Chief Marketing & Communications Officer

FS-ISAC•Reston, VA

9d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Chief Marketing and Communications Officer (CMCO) is a transformational executive leader reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, responsible for building, integrating, and executing the organization’s brand, marketing, internal and external communications strategies, to drive organizational growth, communicate value, and protect the organization’s reputation in a complex, high-risk environment. In a landscape shaped by evolving threats, regulatory scrutiny, and heightened member expectations, this role will modernize and integrate marketing, communications, and crisis response into a unified, intelligence-driven function. The leader will elevate the organization’s brand as a trusted partner, while ensuring rapid, transparent, and coordinated responses to member-impacting events.

Requirements

15+ years of executive leadership experience in marketing, communications, PR, or related fields within financial services, cybersecurity, technology, and/or membership-based organizations.
Proven success leads to transformational changes in complex, regulated, or high-risk environments.
Deep experience in crisis communications and reputation management.
Strong understanding of global risk, regulatory environments, and stakeholder dynamics.
Demonstrated ability to build and scale integrated, high-performing teams.
Calm under pressure with strong crisis leadership instincts
Strategic yet hands-on in building new capabilities
Data-driven and digitally fluent
Highly credible with executives, regulators, and external stakeholders
Change agent who can challenge legacy thinking and drive adoption

Responsibilities

Define and execute an integrated strategy across marketing, communications, public relations, Member Response Team (MRT), and crisis management aligned to business transformation goals.
Serve as a core member of the executive team, advising on reputation risk, stakeholder trust, and market positioning.
Lead organizational change across functions, embedding a member-first, high-accountability culture.
Build a modern marketing function focused on member acquisition, engagement, and retention.
Lead digital transformation including marketing automation, analytics, and personalization.
Create a digitally enabled, data-driven marketing engine with clear segmentation, targeted campaigns, and measurable impact.
Translate complex risk, security, or financial concepts into clear, compelling value propositions.
Collaborate with membership, partnerships, and business development to drive and achieve enterprise revenue growth targets.
Partner with sales/membership teams to ensure market-qualified leads convert to revenue.
Develop a Return on Investment framework to capture growth initiatives.
Drive a disciplined, transparent communication strategy that builds credibility and alignment across members, employees, regulators, and partners.
Build real-time communication capability by implementing tools, processes, and governance for rapid, coordinated communication during incidents.
Elevate executive communications to support visibility, thought leadership, and industry influence.
Ensure consistency of messaging across global markets and stakeholders.
Position the organization as a thought leader in resilience, security, and member protection.
Establish reputation risk disciplines by creating a proactive framework to anticipate, monitor, and mitigate reputational risk globally.
Lead proactive media engagement and manage high-stakes, real-time issues.
Build relationships with media, regulators, industry groups, and key influencers.
Define and evolve a global brand strategy that positions the organization as a trusted authority in resilience, security, and member protection.
Serve as the chief storyteller for the organization, shaping and compelling narrative that clearly articulates mission, value, and impact across all stakeholders.
Ensure message discipline and brand consistency across all regions, channels, and stakeholder groups.
Monitor and manage brand perception and sentiment, using data to inform strategy and course correction.
Oversee content strategy and governance to ensure consistency, accuracy, and alignment with brand and messaging.
Lead development of thought leadership platforms that elevate credibility with members, regulators, and industry leaders.
Serve as the executive owner of enterprise reputation management, including proactive risk identification and mitigation.
Develop and execute a global social media strategy aligned with brand, marketing, and crisis communications objectives.
Position social media as a real-time engagement and intelligence channel, particularly during member-impacting events.
Oversee content strategy, editorial calendars, and platform governance to ensure consistent, high-quality, and compliant messaging.
Partner with digital and marketing teams to optimize audience targeting, engagement metrics, and conversion performance.
Own the organization’s global website strategy as a primary channel for member acquisition, engagement, and conversion.
Optimize website performance to drive revenue outcomes, including membership inquiries, applications, renewals, and engagement with premium offerings.
Integrate crisis and member response by standing up a seamless, 24/7-member response and crisis communications capability, aligning MRT, PR, legal, and operations.
Implement service level agreements, escalation protocols, and advanced case management practices.
Leverage MRT insights to identify systemic issues, emerging risks, and opportunities to improve member experience.
Design and operationalize an enterprise-wide member crisis management framework.
Lead response during high-impact events (e.g., cyber incidents, financial disruptions, operational failures).
Ensure speed, transparency, and coordination across all communications and actions.
Conduct after-action reviews and institutionalize learnings.