SVP, Head of Client Services, CEMEA

Visa is a world leader in payments and technology, with over 259 billion payments transactions flowing safely between consumers, merchants, financial institutions, and government entities in more than 200 countries and territories each year. Our mission is to connect the world through the most innovative, convenient, reliable, and secure payments network, enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive while driven by a common purpose – to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

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Functional Overview

Client Services provides industry-leading operational support to Visa’s clients around the world. With our deep knowledge and expertise, we are a key internal partner to Product, bringing the voice-of-the-customer into the design, development and successful deployment of Visa products and services.

Client Services is accountable for delivering a world class service experience to our clients that begins pre-sales and continues through onboarding, implementation of new products and services, issue resolution and optimizing for client success.  We operate in 50 locations across the globe and operate as trusted partners to Visa’s clients, providing expertise to help our clients successfully grow their business.

Role Overview

The Client Services Central Europe, Middle East and Africa (CEMEA) Leader is accountable for the service experience for all CEMEA clients and is a member of the CEMEA Leadership Team and the Global Client Services Leadership team, and dual reports to the President of CEMEA and the Global Head of Client Services. This leader is responsible for a team of 200+ people and is responsible for service delivery of new products, onboarding new clients, implementations, operational support, issue resolution and client success.  In addition to setting the Services strategy for the CEMEA region, this leader ensures the team partners with key internal stakeholders in other regions, sales, product, technology, finance, risk and legal to deliver outcomes for clients. This leader is the Visa authority for our clients’ operational business within Visa and with our clients.

The Senior Vice President, CEMEA Client Services Lead is responsible for building a cohesive high performing team by providing leadership, setting strategic direction, and applying working knowledge of Visa and Visa products, systems, and procedures.

Scope of Responsibilities

• Establishes and fosters relationships with clients and internal partners at all levels, including executive management.
• Leads and inspires the CS CEMEA team, focused on delivering excellent client experience and optimizing our clients’ operational performance
• Represents CS on the CEMEA Leadership Team and representing CEMEA on the Global CS Leadership Team.
• Drives service strategy and revenue growth for the region, leads budget creation and is accountable for revenue and expense targets, and regional scorecard
• Manages all CS staff supporting to the CEMEA region, some of whom dual report to other Global CS functions, requiring close partnership and coordination with other Global CS Leads.
• Performs as a leader and thought partner on cross-functional crisis management team as needed, often requiring leading through crisis that has no precedent.
• Directs Client Services and Project Management resources across the region to ensure that all Enterprise, Product, Sales and client projects are successfully deployed in a cost effective, timely manner, with a high level of client happiness.
• Drive creation and delivery of processing optimization models for clients and markets to ensure efficient and optimized transaction processing.
• Represents the voice of the client on all operational initiatives and issues with key internal partner organizations including CS, Sales, Product, Systems, Finance, Risk and Legal.
• Partners with Global CS functions to deliver critical CS functional support in the region.
• Leads by example, setting development and leadership goals for the organization, holding leaders accountable for the development of their teams

• A minimum of 20 years of successful experience in progressive leadership roles with Client facing accountability, preferably in the Payments industry
• Functional experience in card operations, supporting highly complex clients and/or services, is a plus
• Demonstrated ability to strategically lead cross functional teams through high impact complex business issues that do not have precedent
• Demonstrated strategic ability to solve complex global cross-functional issues exercising critical thinking and sound judgment
• Strong people leader with track record of building high performing teams
• Ability to thrive leading change and manage ambiguity
• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent, Graduate degree/MBA preferred
• Fluent in English. Russian, Arabic and/or French are a plus

Visa is an EEO Employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. Visa will also consider for employment qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with EEOC guidelines and applicable local law.