Senior Director, Strategic Planning and Campaign Management

University of Chicago•Chicago, IL

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Senior Director bridges strategic direction and execution across the Strategic Planning, Campaign Management, and Executive Office functions, connecting people, priorities, and workstreams to advance the Assistant Vice President’s strategic agenda. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President for Strategic Planning and Campaign, the role translates organizational strategy into coordinated action by establishing clarity around priorities, ownership, sequencing, and decision-making across the division. The Senior Director directly manages project managers embedded within Strategic Planning and Campaign Management who oversee day-to-day implementation, milestones, and delivery within their respective workstreams. Working across rather than within individual workstreams, the Senior Director drives broader organizational progress through cross-functional facilitation, coordination, and problem-solving with colleagues across the enterprise. This role identifies and resolves complex, ambiguous challenges, including competing priorities, unclear ownership, cross-functional dependencies, and stalled decisions, and develops structures to support sustainable solutions or directs issues to the appropriate owners. Through this enterprise-wide perspective, the Senior Director also surfaces emerging risks, patterns, opportunities, and organizational constraints to the Assistant Vice President and other senior leaders to inform strategy and executive-level decision-making. This position leads the planning, development, and implementation of University objectives, long-range and strategic plans, and identifies the University’s strengths and weaknesses. Identifies new external partners to advance strategic priorities. This position is not eligible for employer-sponsored employment authorization.

Requirements

Minimum requirements include a college or university degree in related field.
Minimum requirements include knowledge and skills developed through 7+ years of work experience in a related job discipline.
Bachelor’s or advanced degree.
Minimum seven years of professional experience in nonprofit management, development, alumni relations, marketing, public relations, sales or similar professional field.
Minimum 8 years of progressively responsible experience in advancement, campaign management, strategic operations, or a similarly complex organizational environment; campaign experience strongly preferred.
Demonstrated experience leading and developing a senior team, with a track record of organizational impact extending beyond direct reports.
Strong project and operations management experience, including managing cross-team projects and overseeing multiple, simultaneous, and interdependent workstreams.
Building systems, processes, and operational infrastructure that transform individually dependent work into documented, scalable, and repeatable practices.
Producing and overseeing executive- and board-level materials that support strategic discussion and decision-making.
Analyzing and synthesizing data and complex information and translating findings into clear, actionable insights for technical and non-technical audiences.
Demonstrated experience partnering with and advising executive-level leaders, including managing upward and navigating sensitive or high-priority matters with discretion and sound judgment.
Demonstrated skill and knowledge of, or ability to learn quickly, the internal workings of the University as well as the technology tools available to Advancement, including Phoenix, the University's Donor Relationship Management Salesforce System.
Proficient in a Microsoft Windows computer environment, especially with Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access.
Outstanding interpersonal and communications skills characterized by the ability to listen, speak, and write effectively.
Explain complex ideas clearly and simply.
Manage confidential information with discretion and tact.
Act with integrity, professionalism, and confidentiality.
Work collegially and collaboratively in a team setting.
Self-motivated and take initiative.
Prioritize multiple projects and independently follow through with detail.
Lead across functions through influence, building alignment, shared accountability, and momentum among stakeholders with differing priorities and perspectives.
Strong facilitation skills to convene stakeholders, guide productive discussions, clarify decisions, and build shared ownership across teams.
Demonstrated ability to diagnose and resolve complex, ambiguous organizational challenges and develop practical structures and processes that improve coordination and decision-making.
Move fluidly between strategic thinking and operational execution, translating broad organizational priorities into clear plans, roles, and actions.

Nice To Haves

campaign experience strongly preferred
Ability to learn quickly the internal workings of the University as well as the technology tools available to Advancement, including Phoenix, the University's Donor Relationship Management Salesforce System.

Responsibilities

Serves as the operational bridge between the Assistant Vice President's strategic direction and the teams responsible for delivery across Strategic Planning, Campaign Management, and Executive Office Coordination, translating Executive Team priorities into integrated plans with clear ownership, timelines, accountability, and measurable outcomes.
Aligns priorities and resources across the portfolio and ensures insights, risks, resource needs, and emerging constraints flow upward to inform strategy.
Directly manages project managers embedded within the Strategic Planning and Campaign Management functions, setting priorities, allocating resources, and providing coaching and performance management.
Provides the operational leadership and decision-making framework that guides their work and partners with them to build systems and processes that enable efficient, accurate, and repeatable execution.
Identifies and resolves complex, ambiguous problems that cross functional boundaries, including competing demands, unclear ownership, contested priorities, and dependencies no single team is positioned to see.
Designs and implements governance structures and processes that improve decision-making and, when ownership resides outside the Assistant Vice President's office, elevates issues to the appropriate senior leader and collaborates toward resolution.
Facilitates alignment across functional leaders to advance organization-wide campaign and strategic planning objectives, serving as a convener who brings together the appropriate stakeholders to resolve issues, clarify direction, and maintain momentum while surfacing emerging conflicts and resource constraints before they become blockers.
Partners with People and Culture to lead the orientation of new senior leaders joining Advancement to the planning process, ensuring they have the context and working knowledge of organizational plans and cross-functional interdependencies needed to lead effectively.
Establishes and maintains standards for the quality, accuracy, and completeness of campaign and strategic planning deliverables, serving as the final review point before materials reach the Assistant Vice President or executive audiences and creating infrastructure that promotes consistency and cohesion across deliverables produced by teams throughout Advancement.
Oversees campaign governance processes and workstream management, including planning, tracking, and reporting of the campaign budget and the operational infrastructure supporting the Campaign Cabinet, campaign co-chairs, Steering Committee, and other campaign leadership bodies.
Oversees the development of Board materials, executive presentations, and other leadership-facing communications that support executive decision-making, provide clarity into Advancement progress and objectives, and articulate campaign strategy.
Draws on organizational context and directs the collection and synthesis of information across functions to shape the narrative presented to executive audiences.
Supports enterprise campaign initiatives and strategic projects, including campaign case support, executive analyses, and cross-functional initiatives that advance the University's strategic fundraising priorities.
Leads execution of Advancement's strategic planning process and cadence, partnering across the organization to coordinate executive updates, annual planning, organizational goal setting, multi-year priorities, campaign milestones, and long-range strategic planning.
Tracks progress against annual strategic objectives, develops unit- and team-level planning resources, supports development of the enterprise's three-year strategic plan, and oversees executive presentations and leadership materials that communicate organizational priorities, campaign performance, and strategic direction.
Synthesizes progress against strategic objectives and campaign goals into an integrated view of organizational performance, partnering with Operations to assess the feasibility of stated goals against organizational capacity, competing priorities, and current conditions, and surfacing findings and course-correction recommendations to the Assistant Vice President and Executive Team.
Provides strategic leadership for Executive Office Coordination, directing the operating rhythm of the Vice President's Office through Executive Team and Senior Leadership Team planning, STAT processes, executive briefings, prioritization of executive initiatives, and coordination across internal and external stakeholders.
Continuously improves the systems, governance structures, management tools, and operational processes supporting Strategic Planning and Campaign Management to strengthen decision-making, organizational alignment, and execution across the portfolio.
Seeks opportunities for professional development that will enhance job performance including attending webinars, seminars, building networks within the University and with colleagues at peer institutions.
Acts as a lead researcher and planner for a wide array of efforts led by the department/division.
Establishes and maintains a database of peer and competitor profiles.
Helps develop and maintain a database of faculty (international) research topics and international inter-institutional collaborations.
Performs other related work as needed.