Louise M. Parent is Of Counsel based in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP.

Ms. Parent’s practice focuses on corporate governance and banking and financial institutions.

Ms. Parent previously served as General Counsel and Executive Vice President of American Express from 1993 until 2013, and was a member of the company’s Operating Committee, Global Management Team and Enterprise Risk Management Committees. She was a director of American Express Travel Related Service Company, the company’s principal operating subsidiary, and American Express Centurion Bank, a U.S. banking subsidiary with assets exceeding $30 billion. Ms. Parent also has deep experience in corporate governance and board matters, and worked extensively with the Board of Directors’ Audit, Compensation, and Nomination and Governance committees at American Express.

During much of her time at American Express, Ms. Parent worked to remove anticompetitive barriers in the global credit card industry in Europe, Latin America and the U.S., involving a DOJ investigation and a court decision upheld on appeal, which struck down Visa and MasterCard’s anti-competitive rules and allowed American Express to compete more effectively in the payment card network business.

Ms. Parent serves as a trustee and head of the Nominating Committee of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and is a director of Zoetis Inc. and of the Calvary Fund of Calvary Hospital in New York. She is also on the advisory board of Studio in a School. She was previously a trustee of Smith College where she was also Vice Chair of the Board and Chair of the Presidential Search Committee. She has served on the Board of the YWCA of New York, A Better Chance, and the Cooke Center for Learning and Development. Ms. Parent is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York.

Ms. Parent began her career in 1975 at the law firm of Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine in New York, joined American Express in 1977, and joined Cleary Gottlieb as Of Counsel in 2014. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center and is a graduate of Smith College.