Venese Rhodes

Venese Rhodes is Senior Counsel in the Product Tax group within the MetLife Law Department. In this role, Venese provides her in-house business partners with tax advice on annuity and life insurance products in the qualified and non-qualified tax markets. Venese also provides federal and state tax advice on the resolution of customer complaints, error correction and exception requests and issues relating to tax withholding and reporting. In addition, Venese previously served as a member of MetLife’s Sustainability Reporting team coordinating the full legal review of MetLife’s published sustainability reports and questionnaires for six years.

In 2009, Venese started her career with MetLife as a Legal Assistant and after completing law school as a part-time evening student received a promotion to Corporate Counsel in 2016. Venese received a second promotion in 2019 into her current role of Senior Counsel. Senior Leadership’s identification of Venese’s growth potential within the organization has led to her selection to participate in various internal and external talent development programs such as the MetLife Talent Stewardship program, MetLife Excelerate program and most recently as a Pathfinder at the Leadership Council on Legal Diversity (LCLD) Pathfinder.

Venese received her LLM in Tax from NYLS in 2018, her Juris Doctor (cum laude) from NYLS in 2015, and a Bachelor of Arts in Forensic Psychology and Bachelor of Science in Legal Studies from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.