Vice President of Event Operations

Broward Center for the Performing Arts • Fort Lauderdale, FL

3d • Onsite

About The Position

The Vice President of Event Operations (VP) is a senior leader responsible for the strategic direction, operational excellence, and performance of all event operations, guest experience, front-of-house functions, parking operations, and event security coordination across the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, The Parker, and managed venues. As a key member of the leadership team, this role ensures a seamless, high-quality guest journey from arrival through departure, while driving operational consistency, service excellence, and financial performance. The VP also oversees the Managed Venues division and serves as the primary organizational advocate for the managed venue General Managers at Aventura Arts and Cultural Center and the Miniaci Performing Arts Center at NSU, ensuring these venues have the institutional access, operational support, and organizational connectivity to serve their communities and partners as full members of the Broward Center family. This role is the front-of-house operational counterpart to the AVP, Production & Venue Services, who holds the back-of-house domain (production, facilities, technical, and event technician programs). Together, these two roles cover the full operational envelope of the organization. In addition to stabilizing and elevating existing operations at the Broward Center and The Parker, the VP will lead operational readiness planning for a new live music venue currently in design development, funded, board-approved, and projected to operate approximately 300 nights per year on the Riverwalk and part of the main campus.

Requirements

• Your application MUST include a cover letter with your resume. Applications without a cover letter will NOT be considered.
• 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in performing arts center or live entertainment venue operations, including direct management of multi-venue portfolios and oversight of front-of-house, security, and guest experience functions.
• Experience with governmental or institutional partner relationships, and organizational change management is strongly preferred.
• Multi-venue operations experience required.
• Experience overseeing multiple venues or sites simultaneously, including managing through general managers or venue leaders, is required.
• Proven team leadership and results delivery.
• Active professional network in performing arts center or live entertainment operations, with a demonstrated record of accomplishment of importing external best practices and benchmarking against peer institutions.
• Experience leading a team or organization through significant transition or restructuring, including building trust with long-tenured staff while raising operational standards.
• Bachelor’s degree required; advanced degree preferred, or extensive equivalent professional experience
• Ability to maintain a physical presence at designated work locations, maintaining regular attendance, punctuality and work a flexible schedule including nights, weekends, holidays, and events, is required.
• This role operates on a performing arts schedule. Nights, weekends, and holidays are core to the position, not exceptions.
• A typical week during the performance season includes multiple show nights and weekend events across venues.
• Candidates should self-select on this basis.
• Availability for operational issues and emergencies.
• Able to communicate effectively in English, both in writing and verbally.
• Candidates with experience navigating governmental or institutional operational environments will have a meaningful advantage in both day-to-day operations and long-term organizational strategy.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree preferred, or extensive equivalent professional experience

Responsibilities

• Serve as a strategic partner to the President & CEO, helping define organizational priorities and operational strategy.
• Provide enterprise-wide leadership across audience-facing operations, ensuring alignment and effective execution.
• Establish and model a culture of service excellence, accountability, and high performance across the organization, translating organizational values into visible, daily leadership behaviors and team expectations.
• Identify opportunities to enhance operational efficiency, effectiveness, and overall performance.
• Provide executive oversight of all event operations across venues.
• Build and formalize operational standards, staffing models, and execution protocols, including many that do not yet exist in consistent form, creating the operational infrastructure appropriate to the organization’s scale and complexity.
• Ensure readiness, coordination, and accountability for all event execution.
• Drive continuous improvement in operational performance and delivery.
• Lead operational readiness planning for the new on-campus live music venue, currently in design development. This includes staffing models, systems integration, SOP development, and coordination with construction and programming teams to ensure a successful opening.
• Establish consistent operational leadership at The Parker, which currently operates without a dedicated venue manager following a recent organizational restructuring. Stabilizing Parker’s day-to-day operations is an early and visible priority for this role.
• Develop, maintain, and actively administer Emergency Action Plans across all venues.
• Lead guest experience strategy and front-of-house operations, understanding that the guest relationship begins before arrival and extends well beyond the final bow.
• Establish service standards that reflect the full arc of the guest journey, from the first point of contact through the post-event experience and the long-term relationship that follows.
• Oversee guest services, ushers, and volunteer programs, including volunteer training.
• Foster a culture of genuine hospitality that originates in leadership and works its way outward to every audience-facing team member.
• Own the enterprise-wide guest experience standards program.
• Oversee the full guest journey from arrival to departure.
• Lead parking operations and traffic flow.
• Partner with and supervise the Director of Security in integrating safety and security operations with the guest experience mission, including show-night protocols, contracted security vendor relationships, ingress/egress management, and emergency preparedness across all venues.
• Ensure a safe and welcoming environment.
• Directly supervise the General Managers at Aventura AACC and Miniaci PAC at NSU.
• Set clear performance expectations, evaluate outcomes, and serve as their primary organizational resource.
• Ensure operational consistency and financial accountability.
• Oversee contracts and partner relationships.
• Deepen and strengthen the managed venue relationships, ensuring Aventura AACC and Miniaci PAC at NSU receive consistent operational support, marketing resources, and institutional access.
• Partner with Finance on budgeting and planning.
• Monitor performance and cost control.
• Drive revenue growth and efficiency.
• Align operations with financial goals.
• Develop and steward the organization's Net Promoter Score (NPS) program as a reliable, growing benchmark for guest experience performance.
• Lead the strategic planning and organizational readiness for future food & beverage and hospitality operations.
• Partner with executive leadership to define the operating model, timing, and investment approach.
• Support evaluation of partnership, vendor, or in-house models.
• Prepare operational standards, staffing frameworks, and guest experience integration.
• Serve as the primary integrating force across historically independent operational functions, including front-of-house, security, guest experience, hospitality, and managed venues, actively building cross-departmental communication, shared protocols, and a culture of coordinated accountability.
• Maintain a close working relationship with the AVP, Production & Venue Services, who holds the back-of-house operational domain.
• Represent Event Operations in leadership discussions.
• Support strategic growth initiatives.
• Support the operational evaluation and onboarding of new managed venues as they enter the portfolio, ensuring that operational standards, systems, and culture travel with the organization as it expands.
• Serve as an operational voice in growth discussions, helping the leadership team assess the feasibility and resource requirements of new opportunities before commitments are made.
• Lead, mentor, and develop Directors and General Managers with intention, helping each person understand where they are, where they can go, and what it will take to get there.
• Foster accountability and high performance while creating a working environment where natural friction is addressed openly rather than avoided, and where people feel safe to speak honestly, make mistakes, and grow from them without fear.
• Establish clear goals, performance expectations, and development pathways for each direct report.
• Partner with HR on workforce planning.
• Understand that the employee experience is a leadership responsibility from recruiting through offboarding.

Benefits

• Employees are public employees.
• The organization operates on a governmental fiscal year (October 1 through September 30), is subject to Florida Sunshine Laws and public procurement requirements.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive