Manager - Business Development, Events & Marketing - Amex Ventures

American Express Ventures ("Amex Ventures"), the corporate venture capital arm of American Express, makes investments in game-changing startups that help accelerate innovation and deliver strategic value to American Express.  With a global mandate, Amex Ventures invests primarily in Seed through Series B companies across fintech, commerce, consumer services, and enterprise software.

In addition to investing, Amex Ventures works closely with portfolio companies, startups, and American Express business units to identify commercial opportunities, support strategic partnerships, and strengthen connectivity across the startup ecosystem. The team has backed more than 100 category-defining founders over its 10+ year history, with notable investments including Biocatch, Blackbird Labs, Decagon, Galileo, Melio, Menlo Security, Nekuda, Plaid, Replit, Stripe, Toast, and Wonder, among others.

The Business Development ("BD") team within Amex Ventures is responsible for deepening connectivity between startups, venture capital firms, and American Express business units.  BD manages startup partnership and pilot tracking, supports connectivity between startups and internal stakeholders, builds relationships across the external venture ecosystem, and amplifies the Amex Ventures brand through events, marketing, and platform development.

About the Role

Amex Ventures' Business Development team is seeking a Manager, Events & Marketing to lead the execution of high-impact events that strengthen Amex Ventures' presence across the startup and venture capital ecosystem.  This role reports to the Head of Business Development and Strategy and will work closely with Amex Ventures investors, the Business Development team, internal communications partners, Ventures' external brand agency, and cross-functional American Express stakeholders.  

This is an external-facing role focused on event operations and execution. The Manager will oversee approximately 15–25 Amex Ventures-owned events per year across various formats, including investor and founder events, demo days and conference activations. Marketing will be a secondary but important part of the role, primarily focused on event-related content, communications, and brand consistency.

Event Planning and Execution:

• Lead end-to-end execution of Amex Ventures ecosystem events, including thematic dinners, VC/startup networking events, demo days, and conference activations.
• Manage the annual events calendar, timelines, run-of-show, budget, logistics, and post-event follow-up.
• Partner with the Head of Business Development and Strategy and Amex Ventures investors to translate event strategy, audience priorities, and programming goals into high-quality execution.
• Coordinate speaker preparation, attendee experience, venue selection, vendor management, branding, approvals, and partner deliverables.
• Manage event-related workflows, including creative briefs, production timelines, contracts, invoices, and execution support.
• Develop post-event reporting that translates event outcomes into actionable insights on relationship development, referral pipeline conversion, attendee engagement, follow-up opportunities, and qualitative feedback.
• Travel 1-2 times per quarter, as needed, to support events on-site.
   

Ecosystem Engagement:

• Help strengthen Amex Ventures’ relationships with venture capital firms, founders, portfolio companies, and broader innovation ecosystem partners.
• Source and support opportunities to connect with other top-tier VC firms and ecosystem partners.
• Support external engagement efforts that increase quality startup connectivity and create opportunities for relationship-building between startups and American Express business units.
• Maintain a polished, relationship-oriented approach with investors, founders, strategic partners, and internal stakeholders.

 

Marketing and Communications Support:

• Work with internal communications partners and Amex Ventures’ brand agency partner to support event-related marketing and content.
• Help manage external content including LinkedIn posts, website updates, newsletters, event invitations, recap content, and founder or startup spotlights.
• Support the development of event messaging, audience materials, briefing documents, and post-event content.
• Help maintain consistency across Amex Ventures’ external presence, ensuring events and marketing materials reflect the team’s brand, tone, and strategic priorities.

 

Operations and Project Management:

• Build and maintain scalable planning processes, trackers, timelines, templates, and reporting tools for the events function.
• Use tools such as Affinity, Airtable, PitchBook, Luma, Eventbrite, and LinkedIn to support event planning, relationship management and ecosystem research.
• Manage event budgets, track expenses, support invoice processing, and help ensure events are delivered within approved financial parameters.
• Support event-related contract management and approvals in coordination with Legal, Procurement, Compliance, Finance, and other internal stakeholders as needed.
• Manage multiple events and workstreams simultaneously while maintaining strong attention to detail, urgency, and professionalism.
• Identify opportunities to improve event operations, stakeholder experience, reporting, budget tracking, vendor processes, and brand consistency.

Minimum Qualifications:

• 5+ years of experience in events, experiential marketing, field marketing, community or program operations, venture platform, startup ecosystem, partnership marketing, or related roles.
• Demonstrated experience planning and executing high-quality events for external stakeholders, senior leaders, clients, founders, investors, or strategic partners.
• Strong project management skills, with the ability to manage multiple workstreams, timelines, vendors, stakeholders, and deliverables simultaneously.
• Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Strong attention to detail and ability to create polished, high-quality experiences in fast-paced environments.
• Experience working cross-functionally with internal stakeholders, external agencies, vendors, and senior leaders.
• Ability to operate independently, solve problems proactively, and execute with limited oversight.
• Advanced proficiency in PowerPoint and Excel, including the ability to create polished executive-ready materials, event recaps, planning documents, trackers, budgets, reports, and basic analyses.

 

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in, or strong exposure to the venture capital, startup, accelerator, technology, corporate innovation, or entrepreneurial ecosystem. Existing venture capital relationships a plus.
• Experience working in financial services, a large corporate environment, or another highly matrixed organization.
• Experience with ecosystem-building, community-building, or relationship-driven events.
• Experience managing external agencies, creative partners, event production vendors, or communications partners.
• Experience using tools such as Affinity, Airtable, PitchBook, Luma, Eventbrite, and LinkedIn to support event planning, relationship management, invitations, registration, stakeholder tracking, ecosystem research, and engagement.
• Experience supporting executive-level events, founder events, investor events, demo days, roundtables, conferences, or partner activations.
• Strong understanding of how events, content, and relationship management can support brand-building and business development goals.

 

Employment eligibility to work with American Express in the United States is required as the company will not pursue visa sponsorship for these positions.