Director, Center for Marketing Leadership

Department: Kellogg Marketing
Salary/Grade: EXS/10

Job Summary:

The Director for the Center for Marketing Leadership, along with the Faculty director, is responsible for developing, directing and executing the overall strategy for Center. The Director is a proactive team builder, who can operationalize strategic goals, and ensure operational excellence while serving as a key relationship builder with current and potential program participants, alumni, students, leaders, and partners.

The mission of the Center for Market Leadership is to advance our understanding of how organizations create and sustain leading market positions. Our belief is that the deeper understanding of market leadership can be achieved through study of the intersection of customer behavior, organizational behavior, and competition. Traditionally, these topics are explored separately using different paradigms, but we believe an integrated, multidisciplinary approach can yield important new insights into the nature of enduring competitive advantage.

This role requires an ability to develop relationships and interact on an ongoing basis with Marketing leaders (Chief Marketing Officers along with other senior leaders) who have achieved prominence in their businesses, industries, and communities.  This role also requires the ability to work well with faculty, senior administrators, and staff to develop and manage programs and to manage staff and resources effectively and efficiently.

This role requires the incumbent to have strong general management, financial oversight and organizational leadership experience. Competencies needed include strategic and analytical problem-solving; strong executive presence; planning, decision-making and execution skills; written, verbal and interpersonal communication skills; strong service orientation; positive attitude; collaboration with internal and external team members and associates; and experience managing individuals and teams.

*Note:  Not all aspects of the job are covered by this job description

Specific Responsibilities:

• Strategic Planning & Leadership of the Center:
  • Collaborates with external stakeholders to expand the program globally.
  • Analyzes and implements operational efficiencies.
  • Interfaces with and coordinates with senior level executives, many of whom have extensive relationships with the University and/or Kellogg.  Develops and maintains productive relationships with program participants and partners.
  • Collaborates with other faculty centers and administrative offices at Kellogg.
• Business Development:
  • Identifies and call on prospective partners to cultivate strong client relationships and build a portfolio of program clientele
  • Supports the development and implementation of the Center strategy by coordinating with the Faculty Director and others to identify market opportunities and trends for Marketing Leadership
  • Develops and responds to requests for proposals, presentations, and negotiations of contracts for the Center
• Events Support:
  • Creates events of value for a number of different constituencies, including the Marketing Leadership Conference, the CMO conference on AI. These events showcase Kellogg’s unique role in marketing, enhancing the reputation of the school and maintaining its role as a hub of knowledge. These events are often planned with a groups of thought leaders from Kellogg along with senior executives from industry to set the agenda, recruit speakers.
  • Serves as a connector and collaborator with other functions across Kellogg and Northwestern University, including Admissions, CMC, International Office, Corporate Partnerships and Alumni Relations.
  • Align resources from across the school to create and market these events.
• Communication and Outreach:
  • Represents the Center to external audiences of potential participants, partners and supporters, working with a wide variety of clients and partners to deliver professional services that help the Center acquire and retain participants.
  • Manages messaging and branding of the Center
  • Helps plan two or more conferences per year including working with sponsors and speakers and overseeing marketing, logistics, meals, invitees, registrants, attendees, venues.
  • Liaison with alumni in Marketing to provide them with updates on thought leadership and events as well as integrate their experiences into Center for Marketing Leadership knowledge base. Recommends and collaborates on news stories and interviews for Kellogg media outlets, including social media.
  • Presents on topics within Faculty Director’s expertise.
  • Represents Kellogg and the Center at select conferences and association meetings
• Faculty Support:
  • Identifies and recruits guest speakers
  • Recruit, onboard, and help integrate Senior Fellows into teaching and research activities at Kellogg
  • In collaboration with professors, researches, authors, edits and oversees other writers in creating learning tools such as case studies, experiential tools, and videos on marketing leadership topics.             
  • Works with professors, post-docs and PhD students to develop, conduct, analyze, report and publish our proprietary marketing leadership research and our global consortium research.
  • Represents the Center in its participation and research with internal and external conferences and groups.
  • Oversees calendar of all programs and events.            
• Executive Education:
  • Play a key role in translating and aggregating intellectual content for a broader audience and linking that content to Kellogg by supporting Kellogg executive education in areas related to the Center. These programs include the Chief Marketing Officer’s Program, Creating the Customer-Focused Organization, and programs on Leading through Analytics.
  • Works with Kellogg Marketing and Communications teams to develop coordinated, consistent marketing and brand messages across the Global Network, including campaign plan, materials and tracking to generate full enrollment for the Center’s Executive Education Programs.  Expands participation from new geographies and key sectors including identifying and developing key relationships in priority prospects.  Develops and works an outreach plan to cultivate prospects of custom programs on marketing leadership topics.
  • Provides guidance of faculty, coaches, program managers and other Executive Education administrators to identify, define and unify program designs and overall professional development architectures, including program scheduling.
  • Oversees program planning and architecture, including managing complex program designs, varied stakeholder interests and conflicting stakeholder priorities.  Leads complex teams to create best in class program delivery.
  • Analyzes program evaluations and feedback, including identifying methodologies for determining the ROI of professional development initiatives.  Debriefs and shares feedback with faculty on programs in order to identify areas of potential enhancement. Identifies modifications of content, format, and faculty to enhance future sessions.  Consistently reviews academic program rigor to ensure fit and relevance to internal and external challenges.  Researches and assesses external executive development resources such as coaches, speakers, learning technologies, assessments, and tools. 
  • Evaluates competitor programs to keep our programs distinctively relevant to our audiences. 
• Fundraising:
  • Assesses opportunities and works with Kellogg Advancement office to identify prospective donors from marketing leaders and coordinate the development of these relationships.
  • Serves as liaison with sponsors; presents with academic director to prospective sponsors
• Budget and Human Resources:
  • Develops and implements the Center’s annual budget, tracks budget against performance and addresses identified issues.
  • Build and leverage existing administrative infrastructure to support the Center
• Abides by Kellogg and NU policies.

Minimum Competencies: (Skills, knowledge, and abilities.)

• Undergraduate degree, with MBA or equivalent Advanced Degree preferred
• Eight or more years of experience in a Chief Marketing Officer or comparable senior leader position
• Recognized marketing expertise in addition to leadership and management experience necessary to engage in substantive dialogue with our most successful alums
• Experience with devising and implementing strategies and systems to achieve organizational goals and objectives.
• Leadership experience, relationship management experience, managing teams or equivalent experience.
• Sufficient expertise in marketing to translate intellectual content for senior marketing executives
• Strong relationship builder with excellent communications skills
• Ability to partner thoughtfully and deeply with faculty members, contributing substantively to the discussions, and the ability to partner thoughtfully and deeply with industry thought leaders.
• Ability to gather resources from disparate parts of the school and university to move an idea or initiative forward successfully.
• Creative and forward thinking
• Ability to develop a comprehensive marketing communications plan, in partnership with faculty and industry thought leaders.
• Strategic thinking ability and an ability to develop strategy in a collaborative way, with parties with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests.
• Exceptional presentation skills, especially to executive audiences

Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer of all protected classes, including veterans and individuals with disabilities. Women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans are encouraged to apply. Hiring is contingent upon eligibility to work in the United States.