Senior Director of Financial Planning and Strategic Projects

Art and Wellness Enterprises (AWE) is a professional services organization supporting non-profits founded by Alice Walton, including the Alice L. Walton Foundation, Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, Art Bridges Foundation, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Momentary, and Heartland Whole Health Institute.

Job Description:

Job Title: Senior Director of Financial Planning and Strategic Projects
Reports to: Chief Financial Officer
FLSA Classification: Exempt

Location: Bentonville, Arkansas (On-site)

Art and Wellness Enterprises (AWE) supports operating non-profits founded by Alice Walton, including the Alice L. Walton Foundation, Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, Art Bridges, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Momentary, and Heartland Whole Health Institute.

About The Position

The Senior Director of Financial Planning and Strategic Projects leads the budgeting, forecasting, and financial performance processes for AWE and the diverse, complex portfolio of supported organizations spanning healthcare, arts, education, and philanthropy. The position owns the full annual budgeting cycle, monthly and quarterly forecasting, and detailed variance analysis, ensuring accurate and timely financial insights. In addition, the Senior Director leads strategic projects across AWE and the broader ecosystem, ensuring resources are aligned with organizational priorities and long-term goals.

Key responsibilities include leading financial planning, reporting, and analysis processes, producing variance analytics, and preparing capital investment and ROI business cases. The role delivers executive-level reporting packages with clear narratives, visual aids, and data summaries. The Senior Director also directs the shared services cost allocation model, manages complex modeling and feasibility studies, and partners with senior leaders to advance high-priority projects across the ecosystem.

Success in this position requires exceptional analytical, communication, and leadership skills. The Senior Director must foster collaboration across finance, operations, and executive teams while leading and developing a high-performing team. Strong judgment, discretion, and the ability to balance competing priorities in a dynamic, evolving environment are essential to achieving impact.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

Financial Planning, Reporting, & Analysis

• Own the budgeting, forecasting, and management reporting processes, including timeline development, stakeholder coordination, end-to-end project management, and communication.
• Assist in all aspects of the company’s forecasting and budgeting process and compare detailed KPIs to actual performance.
• Prepare and deliver high-quality, executive-level financial reports to the CFO, AWE leadership, and stakeholders across all supported entities. These reports incorporate clear narrative explanations, visual aids such as charts and waterfalls, pivot tables, detailed spreadsheet summaries, annexures and appendices that enable a comprehensive and clear understanding of financial performance and variances against budgets, benchmarks, and prior periods.
• Produce detailed variance analytics to drive understanding of performance, highlighting major cost and income drivers and opportunities to optimize results.
• Complete capital investment business cases, including ROI and payback analysis.
• Prepare detailed analyses to support major investment initiatives and track performance against plans.
• Bring a deep understanding of budgeting, forecasting, and reporting best practices to improve consistency and accuracy across the ecosystem.

• Develop, own, and implement a consistent AWE Financial Package (monthly reporting) to ensure consistency across client entities and support cost efficiency analysis, benchmarking, and financial aggregation.
• Partner with the Financial Controller and Accounting team on the monthly close process, financial reporting, and preparation of GAAP financial statements.
• Prepare materials for executive leadership, finance committees, board of directors, and other high-level stakeholder forums.
• Build and deliver presentations for client leadership teams and other stakeholders.
• Support accuracy and accountability for all financial transactions, statements, filings, and reports.

Strategic Finance Initiatives

• Support special projects and ad-hoc analysis through robust, complex financial modeling, long-range planning, ROI analysis, feasibility studies, and engagement with subject matter experts.
• Lead initiatives to enhance financial planning and analysis across the ecosystem.
• Leverage operational relationship