Director, Marketing Planning & Operations

How You’ll Contribute

The Communication, Marketing and Brand team uses creative and strategic tools to further the mission of the National Geographic Society (NGS), while maintaining our place as one of the world’s most trusted non-profit organizations and global brands. The Division’s creative minds develop and execute mission-driven, on-brand strategies and integrated strategic communications, marketing, creative and audience growth for the National Geographic Society and unifying our efforts across our owned channels, through owned channels, outside partners and earned media. The team is composed of seven integrated departments: Creative, Integrated Brand Marketing, Partnership Marketing, MarCom Operations and Internal Communications, Strategic Communications, Executive Communications, and Crisis Communications and Public Relations.

The Director, Marketing Planning and Operations is a strategic leader who oversees the execution, technical enablement, and structural optimization of the Marketing & Communications (MarCom) function. Reporting to the Vice President, MarCom Operations & Internal Communications, this role supervises two key operational pillars: Marketing Planning & Operations and Marketing Technology (MarTech). The Director bridges the gap between marketing strategy and execution by designing end-to-end operational workflows, governing a multi-year marketing technology roadmap, and instilling a culture of operational excellence across all seven integrated departments. This leader works cross-functionally across the Society, partnering with key stakeholders (Legal, Technology, etc.), and business units to scale organizational capabilities, improve speed-to-market, and maximize the return on MarCom investments.

Your Impact

Responsibilities Include:

Process Optimization and Program Management (30%)

•  Develop and enforce project management frameworks, operational workflows, and RACI matrices across divisions to increase throughput and team-wide agility.

• Oversee the delivery of large-scale, cross-channel, and enterprise-level campaigns, establishing clear operational milestones and governance structures.

• Champion the safe adoption of emerging technologies (including GenAI and machine learning), designing governance frameworks for hybrid human-agent workflows while maintaining creative and editorial integrity.

• Partner with the Archives team and content creators to establish robust workflows across digital asset management (DAM/MAM) systems, ensuring strict adherence to rights management.

• Oversee marketing resource planning, including forecasting, capacity modeling, talent deployment, vendor utilization, and scenario-based resourcing.

• Standardize metrics and dashboards to track, analyze, and optimize audience growth, retention, and engagement across all owned, earned, and paid channels.

• Partner with the Manager, Analytics and Insights to deliver actionable pre- and post-campaign analyses, turning raw data into strategic recommendations that improve speed-to-market and effectiveness. 

Strategic Leadership, Alignment, and Governance (40%)

• Lead annual and quarterly strategic planning cycles across decentralized MarCom teams, ensuring marketing activities directly map to  budgets, business goals, and technological capabilities.

• Optimize marketing operations, including intake, workflow, prioritization, and resource management to support NGS marketing initiatives.

• Have an ownership role in the marketing technology stack ensuring effective utilization and integration. 

• Architect and implement a scalable multi-year marketing technology roadmap in close collaboration with the Technology division, ensuring the stack effectively supports customer lifecycle marketing, personalization, lead routing, and revenue/fundraising outcomes.

• Set organizational standards for marketing KPIs, dashboards, and scorecards to ensure technical tool adoption metrics and campaign execution data are leveraged for leadership decision-making. 

• Serve as the division's primary accountable business lead for the quality, security, and compliance of audience data sets, establishing policy guardrails in partnership with IT and Legal.

• Define and implement a comprehensive, organization-wide measurement framework to transform marketing and communications (MarCom) efforts into clearly quantifiable, ROI-driven initiatives.