Senior Director of Executive Communications & Speech Writing

The Microsoft Azure and Industry Marketing team is responsible for accelerating Cloud products and services across the Azure portfolio of Infrastructure, Data and AI, and Digital Applications, and also taking a One Microsoft, customer-first view of our priority industries.

We are looking for an experienced and dynamic Senior Director of Executive Communications & Speech Writing to provide external communications and external speechwriting support to our Chief Marketing Officer for Commercial Cloud & AI overseeing the Azure and Industry Marketing team. This role will report to the Chief of Staff and will be responsible for working across teams to develop all external communications and speeches for this executive. You should have a passion for technology and cloud services, a belief in the broader company mission, and the ability to tell a compelling and creative story.

We are looking for a dynamic individual with the experience to develop and execute an effective communications strategy that positively influences perceptions across multiple audiences and stakeholders. This is a deeply collaborative and strategic role that calls for close partnerships and the ability to orchestrate work across senior leaders on the leadership team, key stakeholders in Communications and Marketing, Public Relations (PR)/Analyst Relations (AR)/Investor Relations (IR), and Microsoft subsidiary teams around the world.

You will have significant opportunities for executive visibility, to show thought leadership, and to drive business impact. A successful candidate will be a creative storyteller, an effective speechwriter, one who is self-motivated & self-directed, able to operate in a fast-paced environment, and manage ambiguity while striving for high-quality results. The successful candidate works well in a team to drive impact quickly and operates with the highest levels of integrity and trust.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

This is the role for a communications professional with deep domain expertise demonstrated in practice and with a proven track record of impact. This is the role for someone who is grounded in a growth mindset, is open to new ideas and perspectives and has a passion for learning.

• Exceptional written communications skills with proven communications, high-volumn speech writing, and PR content development experience.
• Successful track record of delivering clear, compelling communications, and creating engaging content that breaks through with customers and achieves business results.
• Demonstrated ability to synthesize the complex and take multiple, complicated, disparate inputs from a variety of sources and evidence, and transform it into simple, clear, succinct, elegant, and compelling communication.
• Highly comfortable in a fast-paced team environment, proven capacity for multi-tasking and ability to manage multiple high-stakes deliverables and projects simultaneously, and resilient under pressure.
• Successful track record of building collaborative partnerships, excellent stakeholder management skills, and driving hard for results by working across teams to achieve a common goal.
• Executive maturity, ability to influence for impact, curiosity and self-awareness, desire to test and learn using data as a success metric, and commitment to diversity and inclusion

Additionally,

• Collaborates across the organization to develop a comprehensive communications plan and workback schedule for external audiences that influences perceptions and drives effective actions and outcomes with our audiences, while aligning with current business priorities
• Effectively uses data and insights to inform and evolve storytelling across all external communications and speaking engagements
• Proactively engages with internal and external stakeholders to develop stories that land with diverse audiences and seek out speaking and authorship opportunities
• Leverages technical expertise, experience, and knowledge of successful communication campaigns to determine the appropriate formats of a given story for varied and evolving target audiences
• Writes speeches, blogs, LinkedIn posts and articles, press quotes, social media content, video scr