Job Description
OVERVIEW
The Member Partnership team is responsible for fostering the overall business and strategic relationship with NPR's network of 249 local journalism organizations, content creators and radio stations. The team works with all divisions at NPR to develop strategies, operationalize solutions, and communicate best practices for serving the audience and increasing sustainability for public media.
As a team, we are committed to advancing NPR's organization-wide diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, and to supporting the efforts of NPR Members to do the same. We are committed to creating a productive and welcoming workplace. We consistently strive to bring a high level of empathy to our work and to our interactions with all network colleagues, and we actively seek feedback and guidance from each other.
The Director of Network Engagement will lead, maintain, and grow cooperative and consultative relationships between NPR and Member station management teams through communication and collaboration, to achieve a productive partnership and build the value of NPR Membership, and to ensure NPR's financial health. The Director is responsible for informing and influencing collaborative strategic initiatives, and programming, service, and revenue strategies. Under the Director's leadership, the team will identify opportunities to modernize and streamline stakeholder communications and engagement, and to establish measurable impact achieved by NPR's strategic activities with the NPR Network. The Director collaborates with and advises staff across NPR Divisions for many critical cross-divisional and external projects. This role reports to the SVP for Member Partnership.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Network Business Relationship Management:
• With the SVP of Member Partnership and other senior NPR leaders, maintains a primary strategic relationship with key leadership colleagues in the top 25 audience markets. Oversees the team that maintains these relationships with all other markets.
• Maintains station relationship data as needed, and presents it as needed in the form of dashboards, reports, presentations and meetings. Advises NPR leadership team on the status of station business relationships upon request.
• Develops and directs approaches and processes to build trusting, consultative, engaged and productive relationships with stations and public radio system stakeholders. Works to strengthen, empower, and coordinate station support across NPR.
• With the SVP Member Partnership and other senior NPR leaders, participates in the administration of NPR's fee model, and in overall NPR Network value exchange analysis, strategy, and modeling.
• Contributes to the development and support of core strategic work in key NPR areas of Content, Digital, Development, Communications, and Audience Growth.
• With colleagues on the Member Partnership team, works to ensure the efficient drafting, publishing, processing, delivery, and execution of legal agreements pertaining to the business relationship with NPR Members.
• Assesses opportunities for effective placement of NPR programming content and adoption of digital products on station platforms. Works across the Member Partnership team to devise strategies and best practices that support Network success in audience and revenue growth. Maintains thorough working knowledge of every NPR broadcast program, digital product and service, and the value proposition each one offers to station partners.
Network Engagement and Impact Management
• Oversees development of stakeholder messaging about NPR content, services and initiatives; delivery of those messages to station partners and stakeholders; and effective engagement around key strategic items.
• Works with the SVP of Member Partnership to design NPR onboarding protocols for new station leaders, to plan productive NPR Annual and A-Reps meetings, and to manage the work of the Joint NPR Network Leadership Team.
• Develops Member network strategic communications, socialization, and engagement campaigns for critical business initiatives. Acts as an internal communications expert, ensuring best in class communications and community practices are executed and followed.
• Establishes communications strategies to track and reflect network impact and health to internal and external stakeholders. Cultivates a data-driven, shared understanding of the network amongst NPR colleagues.
• Partners strategically and tactically with colleagues from NPR News, NPR Programming, the Collaborative Journalism Network, and the social and digital teams operating within the NPR News division, on key initiatives with the Member network.
• Defines and develops Salesforce practices to be able to create foundational tracking of network collaborations and efforts. Manages and enhances engagement, role-based communications, and list maintenance via Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
• Oversees the Network Response team to provide a high-level of tier one support, training, solutions, and best practices to NPR Network colleagues.
• Other duties as assigned.
QUALIFICATIONS
EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
WORK LOCATION:
This is a remote permitted role. This role is based out of our Washington, DC office but the employee may choose to work on a remote basis from a location that NPR approves.
REQUIRED SKILLS
• 8-10 years of experience in a communications and/or project management role, with proven management-level and supervisory experience, preferably in a media setting.
• Outstanding collaboration skills, with a proven ability to work cross-functionally and gain the respect and support of internal and external partners.
• Outstanding organizational, analytical, and verbal and written communication skills.
• Ability to thrive and lead with excellence in a complex environment that requires creativity, improvisation, flexibility, change management, and a sense of humor and perspective.
• We are looking for a strategic thinker and high energy self-starter who is well organized, with a demonstrated ability to successfully manage multiple projects and initiatives with a broad stakeholder/constituent group.
• Our ideal candidate brings a high level of empathy, social skills, and cultural competencies to their work and their interpersonal interactions. The ability to lead, mentor, and inspire others is critical to success in this role.
• Proficiency with MS Word, PowerPoint, and Excel is required; familiarity with Salesforce and with project management tools and platforms like Air Table and Asana are strongly preferred.
The anticipated salary range for this opportunity is $133,000-$166,000.
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-r06bnm-44-222-233-8-42 in your application.