Conference Director, Symposium Operations Strategy

Role Purpose:

As the Director of the NA CxO logistics team, you will be responsible for leading a team of highly skilled operations professionals to flawlessly deliver a portfolio of complex, fast growing conferences which meet our financial goals. To be successful in this role you must learn and understand our corporate strategy and translate it into an operations strategy which delivers exceptional conference experiences for our customers. Your role is to guide the team’s decision making, delivering for today whilst planning for the future.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the operations strategy for the CxO conference portfolio in partnership with our centers of excellence (COEs)

• Lead communication and collaboration across operations delivery leaders

• Participate in key milestone reviews to ensure the team recommendations align with corporate strategy and meets the needs of the customer

• Support the conference teams to transition from the design and delivery of individual parts of an experience to intentionally crafting an end-to-end audience journey

• Drive consistency in decision making and innovation across the portfolio

• Recruit, retain and coach a team of agile, customer focused, operational experts

• Inspire confidence and provide clear direction

• Provide subject matter expertise and guidance

• Ensure that the team is following established best practices to plan and deliver flawless end-to-end conference experiences which exceed our client’s expectations

• Drive initiatives which enhance the portfolio, deliver results against priorities and improve planning and execution

• Build team infrastructure to scale and operate efficiently

• Deliver for today while preparing for the future

• Lead strategy for conference growth solutions, direct and guide team to develop detailed plans for achieving growth and optimizing space

• Build strong relationships with venues and vendors, ensure that they are meeting our expectations and equipped to scale as our business grows

• Clearly understand and translate the needs of the audience

• Champion change and drive creative solutions

• Overall responsibility for NA CXO conference portfolio budgets including preparation, negotiation, accurate and timely monthly forecasts

• Ensure team is accountable and responsible for the expenses they manage and understand the financial impact of the decisions they make

• Lead the team through investment process ensuring recommendations align with the overall strategy for the conference

• Lead portfolio forecast reviews and participate in monthly forecast calls

• Understand risk and deviations to plan and make recommendations for corrective actions.  Partner with COE’s to mitigate risk

• Collaborate with COE leaders to identify trends and regional impacts

• Partner with financial planning team on overall budget health and managing risk

• Build trusted partnerships with team members and leaders across the organization, leveraging in office time to connect with stakeholders, learn from your peers and keep a pulse on priorities across the teams.

• Ability to travel up to 20% of the time, regionally and internationally

Expected results:

• Team Leadership

• Successful execution

• Flawless project management

• Trusted partnerships with key stakeholders across Gartner

• Exceptional cross-functional collaboration

• Exceptional operational efficiency

Key Contacts:

• Conference logistics leadership

• Conference operations centers of excellence

• Gartner business unit partners

• Third party vendors

Education:

• Bachelors degree with focus on events and / or hospitality management preferred

Professional experience:

• 13 + yrs of Conference Management experience

• Experience leading in-person and remote teams

• Experience of large, complex events

• Proven budget management abilities

• Demonstrated ability to set operations strategy

• Experience of working in a complex m