Job Description

The Executive Director Marketing Strategy & Partnerships serves as a senior leader and primary connection between Boston University's schools, colleges, and administrative units and the External Affairs division. This role collaborates across the institution to define and build individual marketing and communications strategies that align with university priorities and messaging. The Executive Director is responsible for ensuring communications and marketing efforts are strategic, focused, on-brand, meet institutional goals and have defined measuring strategies. Acting as a trusted advisor and partner, the Executive Director builds and sustains deep, strategic, and collaborative partnerships across the University, engaging early with senior leaders and communications staff to shape priorities, define objectives, and translate needs into cohesive, high-impact marketing and communications strategies with measurement objectives. The Executive Director leads a team of Marketing & Communications Strategists while operating within a matrixed model that brings together strategy, creative, digital, and communications expertise.

The individual is responsible for leading and mentoring the team in relationship building, strategic planning and messaging and follows alongside key projects and initiatives led by the team to ensure productive collaboration and institutional alignment. Boston University is a leading private research and teaching institution with more than 38,000 students, 11,000 faculty and staff, 300 programs of study, and 130 research centers and institutes. Our scholars are at the forefront of innovation, successfully competing for more than $574 million in sponsored research awards last year. Our students come from all 50 states and more than 140 countries, and nearly 20 percent of our undergraduates are first-generation college students.

What You'll Own:

• The partnership: You are the front door to External Affairs for deans, vice presidents, and communications leaders across the University. You engage early — before a project has a deadline or a deliverable — to understand what your partners are trying to accomplish, who they need to reach, and what's standing in the way. Those relationships are yours to build and sustain. The strategy behind the work.
• You translate partner goals into clear objectives, sharp briefs, and marketing and communications plans that connect to University priorities.
• You lead the development of annual and campaign-based strategies, and you make sure nothing enters production until it's strategically defined, prioritized, and positioned to land. The team.
• You lead and mentor a group of Marketing & Communications Strategists, coaching them in relationship building, strategic planning, and messaging.
• You advise the team on the best ways to tap into connections across the institution to ensure successful promotions of initiatives.
• You stay close to the projects they lead — not to take the wheel, but to make sure the collaboration is working, the work holds together and aligns with the University's key messages and priorities The connective tissue.
• External Affairs brings strategy, creative, digital, and communications expertise together in a matrixed model, and you are the connector that keeps it aligned.
• You partner closely with creative leadership so the work is on brand, inventive, and well told from the first conversation through execution and evaluation. Institutional coordination.
• You see across the whole University in a way few people can.
• You use that vantage point to find overlaps, cut duplication, amplify shared initiatives, and bring units together on priorities that are bigger than any one school or department. Measurement and impact.
• You define how success will be measured before work begins, then assess whether it worked.
• You gather feedback from partners, bring real insight back into the next round of planning, and push the function toward continuous improvement rather than repetition.
• How the function operates. You represent Strategy & Partnerships on the External Affairs leadership team, setting the standards for how the University's communications partners are engaged and advised.
• You own the processes, workflows, and resource decisions that let your team deliver well — and you're expected to keep improving them.

This position is hybrid and requires three days per week on campus at 985 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA. Tuesday and Wednesday are required in-office days. The third in-office day is determined in consultation with the manager. Position requires occasional night and weekend work. Boston University offers competitive pay and a comprehensive benefits package that includes tuition remission for employees and eligible dependents, retirement contributions, health and dental coverage, and paid time off.

Required Skills

• Master's degree with 8+ years of direct experience and 5+ years of management experience or equivalent.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and develop high-performing marketing, communications, or strategy teams. 
• Strong leadership presence with experience influencing and advising senior stakeholders and institutional leaders.
• Demonstrated expertise in developing and leading integrated marketing and communications strategies aligned to organizational priorities.
• Ability to translate complex goals into clear, actionable plans, briefs, and measurable objectives.
• Experience implementing structured intake, planning, and prioritization processes to ensure work is strategically aligned before execution.
• Proven problem-solving capabilities.
• Able to be flexible and adaptable, juggling multiple tasks under deadlines. 
• Exceptional relationship-building skills, with a track record of establishing and sustaining partnerships across a matrixed organization and a large, decentralized institution.
• Strong cross-functional leadership skills, with experience aligning strategy, creative, digital, and communications teams.
• Ability to drive operational excellence by improving workflows, prioritization, and resource allocation.
• Excellent communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to manage competing priorities and resolve challenges.
• Ability to use data, insights, and stakeholder feedback to evaluate effectiveness, continuously refine strategies, and make strategic recommendations.
• Experience in higher education, healthcare, nonprofit, or other complex, mission-driven organizations preferred.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, natural or protective hairstyle, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor.

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