American Express Executive Passionate about Transformation

Nicole Stoner is accountable for overseeing American Express’ award-winning supplier diversity program. She’s accountable for testing opportunities to integrate suppliers, including diverse suppliers, into the company’s overall business strategy. Under her leadership, the program has grown by 75 percent over the past two years.

Stoner is recognized across the company as someone who genuinely takes the time to understand what the business needs, and then makes it happen. Her colleagues say she’s passionate about transformation and fearless when it comes to change. There’s a sign on her desk that reads: “Conformity: When People Are Free to Do as They Please, They Usually Imitate Each Other.” She says it keeps her focused on being the woman that others want to imitate.

Stoner joined American Express a decade ago as a deal team lead in the Global Commercial Payments division. During her tenure, she’s consulted on payments best practices and supported the acquisition and/or retention of nearly a billion dollars in business-to-business charge volume. She’s been a leader and mentor in American Express’ Global Business Services organization since its creation, winning the Corporate Services Excellence Award and the Centurion Award for enterprise-wide transformation excellence.

When American Express formed its shared services business unit in 2010, Stoner jumped at the opportunity to head its new transformation PMO, build out the business management infrastructure, oversee a $750 million portfolio, and sponsor innovation and best practice sharing initiatives across cross-functional enterprise teams. She then joined the procurement executive office as chief of staff to the chief procurement officer, where she served as a respected voice to provide transformational best practices and thought leadership to external shared-services organizations. At the time, she implemented a strategy to reduce procurement operating expenses by 10 percent and fund $1.5 million in new source-to-pay investments.

Outside of the office, Stoner serves on the Board of Directors for the Culinary Historians of New York. She holds a BA in English from the College of William and Mary in Virginia.