Director, Enterprise Data Governance Office

CW Government Travel; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Amex GBT seeks a Director of Enterprise Data Governance to lead strategy, execution, and performance of the governance program from Chicago. You will partner with Privacy, AI, Legal, Risk, and IT to design scalable governance for an AI-enabled operating model and complex travel data domains.

You will build the data domain model, establish governance bodies, and define owner/steward roles with clear accountability while ensuring audit readiness and cross-functional alignment.10+ years in data

Qualifications

• 10+ years in data governance or data management, with 5+ years leading teams.
• Bachelor's degree or equivalent; professional credentials (e.g., CDMP) are a plus.
• Experience standing up and scaling enterprise governance programs and policies.
• Hands-on policy creation and audit-ready governance design.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a comprehensive enterprise data governance roadmap.
• Lead data domain modeling and establish governance bodies and forums.
• Define data owner and steward roles with clear accountability.
• Align governance scope with Privacy, Compliance, and AI governance frameworks.
• Ensure audit readiness and manage control design and remediation tracking.

Skills

Data governance

Leadership

Policy development

Data lineage

Data contracts

AI governance

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Systems, Data Management, or related field

Tools

Alation

Collibra

Ataccama

Job description

Amex GBT is a place where colleagues find inspiration in travel as a force for good and - through their work - can make an impact on our industry. We're here to help our colleagues achieve success and offer an inclusive and collaborative culture where your voice is valued.

Our Enterprise Data Governance Office (EDGO), part of the Data Governance, Quality & Trust organization, is seeking a director to lead the strategy, execution, and performance of enterprise data governance at Amex GBT. As GBT advances toward an AI-enabled operating model, trusted, governed, and traceable data is a core requirement for everything the business builds on top of it. This leader will own the delivery of the governance program and serve as a senior practitioner voice on how governance is designed, scaled, and made to work across the business.

Reporting to the Senior Director, Data Governance, Quality & Trust, you will lead a team of data governance leads and partner closely with Data Quality Enablement, AI & Platforms, Privacy, Risk & Compliance, Information Security, Legal, Technology, and domain leaders.

Business travel data is among the most complex in any industry, spanning booking, ticketing, servicing, exchanges, refunds, invoicing, supplier, and settlement data across multiple platforms and brands. Success in this role requires the ability to plan for and govern that level of complexity.

What You'll Do

• Develop and execute a comprehensive data governance roadmap with clear operating rhythms, measurable outcomes, and accountability mechanisms that align with enterprise objectives.
• Build the enterprise data domain model and establish governance bodies and forums that enable informed, consistent enterprise data decisions.
• Define and scale data owner and data steward roles with explicit accountability and decision rights, sequencing expansion deliberately across domains to ensure clarity before scaling.
• Articulate governance scope, structure, and priorities while providing leadership with clear recommendations on strategic tradeoffs and resource allocation.
• Create and maintain the Data Governance Management Policy and supporting standards that are role-based, auditable, and aligned with Privacy, Records Management, Information Security, and AI governance frameworks.
• Lead data governance audit preparation, including control design, evidence management, remediation tracking, and direct collaboration with Internal Audit and external auditors.
• Establish definitions, taxonomies, and governance standards for booking, ticketing, servicing, invoicing, and supplier data across systems, brands, and client-specific contexts.
• Define data contract standards with producers to protect downstream consumers, analytics, and AI use cases from upstream system changes.
• Provide governance leadership across multi-brand and multi-platform ecosystems, including data from acquisitions and integrations.
• Lead governance standards that ensure data trustworthiness for generative and agentic AI, including ownership, lineage, metadata, and traceability requirements.

What We're Looking For

• 10+ years of experience in data governance, data management, or related disciplines, with 5+ years leading teams or programs at manager or director level.
• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Information Systems, Data Management, or related field (or equivalent professional experience); professional credentials such as CDMP are a plus.
• Demonstrated success standing up and scaling enterprise data governance programs, including operating models, governance bodies, policies, standards, and owner/steward accountability in complex, multi-system environments.
• Proven experience authoring and operationalizing policies and standards that have successfully withstood internal and external audit scrutiny.
• Hands‑on experience governing ontology‑governed content layers for enterprise AI, including business ontologies, knowledge models, or semantic layers that ensure consistent definitions and relationships across AI applications.
• Technical proficiency with governance platforms (e.g., Alation, Collibra) and familiarity with data quality and observability tools (e.g., Ataccama), including lineage, glossary, and stewardship workflows.
• Proven ability to align and influence leaders across Technology, Legal, Privacy, Risk & Compliance, Information Security, and business units without direct authority.
• Strong ability to communicate governance strategy, risks, and recommendations to senior leaders and auditors in business‑focused language.
• Experience governing data across merged, acquired, or multi‑brand, multi‑platform environments.
• Experience in travel, transportation, or data‑intensive industries; familiarity with travel data domains (booking, ticketing, servicing, invoicing, supplier management) and cloud platforms (e.g., Snowflake), data contracts, and metrics governance is strongly preferred.

Location

Chicago, Illinois, United States

The US national base salary range for thi