Senior Strategic Initiatives Specialist

Focus Financial Partners•St. Louis, MO

About The Position

The Strategic Initiatives department is looking for a Senior Strategic Initiatives Specialist to join their team. The Strategic Initiatives Analyst is a high-impact, high-visibility role on Focus Financial Partners’ Strategic Initiatives team — a small, senior team that functions as an internal strategy and transformation group for the firm. This role leads a great deal of analytical and presentation work for the team to ensure we meet our business priorities. They are ready to trade deal-by-deal or engagement-by-engagement work for something with broader scope: supporting the highest-priority strategic initiatives at Focus, working directly with executive leadership, and doing the work that makes complex cross-functional decisions actually happen.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in business, finance, economics or related discipline required, MBA or CFA in progress or completed preferred
3+ years of experience in investment banking, private equity, management consulting, or corporate strategy at a financial services firm.
Demonstrated ability to build and own structured work products — models, memos, slide decks — independently and under time pressure.
Experience working in fast-paced environments with multiple concurrent priorities and senior stakeholder exposure.
Exceptional financial modeling and Excel skills — builds from scratch, not template-dependent.
Strong structured communication skills: can write a one-pager, build a five-slide deck, or lead a working session with equal command.
Intellectually curious and comfortable operating in ambiguity; doesn’t wait to be told what the answer should be.
High personal accountability — owns their output, fixes their mistakes, and doesn’t let things fall through the cracks.
Collaborative by instinct but comfortable working independently; can operate with minimal supervision on defined workstreams.
Familiarity with AI productivity tools (Claude, Notion AI, Copilot, etc.) and a willingness to be an early adopter.

Nice To Haves

Experience building with AI is a plus but not required.

Responsibilities

Own individual workstreams within the AI Strategy Program and other cross-functional initiatives — structure the work, drive to decisions, and deliver outputs on timeline.
Build and maintain the operating infrastructure for complex projects: project trackers, decision logs, risk registers, governance frameworks, and meeting rhythms.
Triage incoming requests and competing priorities across the team’s portfolio; keep the team’s attention on the highest-leverage work.
Build financial models, business cases, and ROI frameworks to support strategic decisions — clean, accurate, and built to be used, not just filed.
Conduct competitive intelligence and market research; synthesize findings into executive-ready summaries and recommendations.
Support initiative tracking and KPI dashboards that connect strategic priorities to measurable outcomes.
Prepare board materials, executive presentations, and governance committee deliverables; own the quality of the narrative and the numbers.
Represent the Strategic Initiatives team in cross-functional meetings; keep stakeholders aligned and accountable without positional authority.
Translate complex, ambiguous situations into crisp problem statements and structured options for senior decision-makers.
Support the execution of Focus’s enterprise AI strategy, including vendor evaluations, use case intake process, governance committee operations, and pilot program management.
Help develop and maintain the AI program’s knowledge base, intake forms, risk frameworks, and operating cadences.
Serve as a credible, hands-on user of AI tools; bring practical experience to conversations about where and how AI creates value at Focus.