Vice President, Brand Strategy

Our Purpose

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re helping build a sustainable economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

Title and Summary

Vice President, Brand Strategy

Job Description
Vice President, Brand Strategy
Reports to: Senior Vice President, Brand Strategy & Advertising

The mission of the Global Brand Strategy & Advertising team is to advance Mastercard’s journey to become a top 5 global. We breathe life into and build the Brand, fueling the growth and expansion of our business. We provide expertise and creative thought leadership to push boundaries and drive competitive advantage. We safeguard and work to secure the Brand as the global symbol of Trust. We hunt for opportunities for big brand ideas, to move our Brand forward, positively impacting the world, bringing it to life in culture and connecting everyone to priceless possibilities. We advocate and build for a holistic and integrated view of the brand and brand expression throughout the Mastercard organization.

Role Overview
The Vice President of Brand Strategy is responsible for advancing a unified, enterprise-wide brand strategy that strengthens and scales the power of the company’s global consumer brand while driving relevance, credibility, and growth across B2B and adjacent categories.

This role serves as a critical connective tissue between consumer brand building and B2B commercialization, ensuring the master brand is not only protected, but actively strengthened through disciplined strategy, expression, and activation in B2C and B2B contexts. The VP will bring rigor, consistency, and momentum to how the brand shows up across all products and services and stakeholders.
This role partners closely with enterprise leadership, product, sales, marketing, and regional teams to translate the strength of a globally iconic master brand into differentiated, credible, and growth-driving brand systems.

Key Responsibilities
Brand Strategy & Architecture
• Maintain and evolve the brand strategy for all audiences across all products and services, aligned to enterprise growth priorities
• Lead brand architecture decisions across products, platforms and services, balancing clarity, scale, and equity
• Act as a senior steward of the global consumer brand, ensuring B2B brand strategy reinforces, amplifies, and evolves core brand meaning, values, and emotional equity
• Ensure the brand platform is fit for purpose as our business scales and evolves, with a unifying positioning that works across all categories and audiences, further re-enforcing and building value into the brand
• Ensure the master brand is leveraged powerfully and appropriately across all products and services and audiences
• Lead brand migration strategies for acquired companies aligned to business objectives, maintaining and transferring brand value, partnering with M&A and B2B marketing teams to realize effective brand migrations
Strategic Leadership & Influence
• Serve as a senior brand counselor to executive leadership, business unit heads, and regional leaders
• Influence business strategy through a brand lens, ensuring brand considerations inform portfolio, innovation, and partnership decisions
• Drive alignment and adoption of brand strategy across global and regional teams, operating largely through influence
Go-to-Market & Activation Partnership
• Partner with product, product marketing, and B2B marketing for go to market of new products and services supporting with naming and branding strategies
• Partner with global marketing, creative agencies and regional teams to ensure there is a strong and resonant expression of the brand in our marketing and advertising efforts, that leads to breakthrough marketing that is clearly recognizable as Mastercard leveraging the power of priceless
• Ensure a consistent expression of our brand and priceless across all products, services and stakeholders
Governance, Standards & Systems
• Establish and evolve brand governance frameworks that enable speed and consistency at global scale
• Oversee brand guidelines, toolkits, and operating models that empower teams while protecting brand integrity
Team & Capability Building
• Lead, mentor, and develop a high-performing global brand strategy team
• Build brand strategy capabilities across the organization through education, frameworks, and shared ways of working
• Foster strong partnerships with agencies and external strategic partners

Qualifications & Experience
• 15+ years of experience in brand strategy, marketing strategy, or related fields, with significant experience at a global, enterprise scale
• Proven leadership experience in B2B branding, preferably within complex portfolios or adjacent-category ecosystems
• Proven leadership experience in B2C branding, preferably with a globally recognized international brand
• Strong strategic acumen with the ability to connect brand decisions to business outcomes
• Exceptional storytelling, influence, and stakeholder management skills at executive level
• Experience working across geographies, cultures, and matrixed organizations
• Prior experience in financial services, technology, platforms, or similarly complex industries preferred
Leadership Profile
• Enterprise-minded: Thinks beyond individual initiatives to long-term brand value and enterprise impact
• Credible and authoritative: Able to command trust with senior leaders while remaining collaborative and pragmatic
• Nurturing and clear: An empathetic leader, able to motivate and bring clear direction someone who will be a great example of ‘the Mastercard Way’
• Strategic but actionable: Balances big-picture brand vision with practical execution frameworks
• Calm builder: Thrives in complexity and brings clarity, rigor, and momentum to ambiguous environments

Mastercard is a merit-based, inclusive, equal opportunity employer that considers applicants without regard to gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disabled or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We hire the most qualified candidate for the role. In the US or Canada, if you require accommodations or assistance to complete the online application process or during the recruitment process, please contact [email protected] and identify the type of accommodation or assistance you are requesting. Do not include any medical or health information in this email. The Reasonable Accommodations team will respond to your email promptly.

Corporate Security Responsibility

All activities involving access to Mastercard assets, information, and networks comes with an inherent risk to the organization and, therefore, it is expected that every person working for, or on behalf of, Mastercard is responsible for information security and must:

• Abide by Mastercard’s security policies and practices;

• Ensure the confidentiality and integrity of the information being accessed;

• Report any suspected information security violation or breach, and

• Complete all periodic mandatory security trainings in accordance with Mastercard’s guidelines.

In line with Mastercard’s total compensation philosophy and assuming that the job will be performed in the US, the successful candidate will be offered a competitive base salary and may be eligible for an annual bonus or commissions depending on the role. The base salary offered may vary depending on multiple factors, including but not limited to location, job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Mastercard benefits for full time (and certain part time) employees generally include: insurance (including medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, disability, life insurance); flexible spending account and health savings account; paid leaves (including 16 weeks of new parent leave and up to 20 days of bereavement leave); 80 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time, 25 days of vacation time and 5 personal days, pro-rated based on date of hire; 10 annual paid U.S. observed holidays; 401k with a best-in-class company match; deferred compensation for eligible roles; fitness reimbursement or on-site fitness facilities; eligibility for tuition reimbursement; and many more. Mastercard benefits for interns generally include: 56 hours of Paid Sick and Safe Time; jury duty leave; and on-site fitness facilities in some locations.

Pay Ranges

Purchase, New York: $217,000 - $359,000 USD