Augie Ray, formerly director of social media at Prudential Financial, tweeted this afternoon that he’s joined American Express as director, voice of customer strategy. The card giant did not immediately respond to a media request to confirm the hiring.

Before joining Prudential last year, Ray was executive director of community and collaboration at USAA. Previously, he was a senior analyst at Forrester focusing on social media. Ray’s observations on the social media and digital space have drawn 17,801 followers on Twitter.

American Express has earned a reputation as a social innovator through its Small Business Saturday program, its Sync platform that ties card purchases to services like Foursquare, Twitter and Facebook, as well as the related tweet-to-buy function added earlier this year for making purchases directly through Twitter.