number of leadership capacities for Duke University and the City of New Rochelle, as a member of the Board of Trustees of The WNET Group (PBS affiliate for NY and NJ) and Rye Country Day School and on the Board of Directors of DirectWomen, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the representation of women lawyers on corporate boards.
Prior to joining American Express, Sarah was an M&A and private equity lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in New York. She is a graduate of Duke University and Columbia University School of Law. She currently resides in New Rochelle, NY with her husband and three children.