Director of Marketing

• Develop and lead a comprehensive, school-wide marketing, communications, and brand strategy aligned with the Dean's priorities and the school's strategic plan.
• Serve as a senior advisor to the Dean and leadership team on positioning, reputation, audience strategy, and external messaging.
• Build and lead the team, directly supervising the Communications Manager and social media interns; recruit, onboard, and develop talent; foster an accountable, collaborative team culture with clear roles and high standards.
• Steward the function's budget and external vendor partnerships, including agencies, photographers, videographers, and media buyers, to extend the team's capacity and protect quality.

• Define and steward the school's brand identity, voice, and visual standards, ensuring a consistent and elevated presence across every audience and channel.
• Lead earned-media and public relations strategy, building relationships with national, regional, and trade outlets to elevate faculty thought leadership, student outcomes, and school milestones.
• Oversee signature storytelling and content production across web, email, social, video, print, and event collateral, ensuring a consistent voice and visual identity at every touchpoint.

• Partner closely with the school's development and alumni relations teams to align marketing strategy with fundraising priorities, campaign messaging, and donor-facing communications.
• Lead the creation of case-for-support materials, campaign collateral, donor stories, impact reports, and stewardship communications that support the Dean and the development team in advancing the school's philanthropic priorities.
• Elevate alumni storytelling and engagement programming so that alumni see themselves, and want to stay close to the school across the full arc of their careers.

• Lead integrated recruitment marketing strategy across undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs, in close partnership with admissions and program leadership.
• Apply data and audience insight to prospect generation, nurture, yield, and conversion across the full funnel.
• Position the school's programs in a competitive landscape and articulate clear value propositions for each audience.

• Provide strategic oversight of marketing and recruiting efforts across all academic departments, centers, institutes, and administrative offices within the school.
• Partner with university-level marketing and communications on shared brand standards, joint campaigns, and resource sharing.
• Streamline and align marketing initiatives across the school to ensure efficiency, brand consistency, and shared measurement.
• Establish operating norms, planning rhythms, and a service model that makes the marketing function easy to work with and faster than the alternatives.

• Lead the school's digital marketing strategy across web, SEO and SEM, paid media, email marketing, marketing automation, social, and CRM-driven communications.
• Direct campaign planning and execution for program recruitment, rankings submissions, signature events, and special initiatives.
• Manage and continuously improve the school's web presence in coordination with university IT and web teams.
• Define KPIs, dashboards, and reporting cadences that link marketing efforts to measurable outcomes.

• Bachelor's degree required.
• At least five years of experience, with 3 years of supervisory or team leadership experience.
• Demonstrated experience developing and executing a comprehensive, multi-channel marketing, communications, or external engagement strategy.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including experience writing for and presenting to senior audiences.
• Working knowledge of digital marketing, CRM or marketing automation platforms, web content management, and marketing analytics.

• Ten or more years of progressively responsible leadership experience in marketing, communications, advancement, public relations, or a closely related external-facing function.
• Significant senior-level experience leading marketing, communications, or brand functions in higher education, advancement and philanthropy, professional services, or a comparably complex mission-driven environment.
• Demonstrated track record of partnering with development, advancement, or alumni teams to advance fundraising, donor engagement, and constituent relationships.
• Experience leading recruitment, enrollment, or audience-acquisition marketing, ideally across multiple programs or product lines.
• Proven success building and leading high-performing teams, and managing meaningful budgets with discipline and transparency.
• Experience operating in a federated environment with many internal stakeholders and bringing them into alignment without heavy-handed control.
• Advanced degree preferred (MBA, master's in marketing, communications, business, or a related field).

and Capabilities

• Storytelling: A storyteller at heart, with a strong editorial instinct and the ability to translate complex ideas into clear, human narratives.
• Strategic judgment: Strategic and analytical, able to set direction, prioritize ruthlessly, and use data to make and defend decisions.
• Brand instinct: Sophisticated brand sensibility, with an eye for visual quality and a commitment to consistency.
• Executive presence: Skilled communicator and trusted advisor who can move comfortably between the Dean's office, faculty, donors, alumni, students, and the press.
• Operating muscle: Operationally strong, with the ability to build the planning rhythms, processes, and dashboards that make a function reliable.
• Channel fluency: Deep fluency across digital, content, PR, social, paid media, and CRM-enabled communications.

• Mission orientation: Mission-driven, with a genuine interest in education, in the people behind the work, and in building something that matters.
• Directness: Direct, honest, and easy to partner with. Comfortable giving and receiving candid feedback.
• Presence: Confident in the room. Comfortable taking control of a conversation when the moment calls for it, willing to push back on senior stakeholders, and able to keep a high-stakes meeting pointed at the outcome rather than the agenda.
• Leadership style: Generous with credit, deliberate with attention, and steady under pressure.