Having served as an executive and in-house legal and compliance leader for American Express Co., the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and, currently, fintech startup Melio, Jonathan Polk has experienced the compliance department’s evolution from cost center to business driver.

Polk also had a new experience over the past year serving in his first general counsel role as the first-ever legal boss for Melio, a New York-based business-to-business payments company that caters to small businesses and has raised $256 million since its founding in 2018.